The database contains more than 200 books including unpublished diaries, notebooks, and memos of Saburo Okita (1914-1993), a postwar economist and economic bureaucracy in Japan. These materials have been kept with the bereaved family for many years, but were recently donated to the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and cataloged in the library in April 2019. From the 1930s to the 1990s, it covers the entire era when Saburo Okita was in the key positions. It is expected to be widely used as a valuable historical source for future research when considering post-war Japan's demographic and environmental policies including international relations as well as Japanese-Chinese relations.

About Saburo Ohkita

In 1947, Saburo Okita was the head of the Research Division, Economic Stability Headquarters, and worked on the first Economic White Paper. He also worked on important postwar economic policies, such as the New Long-Term Economic Plan (1957) and the National Income Doublement Plan (1960). He became Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Ohira Cabinet Period in 1979, and played an active role in diplomacy in the event of the oil crisis and the recovery in Japan-China relations. After that, he served as President of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (1973-77) and Chairman of the External Economic Cooperation Council (1988-92). He is a very important person in tracing the history of Japan's ODA (Official Development Assistance).