Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture (REJ) conjoins an original collection of early- to mid-20th-century multimedia tourism ephemera with a collaboratively built, open-access digital archive that dynamically displays these objects in digital space. Designed to allow curated access to resources documenting representations of Japan and its place in the world, REJ’s archive draws on Carole Palmer's idea of a Thematic Research Collection, a web-based resource in which scholarship is embedded in both the product and its use. Silent cinema research and film preservation work inspired the original collection of travel-contingent objects that make this hybrid project a tool for re-envisioning Japan's past in granular detail.

Scholarly communities emerge around and are sustained by archives. As a digital information hub and repository for open-access resources, Japan Past & Present (JPP) seeks to mobilize the centripetal force of the archive to reimagine the Japanese humanities as a genuinely global field. On the one hand, JPP works to provide global access to archives and information; on the other, it offers funding to incentivize the formation of global groups of scholars who tap into the potential of local archives.