The online version of the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a database that is designed to include bibliographic records of surviving copies of letterpress produced in Great Britain or any of its dependencies worldwide from 1473–1800 (http://estc.bl.uk). One of this online catalogue's advantages is that it has enhanced the surviving copies' information. A sample search of this online catalogue, however, soon reveals that it contains few entries detailing holdings in Japanese libraries. This is simply because no systematic research has examined Japanese holdings.
To register Japanese entries in the ESTC, the present writer started to compile a list of early English printed books housed in Japanese libraries, with a special focus on books dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. Of the various copies that the writer has found so far, this paper sheds light on a  unique collection, housed in the University of Tokyo Library, which the British government donated to support the Tokyo UL's restoration, which  suffered great damage from the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. This paper's appendix provides the list of all the 16th-century copies of this special collection, some of which have not been recorded before.

研究ノート