Asahi Shinbun Cross-Search (Asahi News Database) Asahi Shinbun Cross-Search (Asahi News Database), provided by Asahi Newspaper, is a succeeding version of Kikuzo II Visual for Libraries. This is the largest newspaper article database in Japan, allowing uses to simultaneously search 16 million newspaper articles and advertisements from 1879 to present. Those articles published since 1985 are available for full-text searching. Also this database contains weekly magazines published by the newspaper company, Aera and Shūkan Asahi, Asahi Graph (1923-1956) and the historical photo archive, which contains approximately 10,000 photographic records mostly taken in Asia during WWII.