The Bibliography of Asian Studies can be quite tricky to search if you don't know a couple of tricks. The subject headings used by the BAS are unique to BAS and always start with the country. They can be very hard to guess, so you will be most successful if you do a keyword search and then look at the subject headings assigned. Once you have the right subject heading, you can add in keywords to do a more nuanced search. 

If you are working on China or Korea as a topic, remember that romanization rules have changed over time so you will need to use the different variations to retrieve them all. This is where boolean logic (in this case OR for example Ch'ing or Qing) works so you don't have to redo searches. 

Here are a few subject headings that relate to history of the book: 

China -- Communication & Media -- Publishing & Book Trade

China -- History -- By Period -- Ch'ing (1644-1911)

China -- History -- By Period -- Antiquity to Ming

Korea -- Communication & Media -- Publishing & Book Trade

Korea -- History -- By Period -- Yi Dynasty (1392-1910)

Japan -- Communication & Media -- Publishing & Book Trade

Japan -- History -- By Period -- Tokugawa (1600-1868)

Cumulative bibliography of Asian studies, 1941-1965 / subject bibliography.

Cumulative bibliography of Asian studies, 1941-1965: author bibliography.

Now the online version of the BAS only goes back to the early 1970s at the moment so the database doesn't seem as rich as the others. There are cumulative bibliographies available for anyone who really wants to take a deep dive into book history. Smith's copies of the cumulative bibliographies are out in the Annex and would need to be requested, and that is not convenient given the way that the volumes are displayed in the catalog. So I don't expect people to do it, I just want you to know that it is possible.