From September 13 to 17 in 1999, the First China-Japan Seminar on Number Theory was held in Beijing, China, which was organized by the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica jointly with Department of Mathematics, Peking University. TE: m Japanese Professors and eighteen Chinese Professors attended this seminar. Professor Yuan Wang was the chairman, and Professor Chengbiao Pan was the vice-chairman. This seminar was planned and prepared by Professor Shigeru Kanemitsu and the first-named editor. Talks covered various research fields including analytic number theory, algebraic number theory, modular forms and transcendental number theory. The Great Wall and acrobatics impressed Japanese visitors. From November 29 to December 3 in 1999, an annual conference on analytic number theory was held in Kyoto, Japan, as one of the conferences supported by Research Institute of Mathematical Sciences (RIMS), Kyoto University. The organizer was the second-named editor. About one hundred Japanese scholars and some foreign visitors com ing from China, France, Germany and India attended this conference. Talks covered many branches in number theory. The scenery in Kyoto, Arashiyama Mountain and Katsura River impressed foreign visitors. An informal report of this conference was published as the volume 1160 of Surikaiseki Kenkyusho Kokyuroku (June 2000), published by RIMS, Ky oto University. The present book is the Proceedings of these two conferences, which records mainly some recent progress in number theory in China and Japan and reflects the academic exchanging between China and Japan."

From September 13 to 17 in 1999, the First China-Japan Seminar on Number Theory was held in Beijing, China, which was organized by the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica jointly with Department of Mathematics, Peking University. TE: m Japanese Professors and eighteen Chinese Professors attended this seminar. Professor Yuan Wang was the chairman, and Professor Chengbiao Pan was the vice-chairman. This seminar was planned and prepared by Professor Shigeru Kanemitsu and the first-named editor. Talks covered various research fields including analytic number theory, algebraic number theory, modular forms and transcendental number theory. The Great Wall and acrobatics impressed Japanese visitors. From November 29 to December 3 in 1999, an annual conference on analytic number theory was held in Kyoto, Japan, as one of the conferences supported by Research Institute of Mathematical Sciences (RIMS), Kyoto University. The organizer was the second-named editor. About one hundred Japanese scholars and some foreign visitors com ing from China, France, Germany and India attended this conference. Talks covered many branches in number theory. The scenery in Kyoto, Arashiyama Mountain and Katsura River impressed foreign visitors. An informal report of this conference was published as the volume 1160 of Surikaiseki Kenkyusho Kokyuroku (June 2000), published by RIMS, Ky oto University. The present book is the Proceedings of these two conferences, which records mainly some recent progress in number theory in China and Japan and reflects the academic exchanging between China and Japan."

The contents of this book was created by the authors as a simultaneous generalization of Witten zeta-functions, Mordell–Tornheim multiple zeta-functions, and Euler–Zagier multiple zeta-functions. Zeta-functions of root systems are defined by certain multiple series, given in terms of root systems. Therefore, they intrinsically have the action of associated Weyl groups.  The exposition begins with a brief introduction to the theory of Lie algebras and root systems and then provides the definition of zeta-functions of root systems, explicit examples associated with various simple Lie algebras, meromorphic continuation and recursive analytic structure described by Dynkin diagrams, special values at integer points, functional relations, and the background given by the action of Weyl groups. In particular, an explicit form of Witten’s volume formula is provided. It is shown that various relations among special values of Euler–Zagier multiple zeta-functions—which usually are called multiple zeta values (MZVs) and are quite important in connection with Zagier’s conjecture—are just special cases of various functional relations among zeta-functions of root systems. The authors further provide other applications to the theory of MZVs and also introduce generalizations with Dirichlet characters, and with certain congruence conditions. The book concludes with a brief description of other relevant topics.