Japanese studies ( Japanese: ) or Japan studies (sometimes Japanology in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

), is a sub-field of

area studies Area studies (also known as regional studies) are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/ federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what ...

East Asian studies East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, histo ...

involved in social sciences and humanities research on

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. It incorporates fields such as the study of

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

, art,

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

and

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

. Its roots may be traced back to the Dutch at

Dejima , in the 17th century also called Tsukishima ( 築島, "built island"), was an artificial island off Nagasaki, Japan that served as a trading post for the Portuguese (1570–1639) and subsequently the Dutch (1641–1854). For 220 years, i ...

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

in the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

. The foundation of the

Asiatic Society of Japan The Asiatic Society of Japan, Inc. (一般社団法人日本アジア協会” or “Ippan Shadan Hojin Nihon Ajia Kyokai”) or "ASJ" is a non-profit organization of Japanology. ASJ serves members of a general audience that have shared interests ...

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

in 1872 by men such as

Ernest Satow Sir Ernest Mason Satow, (30 June 1843 – 26 August 1929), was a British scholar, diplomat and Japanologist. Satow is better known in Japan than in Britain or the other countries in which he served, where he was known as . He was a key fig ...

and Frederick Victor Dickins was an important event in the development of Japanese studies as an academic discipline.

Japanese studies organizations and publications

In the United States, the Society for Japanese Studies has published the ''

Journal of Japanese Studies ''The Journal of Japanese Studies'' (JJS) is the most influential journal dealing with research on Japan in the United States. It is a multidisciplinary forum for communicating new information, new interpretations, and recent research results con ...

'' (JJS) since 1974. This is a biannual academic journal dealing with research on Japan in the United States. JJS is supported by grants from the

Japan Foundation The was established in 1972 by an Act of the National Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an Independent Administrative Institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministr ...

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

, and the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...

in addition to endowments from the

Kyocera Corporation is a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power generating systems, telecommunic ...

and the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. The British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS), founded in 1974, is an association primarily sponsored by

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

and the

. The BAJS publishes an academic journal called ''Japan Forum''. In Europe, the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) is also funded by Toshiba and the Japan Foundation. It has held triennial conferences around Europe since 1973. Other academic journals dealing with Japanese studies include ''

Monumenta Nipponica ''Monumenta Nipponica'' is a semi-annual academic journal of Japanese studies. Published by Sophia University (Tokyo), it is one of the oldest English-language academic journals in the field of Asian studies, being founded in 1938. Although the jo ...

'', a biannual English-language journal affiliated with

Sophia University Sophia University (Japanese: 上智大学, ''Jōchi Daigaku''; Latin: ''Universitas Sedis Sapientiae'') is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three ''Sōkeijōchi'' (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the to ...

in Tokyo, and ''

Social Science Japan Journal Social Science Japan Journal (SSJJ) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal covering Japan in social scientific perspective, semiannually published by Oxford University Press. SSJJ's editorial board is located at the Institute of Social Science, t ...

'', published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

. Scholarship on Japan is also within the purview of many organizations and publications dealing with the more general field of

, such as the

Association for Asian Studies The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is a scholarly, non-political and non-profit professional association focusing on Asia and the study of Asia. It is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. The Association provides members with an Annu ...

or the

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...

publication '' Positions: Asia Critique''. The

International Research Center for Japanese Studies The , or Nichibunken (日文研), is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the Natio ...

(Nichibunken), maintains an online database of institutions involved in Japanese studies research worldwide, including information on 1,640 institutions of Japanese studies. The database indicates that the country with the most institutions of Japanese studies outside of the United States and Japan is China (121), while other countries containing a significant number of institutions include South Korea (85), England (69), Germany (64), Canada (61), Australia (54), and France (54).

Notable Japanologists

Boris Akunin Boris Akunin (russian: Борис Акунин) is the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili (russian: Григорий Шалвович Чхартишвили, Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili; ka, გრიგორი ჩხარტიშვ ...

Ruth Benedict Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Re ...

Basil Hall Chamberlain Basil Hall Chamberlain (18 October 1850 – 15 February 1935) was a British academic and Japanologist. He was a professor of the Japanese language at Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active in Japan during th ...

Serge Elisséeff Serge Elisséeff (; born Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev; 13 January 188913 April 1975) was a Russian-French scholar, Japanologist, and professor at Harvard University. He was one of the first Westerners to study Japanese at a university in Japan. H ...

* Carol Gluck *

William Elliot Griffis William Elliot Griffis (September 17, 1843 – February 5, 1928) was an American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author.Brown, John Howard. (1904)."Griffis, William Elliot,"''The Twentieth Century Biographical Diction ...

Conrad Totman Conrad Davis Totman (born January 5, 1934) is an American historian, academic, writer, translator and Japanologist.Conrad Totman Papers (MS 447). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amhe ...

Lafcadio Hearn , born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (; el, Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χέρν, Patríkios Lefkádios Chérn, Irish: Pádraig Lafcadio O'hEarain), was an Irish- Greek- Japanese writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture a ...

Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, (24 February 183717 August 1916) was a British diplomat, collector and writer. Nicknamed "Barty", he was the paternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters. Early years Freeman-Mitford was ...

also known as A. B. Mitford and Lord Redesdale. *

Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...

Fosco Maraini Fosco Maraini (; 15 November 1912 – 8 June 2004) was an Italian photographer, anthropologist, ethnologist, writer, mountaineer and academic. Biography He was born in Florence from the Italian sculptor Antonio Maraini (1886–1963) and Cornelia ...

* Edwin O. Reischauer *

Donald Richie Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also di ...

* Ernest Mason Satow * Edward Seidensticker *

Francis Xavier Francis Xavier (born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta; Latin: ''Franciscus Xaverius''; Basque: ''Frantzisko Xabierkoa''; French: ''François Xavier''; Spanish: ''Francisco Javier''; Portuguese: ''Francisco Xavier''; 7 April 15063 December ...

* Judit Hidasi * Steponas Kairys

Scholarly journals

* '' Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History'', In Japanese * ''East Asian History'' * ''Japan Forum'' * ''Japanese Studies'' * ''

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies The ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies'' is a biannual open access journal of research on religion in Japan. It was established in 1960 as ''Contemporary Religions in Japan'' by the International Institute for the Study of Religions in Toky ...

'' * ''

'', Japanese studies, in English * ''Sino-Japanese Studies'' Se
online
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References

External links

''Electronic journal of contemporary Japanese studies''

European Association for Japanese Studies

Images of Japan in Non-Japanese Sources

Library guides