Department of Japanese Folk Culture

The Department of Japanese Folk Culture covers the three fields of Japanese history, folklore studies, and socio-cultural anthropology. Faculty specializing in each of those fields run seminars on their own specific academic subjects: ancient Japanese history with a special focus on the vernacular kingship of Izumo (now Shimane Prefecture); pre-modern and modern Japanese history focusing on graves of successive emperors; Japanese folk traditions and their changes, focusing on folk believes and rituals; Japanese folk traditions and their changes, focusing on traditional subsistence economies such as those centering on whaling; contemporary socio-cultural dynamics observed in the de-/re-construction of the familial system in the age of the reproduction revolution, etc. As academic advisors, faculty also give students advice on their research topics and plans, supervise research methods and academic references, as well as other advice to encourage and assist students to write their theses.

With the aim of fostering researchers, educators (instructors, teachers and professors) and socio-cultural practitioners such as museum curators, members of governmental/municipal/city/town/village cultural properties protection committees, rural development officers, community leaders, etc., with in-depth expertise and broad perspectives, our curriculum enables every student to choose subjects within all three fields—Japanese history, folklore studies, and socio-cultural anthropology—beyond the “conventional” borders of research fields, so that they can learn subjects that are not their specialty but related to their research. To better enable students to achieve their research goals, we also invite specialists from outside the university as part-time lecturers or visiting professors in fields not covered by our faculty or that are not included in the study of Japanese history, folklore studies, and socio-cultural anthropology but necessary for research in the three fields in this department.