Affiliations with Overseas Research Institutes

Formation of an International Research Network

Our program promoted interchange and partnership with overseas research organizations with the goal of academic information exchange and the dispatch and appointment of young researchers. As of 2006, we were affiliated with East China Normal University, Beijing Normal University, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Sun Yat-Sen University and the University of Hong Kong (all in China), Yonsei University in South Korea, the University of British Columbia in Canada, and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. We invited representatives from these affiliated institutions to our international symposiums to enhance international academic exchange and collaboration.

We also established a system of visiting researchers to encourage cooperative study by inviting young researchers from affiliated organizations. They stayed with us only for two weeks, but it is hoped that such experience will help to lay the foundation for them to grow into researchers able to succeed internationally in the future, as is the case with dispatched researchers. As of the end of 2007, we invited 24 researchers. All of them were young scholars pursuing the field of Japanese nonwritten materials, and some of them wrote a doctoral dissertation based on the study materials and reference materials they gathered in Japan.

Furthermore, we held international symposiums and presented the outcome of collaborative research to researchers both inside and outside Japan in the hope that our research projects would meet global standards. The theme of our first symposium in 2005 was “What are nonwritten cultural materials? Nonwritten materials memorizing and documenting human culture,” and that of our second one in 2006 was “Interpreting human culture through nonwritten materials: perspectives on illustrated materials, folk implements and landscape.” We received valuable feedback and suggestions from researchers inside and outside Japan.

Affiliate Research Institutes, Researchers Invited


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