NIHU Area Studies Project for Northeast Asia

The National Institute for the Humanities (NIHU) as an Inter-University Research Institute Corporation under the auspices of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology up till now has been an umbrella organization for six different institutions engaged in humanities research. On April 20, 2016, under the Third Medium-term Plan, NIHU established two new organizations: the Center for Information & Public Relations (CIP) and the Center for Transdisciplinary Innovation (CTI). CIP was set up for effective dissemination of research results and CTI was established to promote NIHU’s new transdisciplinary research projects. For the past 10 years, NIHU has been working on several area studies projects such as “Islamic Area Studies,” “Contemporary Chinese Area Studies,” and “Contemporary India Area Studies.” In the Third Medium-term Plan, these programs were reorganized into one big project for the promotion of area studies led by NIHU’s new organization for area studies promotion. The “Promotion Project for
Northeast Asian Area Studies” became a new part of this program along with the “Promotion Project for Contemporary Middle Eastern Area Studies,” “Promotion Project for South Asian Area Studies,” and “Promotion Project for Contemporary Chinese Area Studies.” This big project is positioned as a network-type program.

Six research institutes joined the “NIHU Area Studies Project for Northeast Asia” to conduct research related to Northeast Asia. This project involves the National Museum of Ethnology, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (Hokkaido University), Center for Northeast Asian Studies (Tohoku University), Center for Far Eastern Studies (Toyama University), Northeast Asia Research Center (University of Shimane), and Waseda Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies (Waseda University). The goal of this network-based program is to construct an effective collaborative research system by strengthening already-existing bonds between both domestic and international institutes and their members.

Members