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29 January 2009
Sheffield receives boost for Japanese studies
The National Institute of Japanese Studies (NIJS), a joint initiative between the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, as part of the White Rose East Asia Centre, is amongst the beneficiaries of a major grant programme which has given new impetus to Japanese studies in the UK.
The grant programme, which was established by The Nippon Foundation (TNF), a private grant-making foundation based in Tokyo, and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (GBSF), will give £2.5 million to the research and study of Japan in UK universities over the next five years.
Described as "one of the largest injections of recurrent external funding that the discipline has ever received," the programme promised in October 2007 a total of £2.5 million for UK universities over a five-year period. Since then, 13 `Sasakawa Lectureships´ have been established and the universities of Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Cardiff, East Anglia, Oxford Brookes , Cambridge, Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Birkbeck College, as well as Sheffield and Leeds, are offering new courses in Japanese Studies.
The creation of the lectureships provides many more students with the opportunity to pursue the subject to degree level. The new courses span the social sciences, from Japan´s Economy and Management and Modern / Post-war History to Japanese Visual Media.
In total three new posts have been funded through the National Institute of Japanese Studies, which pools the resources and expertise of the departments of East Asian Studies at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds. The posts based at Sheffield have been taken up by Dr Harald Conrad, who will be lecturing on Japan´s Economy and Management, and Dr Bhubindar Singh who has been tasked during this year with establishing NIJS as the global hub for a network of research students. The post at Leeds has been taken up by Dr Irena Hayter, who is the Sasakawa Lecturer in Japanese Cultural Studies.
Japanese has become a vulnerable subject because it is expensive to teach, with many universities cutting back or closing departments over the last decade in favour of courses which bring in more revenue. This threatened to diminish a generation of Japan specialists, and endanger the close partnerships that the UK and Japan have enjoyed in trade and investment, cultural and scientific exchange and in a number of multilateral contexts.
Yohei Sasakawa, Chairman of The Nippon Foundation, said: "The many viewpoints that the Sasakawa Lecturers will bring to their posts will be a major driving force behind research into Japan at universities in the UK. I hope that we will be able to provide further opportunities through this programme for Sasakawa Lecturers and other young researchers to exchange information and collaborate on projects concerning Japan".
The Earl of St Andrews, Chairman of the GBSF, said: "Japan matters because it is the second most powerful economy in the world; it is a major overseas investment and trade partner of the UK. It is a member of the G8 core states of global governance. It is therefore of crucial importance to our policy-makers, business leaders, scholars – and especially to the successor generations and to our future leaders. They must all be given the tools to better understand Japan´s culture, its society and its language. Our programme is helping to do that."
Dr Harald Conrad, Sasakawa Lecturer in Japan´s Economy and Management, in the University´s School of East Asian Studies, said: "I´m delighted to have taken up the post at the University of Sheffield. The NIJS is swiftly developing into a global centre of excellence for research and training on modern Japan and the creation of the lectureships will help pave the way for a new generation of Japanese scholars."
The Nippon Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation celebrated the success of the Sasakawa Lectureship Programme with a major academic conference entitled "Japan Matters: Redefining Power, Politics and Culture in the Age of Globalisation" at Birkbeck College, London, on Friday 23 January.
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