Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- academic discipline
- Subclass of
- East Asian studies
- Part of
- oriental studies
Show 3 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Japanese studies
- Commons category
- Japanologists
- practiced by
- japanologist
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Encyclopedic overview
Japanese studies or Japan studies (Japanese: 日本学, Hepburn: Nihongaku), sometimes known as Japanology in Europe, is a sub-field of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese language, history, culture, literature, philosophy, art, music, cinema, and science.
The historical roots of Western Japanese studies may be traced back to Portuguese traders based in Nagasaki during the Sengoku period, with Luís Fróis detailing Historia de Japam ('History of Japan') and João Rodrigues for compiling Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ('Art of the Tongue of Japan'), and later the Dutch traders in Dejima, during the Edo period (1603–1867). The foundation of the Asiatic Society of Japan at Yokohama in 1872 by Western scholars such as Ernest Satow and Frederick Victor Dickins was an important event in the development of Japanese studies as an academic discipline.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Japanese studies” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.