Joint Research Projects (by Visiting Researchers)
As part of our activities as the “International Research Center for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,” ILCAA invites visiting scholars to carry out joint-research projects in collaboration with the staff members.
◆The study of egophoricity in the languages of Central Eurasia: focusing on Tuvan and Sibe
About the Project
Project term: 1 Sep 2021 - 31 Aug 2022
This research project is a successor to the project “A new collaborative approach with Russia to the documentation and studies on Altaic languages,” which was conducted as part of the JSPS Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan. In this project, we will perform the following study on Tuvan, a Turkic language spoken in south of the Russian Federation having a border with Mongolia. The first research target activity is documenting the language (recording words from primary informants), and the second is grammatical study using the recorded materials. For the grammatical study, using narrative materials recorded and organized under the auspices of a previous JSPS research project and the elicitation data gathered in this stage of the project, we will analyze and compare elements indicating egophoricity (a category of elements indicated by markers such as -noda, -teiru, -yo, -ne in Japanese and associated with the status and processing of speech participants’ information and knowledge, including the speaker’s findings and their compatibility with the hearer’s information and knowledge) of Tuvan and Sibe. Tuvan and Sibe are both spoken in the frontier region between Turkic languages and Mongolian languages and have been influenced by their neighboring languages in various language families. In this research project, we will examine linguistic contacts in the region and their impact on Tuvan and Sibe.
Members
Coordinator
- Arzhaana SYURYUN
ILCAA Staff
- Norikazu KOGURA
◆Study on the inscription texts and the library collection of an 18th Century Ottoman chief eunuch of the imperial harem: Hacı Beşir Ağa (d. 1746)
About the Project
Project term: 1 Sep 2021 - 31 Aug 2022
This study explores the role of Hacı Beşir Ağa (d. 1746) in 18th century Ottoman religious and intellectual life, analyzing the inscriptions on the public buildings constructed by him and his famous huge library collection. He was the most powerful chief eunuch in the history of the Ottoman Empire, who oversaw the education of crown princes and harem women while choosing and deposing a long series of grand viziers especially in the first half of the reign of Sultan Mahmud I (1730-54). This study will make use of Database for Ottoman Inscriptions sponsored by TUFS and Abjad Numerals Calculator by co-project member Takamatsu, one of the online resources of IRC, ILCAA.
Members
Coordinator
- Hatice AYNUR
ILCAA Staff
- Yoichi TAKAMATSU
◆Religious Movements among the Karen People in the Deterritorialized Thailand-Myanmar Borderland
About the Project
Project term: 1 Sep 2021 - 31 Aug 2022
This project aims to explore ways in which Karen ethnic people maintain, reconstruct and reterritorialize their religious movements in the context of rapid socio economic and political transformation taking place in Thailand Myanmar borderland. Although the majority of Karen people are either Buddhist or Christian, a sizeable number of Karen belongs to many religious cults which have their distinctive belief system and ritual practices. Examples of these cults/movements are Leke, Talaku, Myitta Byamazoe and others, which separate themselves from other Karen Christian, Buddhist and other world religions. They have constructed their own communities and expanded networks in the borderland area, while continued to adjust themselves in the complex power relations. However since the 1990s, the situation in the borderland has drastically changed which affect the existence of Karen religious movement. As the Burmese army has seized many Karen nationalist movements'strongholds and camps, hundreds thousands of Karen, including members of religious movements, have fled across the border to refugee camps in Thailand and later relocated to third countries. Besides, with the development of infrastructure and higher budget, the Thai and Myanmar state has started more intensively nationalist and development projects in the Karen religious communities. Lastly, with a lot of refugees and migrants in the borderland, Christian missions have actively launched their evangelization among the marginal people and increasingly being successful. Under this present context of borderland deterritorialization, this research is interested to explore how the Karen religious movements negotiate their existence by redefining their belief system, restructuring and regrouping their communities and expanding their connections. Although there are many Karen religious cults in Thailand Myanmar borderland area, to have an in depth study, th is res rch ill lo n !y the Talaku Karen, who lived in around 20 villages in Thailand Myanmar borderland. The research will trace back to the history and development of the Talaku and the recent deterritorialized and reterritorialized process. Besides the collection of documents on the operation of integrative forces in the borderland, field works will be conducted in Talaku villages in both Thailand and Myanmar to observe changes in their movements and to interview key persons of the cult on how they redefine and reconstruct their cult movement. Results of the research will be written up and finalized at ILCAA in collaboration with Prof. Nishii.
Members
Coordinator
- Kwanchewan BUADAENG
ILCAA Staff
- Ryoko NISHII
◆Creating annotated texts and a sketch grammar of Lole Dialect of Rote
About the Project
Project term: 1 Sep 2021 - 31 Aug 2022
The project is to document and describe the Lole dialect of Rotenese spoken by about 20,000 people on the island of Rote in eastern Indonesia. The documentation and description will be based on the data I collected in the past fieldwork and documentation (about six hours of recordings), including the data recorded at the ILCAA Tokyo in 2017 in collaboration with Prof. Asako Shiohara. This project aims at annotating the existing documented texts and recordings and producing a grammar sketch of Lole. In this research, I will collaborate with Prof. Asako Shiohara, who also intensively works on languages of eastern Indonesia. In order to reach the expected outcomes, we will transcribe and annotate the existing recordings of spontaneous speaking by native speakers using ELAN and FLEx computer software, respectively. Besides annotated texts and a grammar sketch, during my visiting period, we also expect to finish two related paper-drafts to be presented in international conferences.
Members
Coordinator
- Jermy Imanuel BALUKH
ILCAA Staff
- Asako SHIOHARA
The Past Projects
Ongoing Projects in 2021
◆Socio-Economic Dynamics of Transformation of Rural Societies and Migration in Bangladesh with particular focus on Gohira Village
About the Project
Project term: 1 May 2021 - 31 Aug 2021
This joint research project will look at how the rural society of Gohira Village, Chittagong District has changed in the last 50 years since the first anthropological research of Professor Tadahiko HARA (1934–90) in the 1960s by revisiting the village. We will hold workshops and study meetings with local researchers in order to discuss varied research methods for revealing structural changes in local societies based on a long term vision in this joint project as a part of the joint research projects based on the academic cooperation agreement concluded between ILCAA and Jahangirnagar University in 2019.
Members
Coordinator
- Ranjan Saha Partha
ILCAA Staff
- Masahiko TOGAWA
◆Buddhist Revival Movement in modern India: Japanese scholar Kimura Nichiki and his role in Indo-Japan relationship
About the Project
Project term: 1 Apr 2021 - 31 Jul 2021
This joint research project will compare and contrast the records in India and Japan about the activities of Kimura Nichiki (Ryukan, 1882–1965), a Japanese scholar of Buddhist studies, who studied in India in 1909 and thereafter taught at universities such as the University of Calcutta. The project will shed light on an unknown part of Indo-Japanese academic exchanges in pre-World War II period by evaluating roles of Kimura Nichiki in Buddhist revival movement in modern Bengal, following the joint research project as a collaboration between Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) designed in 2016, whose principal investigator was a staff of ILCAA.
Members
Coordinator
- Sumit Kumar Barua
ILCAA Staff
- Masahiko TOGAWA
◆Narrative texts in the South Asian Multi-lingual Context
About the Project
Project term: 1 Apr 2020 - 31 Jul 2020
This joint research project mainly aims to analyze interaction between Persian and other languages such as Sanskrit in the development of Persian literature and stories in medieval and early modern South Asia. Specifically, 1) about the Persian literary works which will be analyzed during the research period, the applicants will identify common and similar motifs, expressions etc. found in Sanskrit literature; 2) particularly, analyzing Persian translations and adaptations, the applicants will analyze their original Sanskrit literary works and show correspondences between the originals and their translations.
Members
Coordinator
- Pegah SHAHBAZ
ILCAA Staff
- Satoshi OGURA
◆Village, Kinship and the Wider World: Ethnographic Studies in South Asia
About the Project
Project term: 1 Apr 2019 - 31 Jul 2019
This joint research project aims to reconsider developments in the theory and methodology of ethnographic studies in South Asia since the British colonial period, by reflecting on the various ethnographic works in Bengal, and acknowledge its importance and relevance to various fields of South Asian studies. In particular, this project will revisit an ethnography written by the late Japanese anthropologist Tadahiko Hara (1934-1990), a former professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, who conducted fieldwork in a Muslim village in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).
Members
Coordinator
- Abhijit DASGUPTA
ILCAA Staff
- Masahiko TOGAWA
◆Malay and Persian Historical Literatures Compared
About the Project
Project term: 1 Sep 2019 - 29 Feb 2020
This project aims at a comparison of Malay and Persian historical writings. It begins with the syairs, narrative poems made up of monorhyme quatrains. First, Historical syairs are compared with Malay historical sources, and then with Persian epics and chronicles. The project tries to get an insight about similarities and differences between the Malay and Persianate worlds in early modern period.
Members
Coordinator
- Henri CHAMBERT-LOIR
ILCAA Staff
- Nobuaki KONDO
◆Documentation of the Oral Tradition of Kui in Alor, the East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia
About the Project
Project term: 1 Oct 2019 - 31 Mar 2020
The aim of this project is to document Kui language, spoken in Alor Island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Unlike typical language documentation attempts focusing on the communicative function of languages, this research project will focus on functions that languages play in the culture, especially on oral tradition of Kui Language, called Lego-lego.
Members
Coordinator
- Katubi
ILCAA Staff
- Asako SHIOHARA (ILCAA)
◆Social Action and the Grammar(s) of Contemporary Indonesian
About the Project
Project term: 1 Nov 2017 - 30 Jun 2018
In this project I will explore the phenomenon of different types of grammar within Indonesian. Rather than viewing these a separate grammatical systems, I see them as differing modes of grammatical organisation and arising from constellations of differing modes of interaction and the various social actions that language users engage in, and integrated in complex ways. I will investigate how language users deploy these different modes of grammatical organisation and what motivates the use of these different modes, by exploring their use in a corpus of naturally occurring Indonesian language.
Members
Coordinator
- Michael C. Ewing
ILCAA Staff
- Toshihide NAKAYAMA (ILCAA)
◆Language Documentation and Youth Participation in Sustainable Language and Culture Reclamation Development
About the Project
Project term: 1 Jan 2018 - 15 July 2018
This pilot action research project focuses on theoretical study of language documentation and youth participation in reclamation activities in two research sites; Ikema-Miyako (Okinawa, Japan) and Black Tai (Petchburi, Thailand). Ethnographic interviews will be conducted to elicit in-depth information about language and culture activities in Ikema-Miyako community. This, combined with comparable information from Black Tai community that has been already collected, will form a foundation for the proposed research. With informed consent, recordings of locally salient forms of conversational exchange, discourses and cultural events with expanded metadata will be produced and analyzed.
Members
Coordinator
- Sumittra Suraratdecha
ILCAA Staff
- Toshihide NAKAYAMA (ILCAA)
◆From Turkestan to Istanbul: in Seeking the Freedom
About the Project
Project term: 1 Apr 2018 - 31 Jul 2018
The most prominent modernist figure and Turkestani leading intellectual who pioneered the modernist visions and agendas was ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf Fiṭrat (1886 – 1938) who for over two decades fought against, first, what he perceived as the restrictive conservative Islamic thought and practice of local Muslim elites and later, the rigid dogmatism of the newly installed Soviet regime. The project is trying to investigate how Fiṭrat contributed to the concept and notion of freedom by following his changes of mind: from Islamism to atheism within the development of anti-colonial thought and general intellectual changes in Turkestan in the early twentieth century. This research can provide valuable insight into the intellectual history in Central Asia, that has until today not received adequate attention within Islamic Studies of the recent past.
Members
Coordinator
- Abdirashidov Zaynabidin Sharabidinovich
ILCAA Staff
- Jin NODA (ILCAA)
◆Cultural and Linguistic Study of the Agrico-Pastoral People in Qinghai Tibet
About the Project
Project term: 1 Oct 2018 - 31 Mar 2019
The objective of this project is to conduct an ethnographical and linguistic study on agrico-pastoral people in Qinghai Tibet through a collaborative research of Tibetan and Japanese researchers.
Members
Coordinator
- Laxianjia
ILCAA Staff
- Izumi HOSHI
◆Studies on the Tangut Text of Collection of Explicit Opinion Belong to Three Generations Excavated from Khara-Khoto
About the Project
Project term: 1 Dec 2017 - 31 Mar 2018
Members
Coordinator
- Bojun SUN
ILCAA Staff
- Shintaro ARAKAWA
◆Semantic Approach on Silk Texts from the Han Tomb of Mawangdui, Changsha, with an Emphasis on the Xiangmajing
About the Project
Project term: 1 Nov 2017 - 28 Feb 2018
Members
Coordinator
- Zhao LIU
ILCAA Staff
- Arnd Helmut HAFNER (SUEYASU)
Research Projects and Resources
[Established Academic Institutions]
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