- ・Human Flow and Creation of New Cultures in Southeast Asia
- ・Cross-linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena
- ・Asian and African Language Acquisition Programme
- ・Studies on Linguistic and Cultural Contacts
- ・Comparative Study of Travels and Representations
- ・Basic Studies for Computer Processing of Linguistic Data from Asia and Africa and Compilation of Dictionaries
- ・Research on CAI Programmes and Courses in Asian and African Languages Using Hypertext-like Multimedia
- ・Comprehensive Study of the Shan Culture Area
- ・History of the Non-Han Peoples of South-West China
- ・Social Change and International Relations in Modern East Asia
- ・Creation of Ethnic Identities in Modern Central Asia
・AFLANG
- ・Research on the Mechanism of Cross-Cultural Contacts in the Islamic World
- ・Pratistha --- comparative studies on Indian temple rituals
- ・Research on coded character-sets and collating sequences in multi-lingual environments
- ・Anthropological Study of Ideology and Practice on Chinese Civilization
- ・Basic Studies on the Indian Ocean Area
- ・独立インドの政治とカースト−州レベルでの研究を中心に−
- ・Southeast Asia and the 20th century
- ・Cross-linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena
(Coordinator: Miyazaki Koji)
The aim of the project is to exchange views on the cultural
process which has been and will be caused by the human
flow in the past and the present Southeast Asia.
In the first place, the project will afford a forum
for discussing current issues in Southeast Asia such
as immigrants, national border, assimilation of peripheral
groups, impact of commercialization and gender. As
is typically shown in the process of creating a nation-state,
the former unit of society and culture was brought
to challenge, either to incorporation into a wider
unit or to fragmentation by the creation of national
borders. Immigrants who not only give multiplicity
to the Southeast Asian societies but also form their
constituent part, have been put in an ambivalent position
by the policy of national integration and their international
network. On the other hand, popular culture and commercialism
flow even into remote areas, regardless of any border,
connecting people of different countries and raising
controversy on traditional values one of which is
related to gender.
Putting it into a wider context, we can assume that
these issues are caused by the process of reorganization
of communities into greater units and the resistance
to it. The process of reorganization is closely related
with the move of people within a country as well as
beyond a country. This is the second point of the project.
We will examine the possibility of a new perspective
of the Southeast Asia, taking into consideration the
relationship between cultural process and the flow
of people. From this point of view we will be able
to reconsider the process of cultural formation in
the past and present Southeast Asia by focusing on
the flow of people within and to the region.
Within the framework of this project, an international
symposium will be held in December 1996 funded by the
COE program of the Japanese Ministry of Education,
inviting scholars from Southeast Asia.
(Coordinator: Kaji Shigeki)
Tone and its related phenomena of the world's languages
are studied from
various angles. The topics studied will include :
- physiological and acoustic correlates of tone (pitch)
- relation between consonant types and tone
- tonal system of individual languages
- lexical and grammatical functions of tone
- difference between tone languages and pitch accent
languages
- typology of the world's tone languages
- diachronic changes and comparative studies of tone
- development of tone (tonogenesis) and tone loss
(Coordinator: Kaji Shigeki)
This programme which is composed of scholars of Asian and African Languages, aims at studying the most effective teaching methods for providing students with a practical competence in target languages.
Every year three languages are taught intensively. This is followed by detailed discussion as to teaching methods, time schedule, evaluation of the course etc.
The objectives of these language courses include:
1. imparting oral and written skills to students;
2. offering training in the scientific study of languages
and practical applications of such studies;
3. helping students to get equipped for graduate school
level field research.
(Coordinator: Nakajima Motoki)
This project addresses the question of what China is from the perspective of linguistics. China is not an ethnic and cultural monolith. It examines the languages of China such as Manchu, Mongolian, Chinese, Uighur, Bai and so forth, the peoples who speak them, their social and geographical circumstances, their cultural and historical backgrounds, the structures of their languages and writing systems, the range of their dialects and inter-relations with other languages.
(Coordinator: Takachio Hitoshi)
This project mainly investigates the discourses of travels which present encounters with the others, decode representations encoded by the others and the meaningful world presented by the others and constitute the various meanings of cultural otherness. In the course of this research, the subject will be extended to contexts which produce discourses on the others, construction of the distance or difference between the self (own culture) and the others, and the evaluation of the representation of the others.
Currently there has been considerable progress in Europe and America in the study of travel-books, questioning the premise that the others must be directly represented and in reflecting the inadequacy of considering the basis of representing the others and the discourses on the others themselves. In correlating these studies, the project shall treat the texts of the modern post-renaissance European and American travellers and also the texts of other travellers. Also the various modes of representation of others and related ideas (such as order and justice, orthodoxy, cosmos) shall be taken up as subjects for research. By such comparative studies, it must be made clear that arrangement of the others themselves and of places and times in which the others have been set, have been done by the cultures with ecriture, and that there are the discourses which present the modes of relationship between the culture with ecriture and the others (e.g., ideal, harmonious, illusional, chaotic, desperate, exclusive). Also these studies will consider the construction of identities in each culture and the universality of culture and even the discourses of modernity.
(Coordinator: Kamioka Koji)
The main aim of this project is to construct machine readable language materials such as the computerized lexicons, concordances, tagged machine-readable linguistic corpora. Though several of the languages under this study have dictionaries of different degrees of exhaustiveness, most of them need to be computerized. Such computerized lexicons could be simple lexical databases or highly comprehensive machine-readable dictionaries. These lexicons become input for preparation of concordances, teaching materials, concordances, spell-checkers, pronunciation dictionaries, historical comparative lexicons etc.
(Coordinator:MINEGISHI, Makoto)
The main aim of this project is developing self-teaching courses for Asian and African languages, that are useful both to the students who want to use them as supplementary materials in the intensive courses held annually at our Institute as well as to those who want to master a language to a certain degree of proficiency on their own initiative.
Research meetings take place twice a year to discuss various problems including: Effective programming of CAI course, selection of data for exercises and effective ways of arranging them; Research into the present condition of 'multimedia systems', and the prospects for its use in language teaching; Drawing up of plans for new hardware and software systems and planning for future activities.
(Coordinator: Shintani Tadahiko, L.A.)
The objectives of this joint project are: (1) Elaboration of a new method to analyse a multicultural interactive area, the Shan Cultural Area; (2) Collection of information about the Shan Culture Area and preparation for eventual field researches on the area; (3) Discussion on the results of the field researches; (4) Study of the Shan languages and dialects; (5) Interpretation and analysis of the existing documents on the area; (6) Publication of the basic documents.
(Coordinator: Daniels Christian)
The history of the non-Han peoples who originally inhabited present-day South-West China is one of gradual incorporation into Chinese Empire. Increased immigration by Han Chinese and the policies adopted by the Yan, Ming and Qing dynasties brought increasingly larger numbers of non-Han peoples under the direct control of the central government. Subsequent loss of autonomy wrought great changes on their indigenous societies, intensified dislocation and in many forced migration; the movement of hill tribes to mainland South-East Asia is a better known example. Few studies in the past have attempted to develop analytical tools which integrate methodological and empirical approaches to explain the complexity of this historical process.
As a first move in this direction, this project aims to promote general research on the history of this regions, which has previously received little attention from historians, first by providing a forum for debate and the exchange of ideas, and second by collecting and processing historical source materials. While emphasizing the need for analysis from the standpoint of the non-Han peoples in order to redress Han Chinese cultural bias, efforts are also being made to create an environment for interdisciplinary explorations by including cultural anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists as well as historians among the participants.
(Coordinator: Nakami Tatsuo)
During the last ten years access to archival sources relating to modern East Asia has become easier, and now historians face the problem of how to systematically collect and digest this huge body of materials. This project focuses on the utilization of archival sources for historical analyses in studies relating to social change and international relations in East Asia between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Symposia with guest speakers are held twice a year and monographs and collections of source materials are being published.
(Coordinator: Shinmen Yasushi)
Central Asia is changing remarkably now. Republics of the former Soviet Union are enjoying independence, and the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region is showing a rapid economic development. Under such a situation each ethnic culture seems to be very intensified. This could be viewed as a kind of rediscovery or creation of ethnic cultural tradition. Such a framework of ethnicities or nationalities in Central Asia such as Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Uighur was not so clear before the modern period but was definitely formed by political authorities in the 20th century.
In the earlier period, Central Asia had a multiplicated society which consisted of oasis inhabitants and nomadic people, and which was based on Turkic-Islamic culture common among them. However, Central Asia was conquered by China and Russia in the 18-19 centuries, and the framework of ethnic groups which we see now was formed artificially in the first half of the 20th century through forcible splitting of ethnic groups by the Soviet government and identification of ethnic groups by the Xinjiang Province government. As a result of this political process, some troubles arose and some conflicts took place. But such a framework promoted a kind of creation of new ethnic identities and formation of new ethnic cultures.
(Coordinator: Matsushita Shuji)
AFLANG ("African Linguistic Perspective") is a working group of students and researchers who have keen interest in African languages. It is well known that African languages show the most varied differentiation and the most complicated geographical distribution in this world. AFLANG looks into this linguistic chaos and tries to find some reasonable order underlying it. The interesting but somehow neglected fields such as surrogate languages, function of music and wordplays are within AFLANG's favourite domain.
(Coordinator: Yajima Hikoichi)
The Islamic world is a centre of intensive urban activities, a melting pot, a crossroad, a meeting place, which covers an immense area in space and time; it has been organised as an integrated socio-cultural area throughout history, even though it contains diverse ecological, political, social and religious component parts. This project aims to explicate the mechanism of cross-cultural contacts and their relationships by which the entire Islamic world has been integrated into a unique organic synthesis.
During the period of 1987-91, the research topic was "Comparative Study of Suq/Bazar as viewed from the Mechanism of Cross-Cultural Contacts". From 1992 we began research on "Human Mobility and Communication in the Islamic World". The problem of migration in Muslim societies is especially important for this study because hijra (migration) and hajj (pilgrimage) are fundamental forms of political, cultural and social action. This research project will be conducted on a cross-disciplinary basis placing importance on the following points: (1) Various features and aspects of human migration; (2) Process of historical migration; (3) Relationships between problems arising from migration and cross-cultural contact, such as identity changes, adaptations and conflicts; (4) Encounter mechanism of human migration.
Publications: Annual Project Report, Nos.1-3; Studia Culturae Islamicae, Nos. 1-56.
(Coordinator: TAKASHIMA, Jun)
Pratistha* refers to a cluster of ritual procedures by which an image or a building is "established" as fit for purposes of effective worship --- a material object becomes an abode (or incarnation) of God. Though this ritual complex does not occur so often in actual practice, it occupies the largest part of Sacred Scriptures on ritual and also contains almost all elements of popularly practiced temple rituals. As such, it reflects the religious mentality of the Indian People with their diverse and dynamically changing religious traditions.
Through the analysis of pratistha, this project aims to elucidate the developments in and interrelationships between Indian religions, from the late Vedic period to the late Classical period (when Hinduism as we know it today took its established form --- about 13-14 Century). Specialists of different sects (Buddhism, Puranic Hinduism, Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Architectural tradition) will participate, trying to bring about a synthesis of Indian religions through comparative studies.
*note: "pratiSThA" in KH transliteration scheme is here written just "pratistha", as we do not have a convenient way to show diacritical marks on Internet without using picture format, and transliteration schemes are not well known to all.
(Coordinator: TOYOSHIMA, Masayuki)
goal of the project
Computing in multi-lingual environment over the Internet calls for some basic character/string fundamentals such as :- unambiguous employment of characters through designation of coded character-sets (eg. unification)
- methods abstract enough to handle string manipulation (eg. text editing)
- rules abstract enough to handle string collation (collating sequences) (eg. sorting)
- culturally correct methods to print/display strings (eg. page composition)
Currently, both of the pro- and anti- Unicode or ISO/IEC 10646-X wings have yet to come to propose neither B nor C details.
This project surveys B and C on the basis of stable A, and possibly D, with foci on Asian languages.
(Coordinator: MIO,yuko)
Societies located around China looked Chinese civilization as a model to
emulate for a long time and managed to preserve the authenticity of their
cultures by absorbing elements of Chinese culture. In the process of
modernization of these societies, however, national borders were
demarcated and each nation adopted western ideologies, such as capitalism,
socialism, communism, which supplanted China-centered ideology, shaping
people of diverse ethnic backgrounds into a nation.
In recent years these nations, including China, achieved rapid economic growth and gained confidence politically and economically. Their governments tend to
tolerate democratization in politics, and permit a degree of multiculturalism.
They also tolerate, or rather promote, economic and cultural exchanges
among people with similar ethnic backgrounds but who live in different
nations, such as inter-border trade and cultural exchange related to
Buddhism among Tai people residing in Thailand and China and Burma.
The purpose of this joint research project is to examine what kind of changes
are brought about in the cultures of societies of this area in the
process of more recent international development. To put it concretely:
Does it lead to be a revival in "folk culture" of ethnic groups in the
periphery of Chinese civilization ? Does this lead to new cultural
centers created by people of the same ethnic background but now separated
by national borders ? What are the characteristics of this kind of new
center ? How have these cultures changed ?
(Coordinator: FUKAZAWA Hideo)
The world of Indian Ocean Area is one of the worlds
that existed before the 16th century when
the modern world system began to be established. This
world came into being several centuries
B.C. It was this Indian Ocean Area with the Indian subcontinent
in between that over the time from the 8th to 16th
centuries continued to link Arabia and the East African
region and the Southeast Asian region through trade
and migration. The presence of dynamism of this Sea
Area is now gradually recognized to have exerted great
inflluence on the history , the formation of states
and their cultures of the land areas in the Indian
Ocean.
Furthermore, the Indian Ocean Area was enclosed by the
modern world system dominated by the West, and not
only the land areas but sea areas were divided by the
sovereign states or territorial states. During which
time, however, traffic across the Ocean never ceased.
Contrary, measures promoted by Western powers such
as slave trade , the emigration of contract workers
and their colonizing activities on the global scale
increasced the needs of both humana and material traffic
across the Ocean area. Thus , the network in the area
was further expanded.
The Indian Ocean Area is a comprehensive historical
arena comprising peoples with divers languages and
cultures interacting over 2000 years. In other words,
it is a world of pluralism and multi-layeredness.
Participants in this joint research project are researchers
specializing in society , language , culture , technique/technology
, and agriculture in Oceania , Southeast Asia , East
Asia , Arabia , East Africa , and the Indian archipelgo.
With a common perspective of the Indian Ocean Area
World , they will , for the initial three years , discuss
feasibility of approaching the pluralistic and multi-layered
world.
(Coordinator: NEMOTO, Kei)
This three-year joint research project aims at looking into the historical and ideological features of the 20th century's Southeast Asia. However, the project does not intend to survey descriptively the history of the area itself. The obeject is rather directed to investigate the meanings and impacts of the 20th century from the Southeast Asian historical point of views.
In order to give shape to it, we set up three topics within the project, which are;
(1)Economic thought, (2)Questions of the formation of nation-states, and (3)Re-interpretation of "pre-modern". On the first topic, we deal with their economic thought under the impact of colonisation and modernisation of the century. On the second topic, we discuss various matters which had relations to what was called nationalism or nation-state building. It deals with not only political history but also mass thought and cultures as well as movements which expressed people's feelings of anti-colonialism generally. The third topic is to treat of the present thought and ideologies which have been emerged from the re-interpretation of "pre- modern" value systems or political thoughts.
The members of the project consists of historians (including the scholors specialised in pre-modern period), anthropologists and economists who are all well-trained in Southeast Asian languages and have experiences of field work in the area.
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