Faculty of Letters, Arts and SciencesWaseda University

About the School

About The Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences

visual_bun_topFrom you to Waseda, from Waseda to you

Waseda University has a 120-year-long tradition of research in the humanities rooted in research on Shakespeare by Dr. Tsubouchi Shoyo. This tradition has extended within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences which is deepening research in the human sciences and the School of Culture, Media and Society which is creating new fields and anticipating the future. The Graduate School, which furthers the special fields of both schools, provides full-scale specialty curriculum aimed at actively promoting the acquisition of the doctoral degree. As the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, in which the traditional and progressive spirit literally coexist, we provide a setting that brings new possibilities into being.

The Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences has produced an extraordinary variety of talented people. It has long adopted liberalism, non-affiliation, independence of scholarship, and a progressive spirit and respected a tradition of bringing together outstanding people from throughout Japan, allowing their individual characters to challenge one another as they apply themselves to study. As a result, a large number of highly talented people have launched into various fields of activity. In the open ethos of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, we have stressed research on and respect of different cultures and the societies and traditions of heterogeneous peoples. Through personal interchange and efforts to promote mutual understanding with the countries of the West and Asia, we have established academic affiliations with overseas institutions. In the years to come, within the rapidly globalizing community, the young people who have studied enthusiastically at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences will undoubtedly play pivotal roles in the future of the world.

From the Senior Dean

 

The Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences

From the Senior Dean

Hisao Takamatsu

Waseda University’s Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences is a center of humanities knowledge, located on the Toyama Campus.

Dating back to the foundation of the Department of Literature in 1890, our faculty has a history of over 130 years, during which it has produced numerous graduates, including many educators and researchers. In fact, it is one of Japan’s leading centers of humanities education and research. Following a series of major reforms that started in 2004, we have been reorganized into the current Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, which is an integrated setup comprising the School of Culture, Media and Society, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and the Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The School of Culture, Media and Society and School of Humanities and Social Sciences form the two major pillars of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The School of Culture, Media and Society comprises six theoretical configurations and provides a cross-disciplinary curriculum across existing academic boundaries, while the School of Humanities and Social Sciences consists of 18 courses and its basic curriculum is designed to allow students to systematically learn specialized knowledge and analytical methods. These descriptions may make the two schools seem contrasting in nature to each other, but students of these schools share many subjects in common and learn on the same Toyama Campus while following their own unique curriculums, which can be said to be the broader characteristic of the two schools. The curriculums of these schools allow students to either go into studies as deep as they might wish to go or develop wider knowledge across all fields of humanities if they wish to widen their horizons by learning about many different things. Furthermore, they can do both if they have the resolve to do so. We also encourage students to go beyond the boundaries of different schools to complete sub-majors. The syllabuses of all of our rich range of subjects are available online. You are strongly urged search for keywords related to your interests and read the syllabuses that come up.

Today, great importance is placed on cross-disciplinary fusion of knowledge in all areas of study. The Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, one primary purpose of which is to develop future researchers, adopts a single-major system to allow students to also enroll in subjects from different courses, including exercise subjects. We hope that new paradigms will be created by graduate students through proactive absorption of knowledge and methods from related disciplines.

Of course, faculty members are also striving to carry out and deepen their own studies. The Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences is working proactively to effectively promote cooperation and coordination between faculty members across different theoretical configurations and courses. The center, and research departments set up under it, host a very broad range of lecture meetings, workshops, research presentation meetings, and other events throughout the year as part of their efforts to disseminate research findings. Many of them are widely open to students and the general public. If you are interested in what is new on Waseda’s Toyama Campus, you are strongly urged to participate in these events.

As someone who has been commuting to Toyama Campus ever since his student days, I have always loved those subtle elements of nature found on the campus. The Japanese plum trees planted in front of Building No. 39 invariably come into bloom around the first day of each spring, serving as an early signal of its arrival. When beautiful purple hydrangea flowers open beside the office, they give you a moment of refreshment, blowing away the dismal mood of the rainy season. Deep in the season of fall colors, I look up at the brilliant yellow leaves of the tall gingko trees that stand inconspicuously by the corridor connecting Buildings No. 33 and 39 every year. The Metasequoia trees lining the slope shed all their leaves and look bleak and bare in winter. However, the way they rise straight up into the blue sky is a truly refreshing sight to see when you look up at them on a bright day.

The above sights have remained almost the same for over 30 years. Towards the end of 2018, however, Waseda Arena was opened on the grounds of the former Memorial Hall, which is on Toyama Hill, providing a pleasant view of the rooftop lawn and richly planted greenery. The sides of the zigzag path leading up the hill are filled with (seemingly) wild vegetation of grass and flowers. I am not sure whether they were planted on purpose or accidentally grew there through self-sown seeds from somewhere else, but they bring a lot of life to the area. The seasonal grass and flowers that appear on Toyama Hill one after another, season by season, also go well with those visually pleasing small elements of nature that were there from a long time ago. As the base of the hill faces east, the grass and flowers sparkle in the sun early in the morning. When you attend a first-period class, I recommend that you to arrive on campus a little early to enjoy the charming scenery.

Another view that is worth a recommend may be the bird’s eye view over Toyama Hill from the top floor of Building No. 33, the highest building on the campus at 16 stories. In particular, in early summer you can enjoy the brilliant view of new green leaves that connect to the forest of Ana Hachimangu Shrine. This spot also provides a magnificent view on the day after a snowfall in Tokyo, albeit a rare occurrence, but it is also a good view on any bright, sunny day. As the name Waseda suggests—literally translating to “field of early ripening rice”—Waseda used to be a rural countryside area on the outskirts of Tokyo when the Department of Literature was founded by Dr. Tsubouchi Shoyo. To this day, some traces of that rural environment have remained in the small elements of nature found in and around Toyama Campus, as I described above.

This is the environment in which the wide range of activities of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences take place each day.

Senior Dean & Deputy Dean

 

*From left side

Professor YAMAMOTO Satomi :Director of Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences

Professor ODASHIMA Koshi :Dean of the School of Culture, Media and Society

Professor  TAKAMATSU Hisao :Senior Dean of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences & Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Professor OKI Kiyotake :Dean of Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences

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