From the Director

Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences
From the Director
TANAKA Fumio

The Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences (RILAS), Waseda University, is an affiliated institute of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences (FLAS), Waseda University. RILAS was established in 2012 mainly to expand research in the specialized fields of FLAS, create new academic domains that respond to changing social conditions, vitalize and increase transparency in research activities, and return research findings to society. RILAS comprises all full-time and non-tenure-track faculty members and research associates affiliated with FLAS, as well as full-time faculty members from other divisions and adjunct researchers from outside the University. Furthermore, it hosts and employs researchers who are recipients of the Research Fellowship for Young Scientists-PD of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

To achieve the above objectives, RILAS not only conducts humanities research and studies, but also carries out many other activities, such as collecting, organizing, and providing research materials, and hosting symposia, workshops, and lectures. To ensure that these activities are organized organically and effectively, RILAS has established multiple research divisions. Currently, 14 diverse research projects are engaged in international activities (as of September 2026). Additionally, RILAS hosts an annual international symposium called the “Annual Forum,” and publishes its yearly research journal, “Waseda RILAS Journal,” on its website. This journal features research papers, special collections from research project symposia and workshops, and reports from the Annual Forum. RILAS is also committed to supporting early-career researchers through hosting programs such as seminars that help them apply for JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists and English research paper writing seminars. It also actively provides information on internal and external job openings, research grants, scholarships, and study abroad opportunities. The RILAS website is regularly updated with these activities and invites you to explore them.

Humanities research at Waseda University boasts a history exceeding 130 years, dating back to 1890 with the establishment of the Department of Literature, the predecessor of today’s FLAS. Over this period, its fields of study have expanded to reflect social changes and advancements in academic research, and the importance of interdisciplinary research has grown. The themes pursued by RILAS’s research divisions, as well as the individual projects of its researchers, truly embody the broad range of challenges that contemporary humanities research faces. At the same time, however, the core focus of research has tended fragment through ongoing dialogue with an increasingly complex and diverse society, making the connections between individual studies as well as the systematic nature of academia harder to discern. RILAS is committed to actively tackling these inherent challenges within humanities research, and aims to put forward a wide range of proposals to restructure research and academia.

We are sometimes asked how the humanities can be useful to us today. However, what exactly does “us” and “today” mean? The era when we shared a certain model of “progress” as a common societal goal under the slogan of “catch up and overtake” is long gone. So precisely what kind of future is the “us” of “today” heading toward? What should an ideal future, and the “we” who are to live within it, look like? To address these questions, the humanities are absolutely indispensable, as they allow us to look deeply into the core of human beings, their societies, and cultures across eras, spaces, and categories, while critically and relatively evaluating the “present.” RILAS will continue to reflect on this “us” of “today” and our own activities, striving to promote humanities research that connects us to an ideal “us” of the future.