1. Overview
The Graduate School of Humanities was established as a section of the University of Tokyo in 1953, while the Graduate School of Sociology was founded 10 years later. The two Schools merged to form the present Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in 1995.
The School as a whole seeks to provide students with a high level of cultural versatility and the ability to formulate new ideas and express them. By doing so, the School cultivates through teaching and research talented individuals who will contribute to the development of human culture by endeavoring to understand thought, history, language and society. In order to realize this goal, we hope to attract students who can generate logical arguments on issues concerning thought, history, language and society from unique perspectives, acquire a high level of language skills according to their interests, and carry out solid and rigorous research.
The Graduate School is comprised of seven Divisions. Each Division offers courses which are sub‑divided into fields of specialization. These fields more or less correspond to the “Research Units” as referred to in the overview of the Faculty of Letters, though it must be noted that the Divisions of Cultural Resources Studies and Korean Studies are independent Divisions which do not have corresponding Departments in the Faculty.
With long-standing academic traditions that date back to 1877 when the Faculty of Letters was first established at the University of Tokyo, the Graduate School has been developing research in Japan and internationally. Our innovations include Cultural Resources Studies, Applied Ethics, Contemporary Literary Studies, Digital Humanities and Death and Life Studies, which collaborate with other faculties and present the outcome of the latest research in various ways to all levels of the university. Committed to those innovations and the needs of society, we added a new program in Death and Life Studies and Practical Ethics in 2022. Additionally, the Center for Evolving Humanities is expected to provide a broader base for new developments in research and education in the humanities and sociology.
We firmly believe in the wealth of knowledge and potential of the humanities, which unite past and future, and we strive to create a curious, productive, and creative community of students and faculty.
