Program in Japanese Studies

Director:
Sachiko Murata, Ph.D.
Tel: 631-632-9364
E-mail: samurata@notes.cc.sunysb.edu
Office: Humanities 1121


Minor in Japanese Studies
In completing the minor in Japanese studies, students take a series of courses centering on the history and civilization of Japan while keeping in view Japan's close ties with China and Korea. Students choose courses for the minor with the approval of the director of the minor. Requirements for the Minor in Japanese Studies


News! The Tentaroh Inoh Collection in Japanese Studies at Stony Brook Library
The Program in Japanese Studies and Stony Brook Library announce the acquisition of the Tentaroh Inoh Collection in Japanese Studies. The books were donated to Stony Brook by the late Professor Tentaroh Inoh (1915-2003), noted historian and collector of rare books. The collection contains about 15,000 Japanese volumes on history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, religion, linguistics, and political science, including numerous reference books. Professor Inoh was born into a wealthy family in central Tokyo, where he received his early education and where he studied Japanese history at Kokugakuin University. After graduation in 1938, he became research assistant to Namio Egami, a famous archeologist at Tokyo University, and busied himself with organizing and classifying documents on the history and archeology of Inner Mongolia. In May 1939 he accompanied Professor Egami to Inner Mongolia to carry out excavations at Olon Süme. In November of that year he was appointed as assistant professor at Mokyo Gakuin in Mongolia. During his stay he participated in various activities with the aim of preserving Mongolian culture, and he also collected several hundred pieces of furniture with his own funds with the aim of establishing a small museum of folklore. In December 1941 he was sent to Beijing and given the task of classifying 40,000 volumes of Japanese books from the Meiji Era (1869-1911) that had been brought to China by Chinese students returning from Japan, a task that took him two years. He was also appointed as a professor of the Japanese language at Beijing University, where he remained from April 1942 to 1946. Upon his return to Japan, he found that all of his belongings had been destroyed by fire during the war. In China itself, he had acquired a personal library of 10,300 rare books, but he was refused permission to take it out of the country, so he donated it to an old Chinese friend, a dealer in rare books. In 1947 he was hired as an archivist for documents on diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1953 he was appointed as professor of Japanese history at Chuo University in Tokyo, where he taught until his retirement in 1986. Over his long scholarly career he published ten books on Japanese history and diplomacy, one on anthropology, a collection of essays, and over a hundred scholarly articles. Sachiko Murata, director of Japanese Studies, met Professor Inoh thirty-some years ago when she was a graduate student in Iran and the Japanese Institute of West Asian Studies asked her to be his translator during his visit to the country. Whenever she traveled to Japan in subsequent years, she would visit him at his home near Tokyo. Each time she noticed that his house seemed smaller because of the increasing number of books. The last time she saw him, on August 16, 2003, he inquired about the status of Stony Brook’s Program in Japanese Studies, concerning which she had consulted with him since its establishment in 1990. When he heard that the program had no books, he said that in that case, it should have his library and that he would donate it to Stony Brook in his will. Professor Inoh died suddenly on November 24, 2003, and the collection arrived in New York in August 2004. Thanks to the special efforts of Christian Filstrup, dean of the library, it is now housed in the Library, room N4065, and is being catalogued. It will be opened formally to the public on May 21, with the presence of Mr. Shizuo Inoh, Professor Inoh’s son. For more information, contact Mr. Tatsushi Hirono (Dept. of Social Welfare, SUNY-Stony Brook) tatsushih@hotmail.com, 1-718-461-6434


Faculty:

Mary Diaz, Ph.D. 2003, Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Adjunct Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies
Japanese literature, English, comparative literature, comparative religions

Honkyung Kim, Ph.D. 1994, Sungkyunkwan University
Assistant Professor, Asian and Asian American Studies

Sachiko Murata, Ph.D. 1971, Persian Literature, Tehran University
Professor, Asian and Asian American Studies
Sachiko Murata studied law in Japan and then went to Iran to study Islamic family law. After completing her PhD in Persian literature, she continued on to an MA in Islamic jurisprudence, but her PhD in jurisprudence was cut short by the Iranian revolution. She also completed a three-year course of study at the Iranian Academy of Philosophy. She was appointed assistant professor in Religious Studies at Stony Brook in 1983. She has published many scholarly articles and five books, including Isuramu Hôriron Josetsu (Iwanami 1985), The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (SUNY Press 1992), and Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Tai-yü's Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm (SUNY Press 2000). She was appointed founding director and first faculty member of Japanese Studies in 1990, and since then she has guided the development of the program. She regularly teaches Introduction to Japanese Studies, Japanese Buddhism, and various courses in Religious Studies.

Etsuko Maruoka, M.A. 2003, Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Adjunct Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies
Areas of research interest: Asian/Asian American studies, race and ethnicity, migration and globalization

Eva Nagase, M.A. 1994, Museum Studies and Art History, State University of New York-Oneonta
Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies
Eva Nagase is an instructor in Japanese language and Japanese culture. After she completed her MA in Asian Art History/Museum Studies, she received a certificate in Japanese language pedagogy from Columbia University. In her courses she emphasizes language acquisition though cultural context. Her special interest lies in the socio-cultural implications of Japanese honorific forms. She has carried out research in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institute on Japanese-American issues, especially Japanese-American women. She has also worked on the historical change of Japanese Shigaraki pottery, Chinese export porcelain, and Japanese influence on American art pottery. Currently she is investigating the development of Japanese dining utensils in relation to Japanese culture. She takes an active role in introducing Japanese culture to the student body in various activities. She is a member of Taiko Tides, a traditional Japanese drumming group at Stony Brook.

Eriko Sato, Ph.D. 1996, Linguistics, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies
Eriko Sato is Lecturer of Japanese in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and Director of Pre-College Japanese Language Program at Stony Brook University. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stony Brook University in 1996 and has published articles on theoretical/applied linguistics and foreign language pedagogy in Journal of Language and Linguistics, Japanese Language and Literature, CAJLE Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy, and Lingua et Linguistica. She has been teaching Japanese at Stony Brook since 1997 and has authored Japanese for Dummies (Wiley 2002), Contemporary Japanese: A Textbook for College Students (Tuttle Publishing 2005), and Japanese Demystified (McGraw Hill 2008). Her current research interests include pragmatics, second language acquisition, Japanese pedagogy, and principles of translation.