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African Studies in Japan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

John Edward Philips
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Extract

In Japan, as in the United States, African studies is relatively new, gaining respectability only after World War II. African studies in Japan is considerably less prominent than its counterpart in the US although Africanist scholars from Japan have nonetheless made notable contributions. The increasing importance of Japan in Africa, both as a source of investment and as a source of foreign aid, is leading to an increased importance cf Japanese knowledge of Africa. In the increasingly interdependent world of the 21st century the quality of African studies in Japan will have an impact not only on Africa itself but on Africanists in other non-African countries as well.

The strengths and weaknesses of African studies in Japan are quite complementary to those of African Studies in the United States. Thus we as Africanists can learn important lessons from the Japanese experience in African Studies, and our Japanese counterparts can learn from us. This article is intended as an introduction to the nature of African studies in Japan for American (and other) Africanists in the hope that cooperation between American (and other) Africanists and their Japanese counterparts can be increased.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , December 1997 , pp. 161 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

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Footnotes

*

Previous versions of this paper were presented at St. Anthony's College Oxford on February 24, 1994, at the University of Maiduguri Department of Languages and Linguistics on March 10, 1994 and at the Kyoto University Center for African Area Studies on September 19, 1996. Parts of the paper were also presented in a talk to the International Association for Japanese Studies, Yamagata, Japan on November 11, 1995.

I wish to thank the many scholars whose comments on this paper and/or African studies in Japan helped to make this article better, especially Anthony Kirk-Greene, Masao Yoshida, Richard Bradshaw, Kanenori Suwa, Jan Vansina, Shuhei Shimada, Philip Peek, Itaru Ohta, George Brooks, an anonymous reader for the African Studies Review and above all my wife, Ritsuko Miyamoto of the Akita University College of Education, without whom not only would I not understand African studies in Japan, I might scarcely have been aware of the existence of African studies in Japan at all.

The author is, of course, solely responsible for all errors contained herein.

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