The National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) in Japan presented by Professor Makiro Tanaka

1. The National Institutes for the
Humanities (NIHU) in Japan
Makiro TANAKA
National Institute for Japanese
Language and Linguistics
1

2. National Institutes for the Humanities
(NIHU)
• The NIHU consists of six institutes
– National Institute for Japanese Language
and Linguistics
– National Institute of Japanese Literature
– National Museum of Japanese History
– International Research Center for Japanese
Studies
– National Museum of Ethnology
– Research Institute for Humanity
and Nature
AHRC/NIHU Memorandum of Understanding
AHRC-funded scholars have access to the world-
class facilities that exist in NIHU facilities.
NIHU belongs to the Inter-University Research
Institute Corporation .
2

3. Inter-University Research Institute
Corporation
• Established pursuant to the National University
Corporation Law with the aim of founding inter-
university research institutes.
• There are four corporations:
– National Institutes for the Humanities
– National Institutes of Natural Sciences
– High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
– Research Organization of Information and Systems
• These institutes conduct collaborative research
and promote advancement of Japanese
scholarship and research.
3

4. Six Institutes of NIHU
Abbreviation Institute Academic Study Location Established Staff
National Institute for Linguistics,
NINJAL Japanese Language and Language Tokyo 1948 51
Linguistics Education
National Institute of Literature,
NIJL Tokyo 1972 67
Japanese Literature Archives
History,
National Museum of
NMJH Archaeology, Chiba 1981 85
Japanese History
Folklore
International Culture,
IRCJS Research Center for Religion, Kyoto 1987 68
Japanese Studies Philosophy
Research Institute for Environment
RIHN Kyoto 2001 53
Humanity and Nature Sciences
National Museum of Ethnology,
NME Osaka 1979 102
Ethnology Anthropology,
4

5. The National Institute for Japanese
Language and Linguistics (NINJAL)
(established in 1948)
• Linguistic theory and structure
– Grammar/syntax, phonetics/phonology,
lexicon/morphology, characters/orthography
meaning/pragmatics/discourse
• Language change and variation
– Dialect, historical change, social variation
• Teaching and second language acquisition
• Cross-linguistic studies
• Corpus Linguistics
5

6. National Institute of Japanese Literature
(established in 1972)
• Research of Japanese
literature
– Collection , organization and
preservation of literary texts
– Collaborative research
• Resource Sharing
– Bibliographic research of
original texts
– Reproducing original texts in
microfilm or digital form
– Database access
6

7. National Museum of Japanese History
(established in 1981)
• Research of Japanese
history
– History, Archaeology,
Folklore
– Database development
• Museum
– Collection, Organizing,
Storage, Investigation,
Dissemination
7

8. International Research Center for
Japanese Studies
(established in 1987)
• Research
– International,
interdisciplinary, and
comprehensive research on
Japanese culture
• International cooperation
– International symposia
overseas
– International workshop
8

9. Research Institute for Humanity and
Nature (established in 2001)
• Research
– Toward the solution of global
environmental problems
– Based on the recognition that
those problems originated in
human culture
• Social outreach
– Kyoto forum on environmental
wisdom and culture
– The Earth Forum Kyoto and the
Earth Hall of Fame Kyoto Award
9

10. National Museum of Ethnology
(established in 1979)
• Research of Ethnology
– Cultural anthropology,
Ethnology
– Database development
• Museum
– Regional exhibitions
– Cross-cultural exhibitions
– Special exhibition based
on the latest research
10

11. AHRC Scholarship Research Assistants
who Studied in NINJAL
• Dr. Stephen Wright Horn (2010.11～2011.1)
Research Assistant
Oriental Institute, University of Oxford
Theme: Tagging noun phrases for grammatical role in a pre-
modern Japanese language corpus
• Dr. Kerri L Russell (2011.3～2011.5)
Research Assistant
Oriental Institute, University of Oxford
Theme: Lexical representation of argument realization
patterns in pre-modern Japanese
11

12. The VSARPJ project in the Faculty of
Oriental Studies in University of Oxford
funded by AHRC (2009.1-2013.9)
“Verb semantics and argument realization in pre-
modern Japanese” (VSARPJ)
Principal Investigator: Professor Bjarke Frellesvig
This is cutting edge research on Japanese history.
Dr. Horn and Dr. Russell are working on this project.
In this project, an electronic corpus of pre-modern
Japanese is compiled.
12

13. Japanese Corpora Compiled by
NINJAL
• Balanced corpus of Contemporary Written
Japanese （BCCWJ） 100 million words
– We published this corpus in 2011.
– This corpus is comparable to the British National
Corpus （BNC） 100 million words.
– This corpus is the first balanced corpus of Japanese
language.
• Historical corpus of Japanese language
– We began designing this corpus from 2009.
– We will embark on compilation of this corpus in 2013.
13

14. Oxford Corpus and NINJAL Corpus
Oxford Pre-Modern Japanese NINJAL Historical Japanese
Corpus Corpus
Development 2009-2013(design)
2009-2012
period 2013-(development)
Study of verb semantics and Study of the history of the
Purpose
argument realization Japanese language
Literal texts regarded as Diverse genres, including blend
Materials recordings of spoken of Japanese and classical
language in 8c-16c Chinese(Kanbun) from 8c to 20c
Mixture of Chinese characters
Characterization Alphabet and Japanese phonetic
characters
Morphology and syntactic
Markup Morphological analysis
structure
Semantic information for Morphological information for
Lexicon
individual words individual words
14

15. Dr. Horn’s Study
• Development
– Oxford corpus and NINJAL corpus
• Technique
– Using XML mark up
• Finding
– Annotation of semantic roles and grammatical
roles
– Discovering patterns of verb behavior in corpora
– Anaphoric relations for referential expressions
15

16. Dr. Russell’s Study
• Development
– Lexicon for a diachronic corpus of Pre-modern
Japanese
• Technique
– Using UniDic lexicon being developed by NINJAL
• Finding
– Correspondences between UniDic and the lexicon
for the Oxford corpus
– Lexical entries to reflect diachronic changes
16

17. NINJAL Research Meetings
•NINJAL Collaborative Research Project Meetings and Symposia
Each project group holds a meeting or symposium several times a year at which
interim reports on the collaborative research are presented.
•The NINJAL Colloquium
A series to which distinguished domestic and foreign researchers are invited as
lecturers to talk about cutting-edge research findings.
•The NINJAL Salon
A periodical meeting to provide opportunity for researchers working at the
institute to introduce their work to colleagues and exchange information.
Dr. Horn and Dr. Russell made
presentations in these meetings.
17

18. NINJAL facilities (1)
The front of NINJAL The courtyard of NINJAL
NINJAL has many open spaces NINJAL library
18

19. NINJAL facilities (2)
Panoramic landscape of guest house Private room of guest house
Conversation lounge of guest house Mt. FUJI from NINJAL 19