The Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture (ISJFC), the home of the International Center for Folk Culture Studies (ICFCS), houses a vast quantity of materials including 250,000 items from the Fisheries Systems Survey, and it has conducted surveys and research on popular culture and everyday life over many years. Further, the fruits of research under the 21st Century COE Program “Systematization of Nonwritten Cultural Materials for the Study of Human Societies” are archived at the Research Center for Nonwritten Cultural Materials (RCNCM), which was added to the Institute to carry on the program’s work.
The objectives of joint research at ICFCS are to make these historical materials and databases held at ISJFC and RCNCM widely available to researchers outside the university and to further expand and deepen related fields of research. To that end, ICFCS is pursuing joint research by soliciting research topics in the following five projects:
-
- 1. Research on the history of maritime areas and people
- 2. Research on mingu materials
- 3. Research on the material collections of the ISJFC
- 4. Research on folk culture
Furthermore, in FY2014, ICFCS took over the folk culture studies previously conducted by the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture to assist local researchers with their studies. Since then, ICFCS has been soliciting applications for joint research projects every year.