Current and completed research projects Projects

Travel Literature by Women in the Edo Period

In this project, Prof. Árokay translates texts from the Edo period written by women about their travels. In selecting the texts, she does not prioritize their “literary value”; rather, she seeks to explore the ways in which Edo-period travel accounts adhere to classical and medieval ideals and models of travel writing, and the extent to which they depart from them in order to open a view onto contemporary conditions. The texts vary in their aesthetic aspirations and often include Japanese or Chinese poems, but they also document the concrete circumstances of travel. They thus reveal a great deal about the education, interests, and mobility of women in a world in which Confucian ideals imposed narrow social boundaries on them—boundaries that they nonetheless found various ways to transcend.

Reception and exchange of humanities knowledge with Heidelberg between the two world wars

Mr. Krämer and Ms. Wuthenow are acting as cooperation partners in this third-party funded project, which was acquired by Prof. Mitani Kenji from Osaka University as a JSPS Kaken grant. The original title of the project is Ryō-taisen-kan no Haideruberuku ni oderu jinbun gakuchi no juyō to kōryū (両大戦間のハイデルベルクにおける人文学知の受容と交流) and it will run from October 2022 to March 2026. 

The project investigates cultural contacts and the reception of academic knowledge by Japanese students who studied at Heidelberg University during the interwar period. Against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Neo-Kantian philosophy in Germany, which had an important foothold at Heidelberg University, and the spread of the humanities in Japan during the Taishō period, the project examines the cultural experiences and scholarly insights gained by Japanese intellectuals during their stay in Heidelberg. The circumstances surrounding the international reception and exchange of academic knowledge worldwide in the first half of the 20th century also play a role in this context. 

Several working meetings have already taken place in Heidelberg with Prof. Mitani and Dr. Kuno Jōtarō from Ritsumeikan University. In March 2025, a workshop on the topic of “Studying Abroad in Heidelberg: Transfer and Translation of Knowledge” was held at Osaka University. In the summer of 2026, a workshop in Heidelberg is planned to provisionally conclude the project. An application for continuation is planned. 

The Settlement House of Tokyo Imperial University: Overcoming Social Inequality in Interwar Japan

Duration: 2021-2025
Financed by:  German Research Foundation (DFG)
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Hans Martin Krämer

In 1923, professors and student activists at the University of Tokyo founded a settlement house in Honjo, an impoverished working-class neighborhood of the city. Although the settlement house, which operated until 1938, also had the character of a welfare institution, its aim was to create an autonomous workers' movement. Suehiro Izutarō, a law professor and initiator of the settlement, wanted the proletariat to “remedy social injustices through its own initiative” and “independently combat exploitation.” The settlement was financially supported by the imperial family and the Ministry of the Interior, among others; nevertheless, most of the students active there were Marxists with connections to the left-wing student group Shinjinkai. The ambitious activities at the settlement included an evening school for workers, an adult education program, afternoon care for schoolchildren, a daycare center for preschoolers, free legal advice, free medical care, and a consumer cooperative. In addition, there was housing for students from the University of Tokyo, who were thus able to live in the immediate vicinity of the proletariat, the revolutionary subject.

The project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Initially, the project focused on worker education as the most important means of settlement, i.e., educating and mobilizing the city's poor through independent educational measures. However, the contexts of the (public and private) welfare efforts of the time and Marxist ideas (many of the settlers converted to the right in the 1930s) were also addressed. This raised the question of the statism of the pre-war Japanese left, which presumably facilitated a turn toward the state as an agent of social change and toward ethnic nationalism.

Mahāyāna in Europe. Japanese Buddhists and their contribution to scholarly knowledge about Buddhism in 19th-century Europe

Duration: 2017-2020
Financed by: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Hans Martin Krämer
Project staff: Dr. Stephan Licha, Ulrich Harlass, M.A., Clara Böhme, M.A., Julia May, B.A., und Violetta Janzen, B.A.

Although the European concept of religion underwent significant transformations in the early modern period, it was not until the 19th century that it was decisively shaped as a category of knowledge.The fact that this process of knowledge formation had a global dimension has so far only been generally recognized in terms of Asian reception of European ideas. However, Asian ideas also found their way into Europe, as demonstrated by the example of early religious studies, a central instance for the scientific discussion of religion. Even at the time this discipline was emerging, there were already intensive contacts between Japanese scholars and religious experts (usually Buddhist clergy) and European Orientalists such as Léon de Rosny, Friedrich Max Müller, Sylvain Lévi, and others. The great influence these contacts had on Japanese Indology and Buddhology, which emerged after 1900, has been well documented; however, it is not clear to what extent the understanding of East Asian Buddhism, or of Asian religion in general, changed through the mediation of East Asian actors in European Oriental studies, and how this in turn affected the concept of religion in religious studies, which intensively received the results of Oriental studies. However, Japanese “students” abroad had been interacting with European Oriental studies and religious studies since the 1870s. It was only from this interaction that a global concept of religion emerged around 1900, characterized by its emphasis on the inwardness of religion.

Spiritual Pan-Asianism: The Religious Dimension of a Political Movement (Sub-project within the interdisciplinary research group MC7 „Discursive Practices of Political Legitimation")

Financed by: Cluster of Excellence „Asia and Europe in a Global Context“
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Hans Martin Krämer

The role of Asianism or Pan-Asianism in the formation of a political and cultural identity in modern Japan has been intensively studied in recent years. From a religious studies perspective, a methodological secularism is striking, meaning that actions by historical actors that cannot be attributed to strictly rational, economic, or political motivations have been systematically ignored—even though there are numerous indications of identification with spiritual or religious movements or groups that were not merely strategic. It is precisely the lack of distinction between “political” and “religious” motives—disconcerting from a secularist perspective—that proves especially illuminating when viewed from the perspective of the actors themselves. There are a number of individuals who combine the political concerns of Asianism with religious goals in different ways; many of them are united by a special commitment to the anti-colonial liberation struggle in India, which is combined with an enthusiasm for pan-Asian religiosity. A particularly exciting and little-known case is that of the Frenchman Paul Richard, a former Protestant pastor and protagonist of theosophical circles in Paris, who met the political activist and later guru Sri Aurobindo in South India and spent four years in Japan with his wife, the later spiritual leader of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, from 1914 onwards. There he became actively involved in the anti-colonial liberation movement, always inspired by the vision of a liberating religiosity. One of the primary goals of this project is to collect and evaluate Richard's publications and legacy, which are scattered across Europe, India, and Japan.

Strategies of Translating Christian Terminology into Japanese: The Problems Concerning Buddhist Vocabulary in 16th and 17th Century Christian Literature

Duration: 2010-2012
Financed by: Fritz Thyssen Foundation
Project leader: Prof. Dr. Judit Árokay
Project staff: Dr. theol. Shin Yoshida