Institute of Japanese Studies Prof. Dr. Judit Árokay

After studying German Studies, English Studies, and Japanese Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (1984–1990), I spent a year at Hiroshima University studying Japanese language and literature. I then began a second course of study at the University of Hamburg in Japanese Studies and German Studies. The focus of my studies was classical and medieval Japanese literature, cultural theories about Japan, and processes of cultural translation—topics that have occupied me ever since.

In 1998, I received my doctorate in Hamburg with a dissertation on “Classical Japanese Women’s Poetry in the Mirror of Medieval Japanese Poetics,” after which I worked until 2004 as a research assistant at the Department of Language and Culture of Japan at the University of Hamburg. From 2004 to 2007, I was a research associate at Freie Universität Berlin, in Japanese Studies, in the Literature and Cultural Studies division, and participated in the DFG research group “Self-Narratives from a Transcultural Perspective.” In 2007, I completed my habilitation in the Department of History and Cultural Studies at Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on “The Renewal of Poetic Language: Poetological and Linguistic-Theoretical Discourses of the Late Edo Period.”

Since 2007, I have held the professorship in Japanese Studies at the Institute of Japanese Studies at Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg), specializing in premodern literature and culture.

In Heidelberg, during my first years I was involved in the projects of the cluster “Asia and Europe: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” and, together with the Department of Slavic Studies (with Prof. Jadranka Gvozdanović), I led a subproject on the topic of diglossia and the dissolution of diglossia in different languages (Divided Languages? Diglossia, Translation and the Rise of Modernity in Japan, China, and the Slavic World, Springer, 2014).

In 2014, I began editing the online journal “Bunron – Studies in Japanese Literature”. In 2015, I was a member of the Marsilius Kolleg of the university, where I was able to lay the foundation for a project that has since been funded by Japanese institutions: the creation of a digital literary map of Japan.

Since 2007, I have been involved in academic self-governance in various roles: as Director of the Institute of Japanese Studies, Director of the Center for East Asian Studies, Equal Opportunities Officer, and later as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Since 2025, I have been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.