The College of Arts has recently been restructured into four departments: the Department of Christian Studies, the Department of Education, the Department of Letters, and the Department of History. This transformation of the College of Arts represents our vision of the liberal arts for the 21st century.
The Department of Christian Studies endeavors to understand the world from the perspective of Christian culture, while pursuing the founding spirit of Rikkyo University. The Department of Education seeks to consolidate educational science with education and training for primary school teachers.
The Department of Letters is composed of five courses: English and American Literature, German Literature, French Literature, Japanese Literature, and the newly established Course of Philosophy and Creative Writing, which has assembled a diverse line-up of faculty and classes. Its aim is to encourage creative expression and thought, with students playing a leading role.
The Department of History consists of courses in World History, Japanese History, and Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, which serves as a bridge between history and culture, linking the perspectives of regions and opening up new possibilities in the humanities.
The College of Arts thus offers students a unique program of studies that enables them to transcend the boundaries of departments or courses and make full use of the liberal arts tradition in order to develop into well-rounded people with specialist knowledge in an age of diverging values.
How one finds meaning in life and how one acquires understanding of the world are challenges that our predecessors tirelessly strove to address. We have assembled the results and legacies of this long search for solutions to the puzzles of humankind and the mysteries of the world.
Conventional understanding can be a shackle that causes us to uncritically affirm the status quo. This barrier of expediency may lack fairness and equality, and can deflect our gaze from the contradictions and conflicts of human life. The College of Arts trains the students' critical thinking skills to enable them to examine the deeper complexities of life.
Or understanding the world, understanding humankind, understanding the self. Regardless of the order, the research and education found at the College of Arts offers an approach to learning that strives to promote understanding through the collaborative efforts of faculty and students.
Active scholarship is not secluded within a single framework, but transcends boundaries into other territories. Thinking and acting on one's own and expressing oneself in this changing world defines the individual. By working to make this a reality, we become aware of new challenges, seek further boundaries to cross, and set out to act accordingly.
In the Department of Christian Studies, Christianity is the subject of academic research and study. Learning is the objective for all students regardless of their religious beliefs.
The Department places a great deal of importance on providing a meticulous education in small-sized classes. Teachers provide concrete advice and guidance to all students based on their individual needs and interests.
Although graduates of this department may choose career paths that resemble those followed by students of other departments, the objective of the Department of Christian Studies is to send well-educated graduates into society with an understanding of different cultures, and an acute sensitivity to historic and international matters.
First-year students are required to take Introductory Seminars, and second-year students are required to take the Seminar in Basic Christian Studies. In these initial two years, students are expected to build an academic foundation by examining Christianity from a historic, cultural, and ideological perspective. Students also learn basic concepts and methods for pursuing their independent research areas, as well as means of collecting, organizing, and analyzing documents in order to more deeply explore the themes, process, and techniques involved in writing a thesis.
The Department provides lectures and seminars on Christian culture, approaching Christianity as an important “culture” for humankind. This enables students to study Christianity from various viewpoints. Lectures and seminars on Christian Theology present theology from a more in-depth, specialized perspective. By studying in the Department, students can earn credentials to teach Religion and Social Studies in junior and senior high schools. (Social Studies are divided into geography/history and civics for high school credentials.)
For the selection of students into the Department of Letters, admission is conducted for each Course through a specific entrance examination category. In the Department of Letters, students are placed in a course at the beginning of their first year, and they study in the specialized classes within the course to which they belong. This allows them to learn in a systematic manner throughout their four years at Rikkyo University.
Within the Department of Letters, students are allowed to take classes in courses outside their primary disciplines. This allows students to balance their education.
Basic C Courses allow students to take classes in the Department of Letters, as well as in the Department of Christian Studies, the Department of History, and the Department of Education. These classes offer students the chance to acquire a broad literary education.
Basic A and B Courses, which are core Courses within the College of Arts, are prepared with a view to assist students’ paths after graduation. These courses offer students of the Department of Letters a wide range of learning possibilities unbound to the framework of “literature,” such as Career and Human Studies, Internships, and Overseas Field Studies.
The Department of Letters joins other departments in the College of Arts in following the established tradition of engaging students in active learning of study and research methodologies, presentation and debate know-how, by emphasizing learning in seminar-style classes with limited student enrollment.
The curriculum places great importance on building the students’ English language skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The goal of the course is to build broad English language abilities in students to enable them to gain a feeling of affinity and familiarity, as well as a refreshing sense of appreciation, for the cultures and literatures of the English-speaking world. A more general goal of this study is for students to experience identity expansion as they acquire a new means of communicating with and understanding the world.
The cultures and literatures of the English-speaking world are quite varied and diverse. Students in this course explore a broad variety of topics, in such areas as politics, gender, and human rights, as expressed in diverse media such as movies, music, art, theater, poetry, novels, critiques, and essays. Various clues are examined in pursuit of solving the mysteries of our world and finding answers to the question of why the world evolved as it did. The process involved in these explorations is reported and communicated in English and Japanese.
There are a great many people who think and write in English in North America and Europe, but also in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific and India.. Therefore, the language used in poetry, songs, news broadcasts, novels, and stories in these regions, too, is English. Students studying in this course will come to realize that they themselves are also a part of this diverse English-speaking world.
The joys and sorrows that are so much a part of living, along with the sunshine and shadows of life, are depicted in full detail in the poetry, novels, and plays found in English and American literature. When one reads or comes into contact with these works, one cannot help but feel a sense of being tempered and disciplined. This process forms the stimulation that encourages the topics that students select for their graduation theses.
To know oneself is essential to becoming an intellectual. From the perspective of Japanese-German comparative studies and writing, the German Literature section of the Department of Letters develops and nurtures intellectually and internationally minded students with deep self-awareness.
The goal of studying in the Department is to acquire, primarily through seminars provided by teachers who are native speakers, the language skills necessary to express oneself in German. The Department provides students with substantial support for a wide range of activities and studies, including writing compositions, Internet searches, and preparation for overseas language study and language proficiency exams.
Classes are taught by a team of professors with a wealth of experience on the international stage, scholars who incorporate the achievements of their latest research and that conducted by scholars throughout the world. The classes guide students in their discovery of new German-speaking areas of interest. The Department also provides a full range of support for students hoping to study abroad.
The Department offers a methodical language program aimed at providing students with the skills to make practical use of the German language. It provides a broad range of German classes to meet the needs of students at various linguistic levels.
All full-time instructors lead seminars that allow them to provide careful and detailed guidance to each and every student, which in turn enables their further pursuit of academic topics that meet their particular areas of interest. Moreover, the full-time and part-time instructors who conduct the seminars and lectures are able to provide instruction in a very broad spectrum of fields that cover the linguistic, literary, and cultural aspects of German-speaking regions.
The objective of study in the Course of French Literature is to learn the French language while becoming acquainted with the cultures of the French-speaking regions and with French literature and philosophy. The more students learn, the more they discover that the French language provides access to a cultural world of depth and breadth. Few languages in the world have absorbed and incorporated the cultures and literatures of so many regions and social classes, with so much intensity, diversity, and tolerance as has the French language. The entire world can be seen through the window that is the French language. Through this window, French students can see as far away as South America, Africa, and beyond, to the distant source from which modern history flows: the source of the world we now inhabit.
The purpose of acquiring French language ability, and becoming familiar with the cultures and literature of French-speaking regions, is not to develop a sense of cultural refinement. Rather, the purpose should be to see before one’s very eyes a completely different world where countries have no borders and where various cultures and peoples intermix; where one can touch the source of their energy and form a basis from which to develop one’s own intellect and understanding.
Students begin with introductory courses in French Studies, where they are introduced to the distinctive features of the cultures of Paris and other regions, together with the works of literary figures and artists associated with those places. Following completion of this basic course, students take intensive courses designed to strengthen their French language skills. In addition, they explore the distinctive features of French poetry and novels, and essays on culture, thought, and philosophy, using texts written in French as those translated into Japanese. Lectures also include discussions on French fine arts, exemplified by such schools of painting as Impressionism and post-Impressionism.
The subjects offered in lectures and seminars in the Course of Japanese Literature are selected every year from among the important subjects covered by the entire spectrum of Japanese literature (including the performing arts), ranging from the ancient through the modern and contemporary. Lectures and seminars are also offered in the field of Japanese language studies. The Course also offers classes on the works of Chinese literature and philosophy that have made a profound impact on Japanese literature.
In Introductory seminars and classes, first-year students acquire basic knowledge about Japanese literature and the Japanese language, as well as methods for carrying out surveys and research. Building upon the basics learned in these introductory classes, the curriculum is structured so that students from their second year onward sequentially take lectures and seminars in specialized subjects.
“Treatises” refers to classes that allow students to select their topics of interest and, under the advice and guidance of a full-time instructor, write a paper about it. These classes allow students the opportunity to make independent discoveries.
The Course of Philosophy and Creative Writing provides comprehensive support for efforts that deal with our contemporary world through study of the humanities. Students are trained to grasp the distinctive characteristics of our times by distancing themselves from the present by applying their knowledge and sensitivities to classical literature.
In the Course, students study the classics of literature and philosophy that span all cultures and eras. Texts are read in the original language whenever possible, and students learn rhetoric for contemplation and expression, as they develop the ability to read deeply and accurately. By comparing the culture tied to the Japanese language with cultures tied to other languages, students come to understand the limitations of their own abilities for thought and expression, and realize the need for a more universal means of expression.
As a graduation requirement, students must create an original work in the form of an essay, critique, novel or poem. They must also produce a full-scale critique or thesis on thought or, should the contents of the work make it necessary, a non-language form of expression. The course is designed to train students aspiring to become writers or literary creators.
The Department of Historical Studies comprises three Courses: World History, Japanese History, and Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies. Students studying in the Department gain a profound understanding of historical basics from a standpoint unfettered by any specific cultural value. Each student’s course is dependent upon the seminars that they take in their second year.
Students first establish a base of knowledge in the context of comparing their own culture against other cultures. This contextual understanding is developed by studying cultures of people who lived through various historical eras. Building on this foundation, students explore hypothetical frameworks based on the concepts of a “land-based world” and “sea-based world.”
In addition to philological methods, students in the Department develop methods from cultural anthropology theories of regional research, as well as new academic fields such as cultural environment studies., The Department offers numerous specialized language and fieldwork programs to promote proficiency in these methodologies.
Students in the Department remain the present as they persue study the past. Students are taught to orient themselves in today’s world from a historical standpoint, and therefore are able to actively take part in the contemporary multicultural society of today.
Specialized research begins in the Introductory Seminars required for first-year students. Each of these basic seminars is held with a small number of students, who learn the basic academic approaches to the three Courses in the Department. The students also receive detailed individual guidance to help them select the Course that they will pursue from their second year onward.
Students join one of the Courses in their second year, where they receive specialized instruction from teachers in intimate seminars. Under the guidance of the instructors, each student selects an area of interest and establishes a research plan to pursue this theme. Students attend classes on various specialized subjects, such as history lectures or interdisciplinary cultural studies lectures that approach specific themes or various current events. It is also possible for students to take specialized classes in other Departments in the College of Arts.
Every year, the Department offers two or more fieldwork programs as well as study programs for Dutch, various Islamic languages, Swahili, and Italian. Many of the basic classes offered in the College of Arts include overseas fieldwork. Studying these various subjects enables students to obtain the practical knowledge and skills that they will need in their future careers. Many graduates find employment in such fields as foreign aid or regional development-related work.
If a person is in a traffic accident and suffers memory loss, that person may have no recollection at all of who they are. In much the same way, if we forget our past, we lose our identity and all self-recognition. History is a study in which events of the past are scientifically investigated and organized to find the significance they hold for us and the society at present. Japan has a long history of accepting an extensive variety of cultural and socio-political systems from abroad, so the past that involves us obviously does not stop at its borders; rather it ripples out across the world, although its importance and significance may vary according to region. There is, therefore, significance in studying and researching on the history of various parts of the world. In studying history, it is thought that some common set of criteria should be established from which to understand the world as a single global entity, or to understand the processes of change in terms of time. Historical concepts, such as the division of history into periods and the principles of the stages of development, serve as the aforementioned common criteria. The Course of World History proposes its hypothetical concepts of a “land-based world” and a “sea-based world” as a substitution to these criteria. The curriculum offered by the Course of World History is formed with these concepts in mind. Through this curriculum, students are provided with a basis from which they can build a new world history landscape.
We all strive to live facing the future. Within each of us and our society, there also exists the concentration of our heritage. This takes the form of human cultures, accumulated over thousands of years, and countless human lives, passed in our natural surroundings. Absolutely isolated individuals and remote societies rarely exist in the real world. Culture on the Japanese archipelago has been shaped over time through its interactions with not only East Asia but also with Western Europe. The history of Japan thus constitutes part of world history. At the same time, the climate, customs, and knowledge peculiar to the Japanese archipelago are deeply ingrained in our culture. Because we live in the part of the world that is Japan, we first need to confirm our identity by understanding the history of the Japanese archipelago, by resolving our past, discovering new truths, unraveling old mysteries, and then transforming these findings into knowledge. The Course of Japanese History has teachers for every period of Japanese history, including ancient East Asia, the Middle Ages, early-modern times, modern times, and the present. Students in the Course contemplate a broad range of important historical themes unbounded by era, such as international relationships, the imperial system and the social class system, cities and villages, and the history of women and gender issues. The analytical and conceptual capacities of students are fostered by reading historical documents, which serve as the central focus of historical research, before setting out for historical settings and field sites to conduct fieldwork. The course aims to stimulate students’ curiosity and capability to explore, fostering truly internationally-minded individuals with opportunities to discover the pleasures of historical research.
In the Course of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, students study the records of human civilizations in a broad sense. The modern movement of people, exchange of information, and fluctuation of culture all occur at a dizzying pace. In such an age, it is impossible to take a complete picture of societies and human beings from a single point of view. For this reason, the Course of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies freely incorporates methodologies outside those used in the study of history with the aim of understanding human societies from a multiplicity of new perspectives. These new perspectives include: (1) focusing on the basic elements of culture, (2) viewing cultures from a relative perspective, and (3) clarifying the culture’s relationship with today’s society. The basic elements of a culture comprise elements such as ethnicity, customs, social systems, language, and technology. These elements predate nations and social institutions; they continue to characterize a great many aspects of people’s everyday lives. Focusing on these basic elements and acquiring a comparative outlook are abilities which are increasingly important for the society in which we live. The Course remains dedicated to various research fields and comparative study, including Islamic civilization and the societies which it has fostered, aspects of the multiculturalism encountered on the American continents, the cultures of preliterate societies in Africa, and South America’s natural environment and its inhabitants. The course trains active, flexible students with outlooks that are simultaneously generational and pan-generational, and are focused on regional and pan-regional culture, the microscopic and the macroscopic. It therefore provides them with a commanding view of their surroundings.
Throughout our personal lives we are involved in education; we learn in the context of home education, school education, and lifelong education. And at the social level, we are faced with an incessant stream of various education-related issues, ranging from educational reform to juvenile delinquency. The objective of the Department of Education is to engage a broad range of academic fields in the comprehensive study of various educational issues.
In their third year, students must decide which of these two majors, Educational Studies and Primary School Education, they will pursue. Third-year students majoring in Educational Studies can use the required Seminars in Educational Studies as a foothold to examine specific areas of education in greater depth and from a specialist’s standpoint. For students concentrating on Primary School Education with the aim of obtaining a teaching credential for primary school (a graduating requirement), in the Department emphasizes studies that nurture and develop teaching abilities.
Lectures are offered on a wide variety of subjects that delve into numerous current educational issues, including pressure-free education and the decline in academic abilities, the educational problems of bullying and students refusing to go to school, and issues related to clinical education that reflect a psychologically delicate society. Topics raised in these lectures include the effect of the internationalization of society on education in schools, social advances made by women, and other gender-related issues.
After a brief introduction to the basics of educational studies, first-year students begin attending classes specialized in various areas of educational science, such as educational psychology, educational sociology, education history, and educational philosophy. The Department also offers a broad range of subjects for students to choose from according to their particular interests.
The Department’s focus is on real live education as it is carried out in the field. It therefore emphasizes in-class studies and activities, while providing opportunities for fieldwork. Students gain practical experience and conduct hands-on research outside the classroom.
