The areas in which the Asian History program at Osaka University shines globally are early modern and modern Chinese history, premodern Central Asian history, medieval and early modern Southeast Asian history, and Asian maritime history. Faculty members teaching these topics use not only classical Chinese texts but also other Asian language sources, and combine fieldwork results in their research. Given that the research concerns the histories of foreign countries, the work must meet global standards. Graduate students are instructed, as a matter of course, to set high-level research objectives and judge their performance by the standards of overseas researchers rather than solely those in Japan.
Students are expected to push ahead with specialist research in each sub-field, absorb a broad range of scholarship about Asian and world history in general, and position and explain their research and learning outcomes against a cross-section of academic fields. The program provides a suitable challenge, not only for those wishing to become specialist researchers, but also for anyone who would like to work as a social studies or historical geography teacher at a middle or high school as well as those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the newest findings in the field and bring greater knowledge to society.
Professors
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- MATSUI, Dai (Ph.D.)
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History of Central Asia and the Mongol empire (10.–14. cc); Philological research on Old Turkic and Mongol documents
- TAGUCHI, Kojiro (Ph.D.)
- Chinese history: Socio-economic and Fiscal Structure of Early Modern China, Land Registration during KMT Period