Dean's Message

April 2007 saw the establishment of the Kobe University Graduate School of Intercultural Studies. The Graduate School came into being due to the reorganization of the former Graduate School of Cultural Studies and Human Science. At the same time, emphasis was shifted from the undergraduate level to the graduate level. What had belonged to the former was transferred to the latter, including facilities, teaching and administrative staff, committees, and other organizations.

  The Faculty of Intercultural Studies was established in October 1992, and accepted its first cohort in April 1993. This was followed by the instatement of the first-stage (master's) curriculum for the doctoral program in the then Graduate School of Cultural Studies and Human Science four years later and then by the second-stage (Ph.D.) curriculum two years after that. The reorganization into a graduate school of the same name as the undergraduate school means that now we have a structure for the pursuit of education and research in the field of intercultural studies extending from the undergraduate to the graduate levels.

  The field intercultural studies should not be regarded as a single classic discipline in particular. It instead indicates interdisciplinary learning involving common themes such as those principles that underlie all cultures, the diverse forms of culture, and mutual cultural correlations. In short, it is a field that exists as a branch of studies, rather than as one particular discipline. The Graduate School is the first at a Japanese national university in Japan with the name of intercultural studies. It provides a venue for multi-perspective approaches to intercultural learning as a branch of studies and a field of interdisciplinary research based on innovative frameworks. We anticipate that the Graduate School and its students will continue to be at the forefront of intercultural studies in Japan.