The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) is a research center for ethnology and cultural anthropology.

Departments

Programs of the School of Cultural and Social Studies Offered at the National Museum of Ethnology

The two post-graduate programs offered at Minpaku provide an ideal place for training and for graduate education.  In order to broaden the students‘ perspectives, both Departments expect the students to take full advantage of the extensive holdings in the Museum‘s library and in its collections, which include ethnological materials from around the world, as well as extensive archives of films, photos, video-tapes, and recordings of languages and music.  Students are required to do their own fieldwork and are advised to actively utilize the computer to aid in the objective analysis of their data. 

As an Inter-University Center, the Research Institute of the Museum provides students with opportunities to participate in academic meetings with researchers having various specialties from other Japanese educational and research Institutions. 

The Department of Regional Studies

A moment in the Graduate Students‘ Room

The Department studies the individual cultures of ethnic groups in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. It considers the characteristics and history of each culture and focuses on describing a culture and understanding its structure using ethnographic methodology. The Department fosters researchers who have high expertise and actively promote the descriptive study of individual cultures based on fieldwork.

A moment in the Graduate Students‘ Room

The Department of Comparative Studies

A graduate seminar

The Department of Comparative Studies is designed for students interested in the comparative and cross-cultural study of social systems, religion, technology, languages, arts, and cultural resources. Through the comparative study of ethnic cultures, students are expected to identify the cross-cultural aspects of their research subjects and to develop theoretical interpretations of the comparative data. To foster researchers with high expertise, we encourage new research methods integrating relevant information technology and interdisciplinary approaches with the traditional anthropological methods.

Other programs of the School of Cultural and Social Studies and the Departments and Institutions where they offered are:
Japanese Studies (International Research Center for Japanese Studies)
Japanese History (National Museum of Japanese History)
Cyber Society and Culture (National Institute of Multimedia Education)
Japanese Literature (National Institute of Japanese Literature)

A graduate seminar