Oriental Philology – Japanese Studies

Japanese refers to something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia, including:

Japanese studies or Japan studies (sometimes Japanology in Europe) is a division of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese language, culture, history, literature, art, music, and science. Its roots may be traced back to the Dutch at Dejima, Nagasaki in the Edo period. The foundation of the Asiatic Society of Japan at Yokohama in 1872 by men such as Ernest Satow and Frederick Victor Dickins was an important event in the development of Japanese studies as an academic discipline.

Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. Philology is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist.