LONDON (Kyodo) A funding crisis affecting Japanese studies in Britain has been alleviated with the creation of 13 new teaching posts thanks to two charities.
The new lectureships and research positions, costing £2.5 million over a five-year period, will focus on contemporary aspects of Japanese business and society.
The Nippon Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation decided to inject the funds after years of decline in Japanese studies.
Several Japanese courses have been dropped at British universities over the last 10 years because it is a costly subject relative to other languages. Japanese courses also attract fewer students than more popular degrees, making the ratio of teachers to students higher and leading to a dearth of homegrown experts on Japan.
The new posts mean 11 universities can offer courses from Japan's economy and management, to modern and postwar history and visual media.