Akira Mochizuki, Professor, College of Letters
Ritsumeikan University’s Institute of Human Sciences is in its 5th year from its start based on the former Institute of Educational Sciences. During that time, Ritsumeikan University has seen the establishment of a number of educational organizations relating to human sciences, including Educational Anthropology Major in the Department of Psychology; the Department of Human Welfare in the College of Social Sciences; and the graduate schools of Science for Human Services, Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences.
This development can be recognized as our real-time response to the identification of and definition of measures against various problems currently arising in actual society. During the same period, social change that may be called a paradigm change has taken place, regardless of whether they are good or bad, everywhere, from the large framework of social recognition regarding human beings to systems of helping the elder and disabled people as well as those that support children in schools and communities.
I think that the role of the Institute of Human Sciences is to function as a dynamic platform to help researchers and practitioners involved in the domain of human science to cooperate in order to solve, without delay, newly emerging issues in the time of such change, and achieve “fusion” in building a new methodology out of that cooperation. While “human science” is not a new name at all, it can be said that the effort has just begun not only to merely have multiple related areas gather under that term but also to come to grips with the methodology for effectively realizing such cooperation and fusion. Perhaps it is possible to say that the Institute of Human Sciences is an organization that may, through trial and error, develop such methodology per session as a common research theme.
I believe that such cooperation and fusion will bear fruit only if it is deployed across different categories, such as research/education, university/community, and basic/application in addition to between existing academic systems. Therefore, the action required of the Institute of Human Sciences as a platform is to first make the researchers/practitioners involved, internal or external, have a clear view of their mutual work and to offer a place and service for the required cooperation. The achievements of the research and practice done during this period are presented in the printed media Ritsumeikan Human Science Research and the Academic Frontier Promotion Program Project Research Series. They are also introduced, along with their work process, on the institute’s Web site and the accompanying Human Service Platform (HSP), using various media, such as animation.
The year 2004 is the final year of the Academic Frontier Promotion Program’s Total Research on Human Environment Design for Interpersonal Helping project, which is the core issue of the institute. It is also a milestone year in which several other big projects will end. On the other hand, new research projects and practical activities derived from these projects are growing day by day and beginning to bear fruit. It makes me feel that the Institute of Human Sciences as a platform has just begun to function on a full-scale basis.
I believe that it is the mission of the institute at Ritsumeikan University, which boasts a wide range of human resources, to develop as a platform that can deepen research while proceeding with practical work opened to society. We welcome your comments and ideas.
Previous directors of the institute of Human scences,
- Akira Mochizuki (College of Letters) 2004–
- Yoshikazu Sato （College of Social Sciences） 2002–2003
- Takao Matsuda （College of Letters） 2001
