The department was founded in 1907 as the first geography department in Japanese universities and has remained a center of human-geographical studies in Japan. It consists of three sub-fields (geography, human geoecology and landscape history) and they are interrelated through research and education. Lectures on historical, rural, urban, economic, population and quantitative geography are delivered by the staff of the department. Other teaching topics managed by invited lecturers include geomorphology, geographical information systems and man-environment systems. It supervises the maps and ethnological materials section of the University Museum, which includes a large collection of rare maps of early modern Japan, together with various daily-life utensils brought from Micronesia, Southwest Asia and East Africa. In this department, graduate students are required to publish their research results as refereed papers in leading geographical journals.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/geography/geo-top_page/