At the undergraduate level, seminars to teach skills in reading historical materials are held annually or biannually in the fields of ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern Japanese history. These seminars include an exercise in reading unpublished Japanese documents. Professors also give lectures in the undergraduate division on such topics as Ritsuryo system of the ancient period, the Shogunate power, and modern Buddhism. From time to time, guest lecturers are invited from other Japanese universities to speak on various topics.

Activities in the graduate school include seminars in Japanese historical materials, such as documents of the Shokuho and Edo period as well as medieval law. Graduate students are encouraged to attend the undergraduate lecture courses as well. In addition, the graduate students run their own study groups on a variety of historical topics.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/nihonshi/(in Japanese)

The Department of Oriental History was founded in 1907 and consisted of three Professorships for the purpose of research and instruction in the history of China and neighboring regions such as Inner Asia and Korea. After the foundation was consolidated by Naito Konan, Kuwabara Jitsuzo, Haneda Toru and several other scholars, the academic tradition based on thorough philological training and deep historical knowledge has continued until the present day.

In addition to the above-mentioned staff, many academic members of the Institute for Research in Humanities and other sections are also responsible for lectures and seminars.

The department is the center of activities of the Society of Oriental Researches (Toyoshi-Kenkyu-kai) which publishes Toyoshi-Kenkyu (The Journal of Oriental Researches) quarterly and collaborates in the publication of Toyoshi-Kenkyusokan (The Oriental Research Series).

The Department of West-Asian History was founded in 1969 for the purpose of integrating and reinforcing instruction and research in the history, languages, and cultures of Western and Central Asia, with an emphasis on the Islamic period.

All students, undergraduate and graduate, are required to attain a reading knowledge of at least two of the major West-Asian languages: Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Ancient languages.

Besides language courses, the following special courses are offered: An introduction to West-Asian history; Historical sources on Achaemenid Iran; Afghanistan at the early Islamic period; Mazalim court in medieval Islam; Anatolia in the 11th-15th centuries; Modern history of Central Asia.

Students are also required to attend seminars on historical materials such as: Al-Maqrizi, Al-Mawa’iz; Khvandamir, Habib al-Siyar; Mustafa Ali, Kunh al-akhbar; Arabic, new Persian and modern Turkish texts.

The department has a special connection with the activities of the Institute for Eurasian Studies, which is located in Kita-ku, Kyoto. The office of the Seinan-Azia Kenkyukai, or Society for Western and Southern Asiatic Studies is in the department, and Seinan-Azia Kenkyu (Bulletin of the Society for Western and Southern Asiatic Studies) appears twice a year. The associates of the department are the main contributors to this journal.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/w-asia/index-e.html

The department has four Professorial subdepartments, one each for ancient, medieval, early modern and modern history. The present faculty concentrates on these four fields, and other lectures are arranged to cover other areas of European and American history. These lectures are given partly by staff from other faculties or institutes of Kyoto University and the lecturers invited from other universities. The topics are designed to give a general idea of the history of each epoch and each nation. Students are required to take one introductory course in European history, three lecture courses, three seminars, and two foreign languages, besides there are eleven optional lecture courses provided. Graduate students can decide which lectures to attend, but one seminar designed for them is compulsory. Among the academic activities of the students, particular attention is paid to the annual meeting of the department in which the new doctoral students must deliver lectures on their M. A. theses.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/seiyoshi/ (in Japanese)

The department, founded in 1916, was the first archaeological department within the Japanese university system. The field of study covered by the department is principally focused on Japan, Korea, and China. Lectures, seminars, laboratory work and field work are offered on theoretical subjects as well as on the staff’s specialized topics. The department maintains close contact with the University Museum, Center for Cultural Heritage Studies, and the Archaeological Section of the Institute for Research in Humanities of Kyoto University. It carries out surveys and excavations in sites and conducts a research symposium each autumn.

The department published 16 volumes of Kyoto Teikoku Daigaku Kokogaku Kenkyuu Hokoku (Report upon Archaeological Research in the Department of Literature, Kyoto Imperial University).

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/arch/ (in Japanese)