The National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in France offers its congratulations and expresses its gratitude on the 50th anniversary of the Japan Foundation Awards.

Our students of Japanese culture and language and our faculty members have received much support from the Japan Foundation over the years, as have many universities and research organizations around the world. In recent years, we received a grant to purchase books, a grant to produce teaching material which was extremely helpful for our Japanese-language education activities. Our research activities received the Foundation support on numerous occasions.

The “Special Program for Social Science Research and Education on Contemporary Japan,” held between 2015 and 2020 with the support of the Japan Foundation, was one of the most important ones we have received to date. Indeed over those 5 years, INALCO and Université Paris Cité together received very substantial research funds thanks to which French researchers were able to go to Japan, a Master level social science seminar could be set up on contemporary Japan, several books could be translated from Japanese into French and could be published.

All the junior researchers from INALCO and Université Paris Cité who were involved in these translations and seminar organization were subsequently able to find academic positions. This program was a driving force for the expansion of Japanese studies in France.

Given the above, I would like to express my wholehearted gratitude and, again, on behalf of the Japanese studies department and INALCO, my congratulations on the 50th anniversary of the Japan Foundation Awards.

Guibourg Delamotte
Professor of Political science,
Head of the Japanese Studies Department
National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (France)
The Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO)

(Original text in Japanese and English)

* After receiving the Japan Foundation Award, the name of the faculty was changed from the former Department of Japanese Language and Civilization to the current Japanese Studies Department.

The Japan Foundation Awards (2012) Profile