Staff

The Humanities-based Interdisciplinary Research Center is composed of faculty members of the Literature and Human Sciences and more than 50 HIRC doctoral fellows.

The following is the list of core members FY 2026:

Name	Title	Specialization
KUBORI Hiroaki	Dean Professor	Early Modern Japanese Literature, History of Ningyo Joruri
KISHIMOTO Naofumi	Director Professor	Archaeology of the Kofun Period
SHINGAE Akitomo	Vice-Director Professor	Queer Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
ISHITA Saeko	Professor	Sociology of Culture, Visual Sociology, Media & Cultural Studies
MASUDA Satoshi	Professor	Musicology, Popular Culture Studies
SAGA Ashita	Professor	History of Modern Japan
KAWANO Eiji	Professor	Sociology of Urban & Social Policy, Comparative Sociology
KUSABU Hisatsugu	Professor	Byzantine & Medieval History, Christianity, Religious Movements
HASHIMOTO Hirofumi	Associate Professor	Social psychology, Cross-cultural psychology
KIYOKAWA Sachie	Associate Professor	English Literature, Utopianism
SEKIGUCHI Yohei	Associate Professor	Comparative Education, International Dimensions of Education in Vietnam
MAEDA Ryotaro	Lecturer	Medieval Japanese Literature, Japanese Mythology
KIM Seungyeon	Project Assistant Professor	Modern & Contemporary Japanese Literature(Culture), Post-Disaster Literature, Comparative study of Japanese & Korean Literature