Pick up your books and go outside
On-the-Spot Learning
One may imagine the “Faculty of Letters” to be a place where students do nothing but read books. This assumption, however, is false. For studies in the Division of Psychology and Sociology, as an example, experiments and social surveys prove indispensable. A variety of fieldwork, such as archaeological excavations and ethnography, is also conducted by students in this Faculty, sometimes even overseas. Students in the Faculty of Letters do, indeed, leave their offices and libraries to venture outside. Usually with their books, of course.
Sense and Sensibility
Explore New Worlds by Reading the Originals
The teaching of foreign languages in the third and fourth year of the Faculty of Arts and Letters is highly emphasized. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Latin, Greek, and Tibetan are taught alongside commonly taught English, Mandarin, German, French, Korean, and Russian. Learning a foreign language requires a great deal of effort and opportunities should be provided to take advantage of it. Therefore, the Faculty of Letters offers a class called “Reading the Original Texts,” in which students develop the ability to accurately read the original language texts, rather than translated texts. In this class, students carefully read works by Plato, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Murasaki Shikibu, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Diderot, Chomsky, and others, as well as the Manyoshu, the Talmud, and the Nibelungenlied. Using this wide range of literary works as a guide, students will discover a new world. The reading skills cultivated in this program will stay with them after graduation, and will surely enhance their sensibilities throughout their lives.
