近代日本における「文学部」の機能と構造-帝国大学文学部を中心として-  [in Japanese] The Function and Structure of the School of Letters in Modern Japan: Focusing on the Imperial University  [in Japanese]

The study of higher education has traditionally focused on job-related arts such as law, engineering, and medical schools which meet the "needs of the nation", while the comprehensive study of the school of letters has been almost ignored. In this paper, I tried to analyze the function and structure of the schools of letters in the Imperial University of Tokyo and Kyoto in the period from the late 18th century to the early 19th century by comparing them with those of the law school, focusing on the research and educational aspects. To be more detailed, I analyzed the structure of school of letters in the system of higher education, its philosophy of the founding, structure of departments and curriculum, students' consciousness and ethos, and social allocation and role of the graduates in Modern Japan. Then I tried to find the cause of the problems the present school of letters has. The findings are as follows. 1) In the process of modernization, only few universities, regardless of whether national or private sector, had a school of letters, which means that the school of letters was not regarded as important from the both national and social points of view. 2) The school of letters of Imperial Universities was a quite ambiguous section aiming at both reviving the Japanese and Chinese studies from ancient times and imitating the school of philosophy in Modern Germany. As a result, as the organization of the university had been well-formed, disparity between departments in the school of letters had been becoming wider. 3) Although under the Imperial University regulations the main objective of the university was to develop the researchers, that objective of education soon came to deadlock because of the relevance to the job market. 4) In order to deal with this deadlock, restructuring of the departments and reforming the curriculum, putting the emphasis on the foreign languages, were carried out, but failed, resulting in accelerating each department to indulge in research. 5) The school of letters absorbed the literary or philosophy youth, and the research-oriented ethos was formed through the close relationship between these youths and professors. 6) The graduates of this school played an effective role in liberal education by teaching at the Kyusei-koko or high school. Finally, I discussed how the above mentioned structure and function have been changing in the development of mass education since the end of the war, and how they are related to the present status of the school of letters.