The Japan Foundation sponsored the Survey of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in North America in cooperation with the Association for Asian Studies and the Japanese Studies Association of Canada. The survey was conducted through the University of Hawaii under the direction of Professor Patricia Steinhoff of the University of Hawaii and Professor Julian Dierkes of the University of British Columbia. It is the fourth such study to be conducted by the Japan Foundation for the United States and Canada, as part of their worldwide series of surveys on Japanese Studies.

This is the first survey of the United States and Canada to have a fully searchable website of the survey results. Print directories were published for the previous three studies of the United States and Canada. This website replaces a published directory for the current study, but we have produced directory entries in pdf format for all specialists and programs that participated, and have also developed full versions of the directories in pdf format that are available for download. There are also two separate volumes for the United States and Canada that contain analysis of the survey data. Download Links at bottom of the page

The website is based on the categories of information that 1,693 specialists, 287 programs, and 88 libraries reported in our very extensive survey, and their directory entries as formatted for print publication. Users may browse or search by selecting from the menu of available categories to generate a list of the specialists or programs that meet those criteria. That list may be printed out along with the specifications that produced it. Clicking on the name of a program, institution, or library in the search results will bring up the full pdf directory entry, which also may be printed out or downloaded.

The website does not support free, full-text searching, but offers a full range of searches using the categories of the collected data. Search results are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012 and at present there are no plans for updating the information until another complete survey is conducted at some time in the future. The information is therefore comparable to a directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in North America published in January 2013.

The study collected basic information on doctoral candidates from both Japan specialists and Japanese Studies programs, and some doctoral candidates also reported themselves to the study. This information was used to produce lists of current doctoral candidates for the program listings and also to follow up on doctoral candidates reported in previous studies. The Doctoral Candidates section of the website provides searches for this limited data, but there are no formatted full entries for doctoral candidates. A small number of doctoral candidates qualified for regular entries in the Specialist directory because of their publications and professional activity. When a search produces one of these individuals, there is a link to the pdf of their full directory entry.

Although the study covers the United States and Canada, in order to keep track of Japan specialists and doctoral candidates at North American institutions who move in and out of the area over time, we continue to invite the participation of specialists who are currently working outside of North America but maintain professional ties through publications and professional activity. Such persons are included in the website searches of Japan specialists, but may be excluded by filtering the search by country. Japan specialists residing outside North America are generally excluded from the analyses of the data that appear in the separate volumes on Japanese Studies in the United States and Japanese Studies in Canada, except for persons on the staff lists of North American institutions who are temporarily out of the country.

PDF volumes available for download.

The Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in the United States and Canada comprises three volumes:

Vol. I Japan Specialists

Vol. II Institutions

Vol. III Indexes

Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in Canada is a single volume containing the directory entries for Japan specialists and institutions in Canada, plus an essay by Professor Julian Dierkes of the University of British Columbia on the current state of Japanese Studies in Canada.

Japanese Studies in the United States: The View from 2012 is a monograph analyzing the data for the United States.