A new project started in April 2018 in Japan, with ambitious goals, several active research teams and a rich schedule of events and activities. We are very grateful to Gina Konstantopoulos, who has kindly accepted our invitation to present “The Essence of Urban Civilization”, the project carried out at the Research Center for West Asian Civilization, University of Tsukuba. Besides providing information on the activities of the Japanese team, this interview has also been the occasion to know more about the current situation of Assyriology in Japan, and in particular in the University of Tsukuba.
How did the project “The Essence of Urban Civilization” came to light? When did you have the first idea, and when did it officially start?
The project “The Essence of Urban Civilization” has its foundations in the “Research Center for West Asian Civilization” at the University of Tsukuba. The Center, which began in 2012, includes University of Tsukuba faculty from the fields of Assyriology, Archaeology, Geology, and Cultural Heritage studies.
Project Building and Research Center for West Asian Civilization at the University of Tsukuba
The “Research Center for West Asian Civilization” began with the goal of establishing an interdisciplinary Center that could investigate the different cultures and societies of the ancient world. The Center aims to create strong links with the international scholarly community and across borders of scholarly disciplines and methodologies, as seen in the overview below:
Aims of the Research Center for West Asian Civilization
The current project, “The Essence of Urban Civilization,” is supported by funding from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Professor Shigeo Yamada, the principal investigator, secured a JSPS Kakenhi grant for the project, which began in April 2018 and will be supported until March 2023.
Can you tell us something more on the Project? Which research lines will it pursue? How is the project organized, what is its approach to the topic that it investigates?
The project studies urban civilization in the Middle East. It is comprised of several different research groups and teams.
Team A01: First Signs of Urban Civilization focuses on the investigation of Neolithic sites in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, such as Hasankeyf Höyük, incorporating archaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, and environmental science research. Team A02: Landscape and Structure of Ancient West Asian Cities examines the urban landscape and development of cities in both Mesopotamia and Egypt from the third millennium BCE to third century CE. Of the two research group within this team, one focuses on Mesopotamian cities, with particular focus on utilizing both archaeological and textual evidence from cuneiform sources. The second team focuses on Egypt’s urban centers such as Thebes and Memphis, reconstructing ancient urban landscapes from the Pharonic to the Hellenistic period.
Team B01: Environment and Resources of West Asia utilizes the research of faculty members in geology and archaeology to understand resource patterns in urban spaces as connected to urban development. Finally, the project moves into later chronological stages with Team C01: West Asian Cities from the Middle Period to the Modern Period, with one research group studying the urban structure of Islamic cities in the region, particularly their roles as economic and political centers and how social spaces were defined within cities such as Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, and Isfahan. The other group considers the more modern perspective of cites as models of urban planning. Though each of the research teams conduct their own independent work, there is also a strong sense of collaboration between them, through biannual all-project meetings and planned collaborative articles and larger research outputs.
What are your main expectations for “The Essence of Urban Civilization”? Which main research results do you wish to achieve?
Each of the research teams have their own aims and goals, and the Project encourages those individual results while also producing work that represents the research of the entire center. One major research result that the Project is working towards is the production of a series of edited volumes that cover the topic of urban civilization in the ancient Middle East, incorporating all of the groups and their various research topics.
Library of the Research Center for West Asian Civilization
We are currently in the process of applying to make the Project, and the Center it is connected to, an official and permanent research center at the University of Tsukuba. If successful, this would be the first permanent research center in the humanities at Tsukuba, as all others are in the sciences. Most importantly, this would encourage further work and research on the ancient Near East at Tsukuba and in Japan.
Can you present to us the members of the project?
There are a great many members of the project here at the University of Tsukuba, as well as affiliated academics at other universities in Japan. The Project’s leader and principal investigator is Professor Shigeo Yamada. As the Project has grown out of the Research Center for West Asian Civilization, it includes most members of the Center. Among the different teams, one research group (“Discourse of Urban Civilization in West Asia”) considers the work of the various aspects of the project as a whole. This group includes the following individuals:
Project Leader
– Shigeo Yamada; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Co-investigators
– Osamu Maeda; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
– Kosuke Matsubara; Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba
– Tomoko Morikawa; Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology and Faculty of Letters, The University of Tokyo
– Daisuke Shibata; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
– Jiro Kondo; Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University
– Yoko Taniguchi; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
– Yutaka Miyake; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
– Ryo Anma; Graduate School of Technology, Industrial and Social Sciences, Tokushima University
– Masanori Kurosawa; Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
– Nozomu Kawai; Institute for Frontier Science Initiative, Kanazawa University (Egyptology)
In addition, the project has hired two assistant Professors in the History of Ancient West Asia, Gina Konstantopoulos and Yasuyuki Mitsuma. On the Project’s website, you can find the full listing of all the research teams and affiliated members.
Does the project “The Essence of Urban Civilization” envisage some events in the future – exhibition, workshop, conference or similar? If so, could you give us some details and a website which we may check for regular updates?
The Project has an active schedule of events and activities, from public lectures given by members and visiting scholars to larger conferences held in coordination with other universities. Such conferences and workshops have often included international scholars, and have been held primarily in either English and Japanese, depending on the particular event. Some past events include:
– “Mesopotamian Landscape Archaeology: Recent Research in Iraqi Kurdistan” (January 2019)
– “Baghdad, a 1400 year old Capital City in West Asia” (January 2019)
– “Recent Archaeological Research in Southern Iraq” (June 2019)
– “The Mutual Development and Friction between Water, Soil and Cities in Ancient West Asia and the Origin of Urban Mines” (August 2019)
– “Network and Urban Landscape in Historical Perspective” (August 2019)
– “Urban Landscape and Structure in Ancient Egypt” (September 2019)
– “Sasanian Cities” (February 2020)
The Project is planning a two-day international workshop on the overall theme of ancient urban civilization, which has been postponed to February 2021. A full list of workshops and seminars can be found on the Project’s website.
The project also includes fieldwork in some archaeological sites located in Iraq and Turkey: can you tell us something about these activities?
The University of Tsukuba has conducted a number of archaeological excavations and surveys over the past decades. One of the older fieldwork projects has been at Tell Taban in Syria, the site of the ancient city of Tābetu. The site has been excavated since 1997 by Kokushikan University; Tsukuba joined the work at the site in 2005, and was only stopped in recent years by the crisis in Syria. Fieldwork at the site unearthed a number of cuneiform tablets, most of which are from the Middle Assyrian period.
Other fieldwork activities are located at Yasin Tepe, a first millennium site in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Hasankeyf Höyük, a Neolithic site in Batman, Turkey. These two sites present very different projects. Yasin Tepe is a major urban site, a city of prominence during the Neo-Assyrian empire. The 2016 excavation uncovered large buildings with rooms similar to the reception rooms of Assyrian palaces. Hasankeyf Höyük, on the other hand, dates to the tenth millennium, and evidence from excavations suggest it was the site of a village of hunter-gatherers. The university has also been involved in a survey of prehistoric sites in Iraqi Kurdistan.
An overview of some of the fieldwork projects can be found at this link, with drone footage of Yasin Tepe from the past season.
Can you tell us something on Assyriology at University of Tsukuba? Do you have classes and, if so, how many students are involved? Which research activities do you carry out there?
The University of Tsukuba is an active center for Assyriology in Japan, even though we do not currently have a stand-alone program in Assyriology! Instead, Assyriology falls under the program of ancient West Asian History. Some of our students also come from the field of linguistics, with a focus on Semitics, and others from West Asian Archaeology. Regardless, the faculty at the University of Tsukuba includes a large number of Assyriologists. Professors Shigeo Yamada and Jun Ikeda, as well as associate professor Daisuke Shibata, are all permanent faculty at Tsukuba. With the start of the Project, our resident Assyriologists have expanded to include Yasuyuki Mitsuma and Gina Konstantopoulos as assistant professors on the Project. In addition, Tsukuba has a number of faculty studying the archaeology of the Near East, including professor Yutaka Miyake, emeritus professor Akira Tsuneki, associate professor Osamu Maeda, and assistant professor Yu Itahashi.
Central Campus and the Main Library at the University of Tsukuba
In the history track, students who can study Assyriology at the BA or MA level. We also have one student who is studying Assyriology as part of their PhD program in Linguistics. Excluding first and second year students, there are currently about ten students who focus on the history of West Asia, and a similar number of students in Linguistics and Archaeology. We have Akkadian and Sumerian classes at both the introductory and advanced levels, and also offer a wide range of lecture courses on the history, society, and culture of the ancient Near East. The University of Tsukuba is also connected to a number of other nearby academic institutions, including the Ancient Orient Museum in Sunshine City, Ikebukuro and the “Institute for the Culture Studies of Ancient Iraq” at Kokushikan University. We are fortunate to work with colleagues at nearby universities, such a Fumi Karahashi at Chuo University, who has already appeared in Mar Shiprim to discuss the program there.
How is the current situation of Assyriology in Japan?
Assyriology and the study of the ancient Near East has a long and interesting history in Japan. At present, most Assyriologists in Japan belong to other university departments, and Assyriologists can be found at the University of Tsukuba, Chuo University, Kokushikan University, Sophia University, Kyoto University, Doshisha University, and Osaka Gakuin, among others. In the past, many Assyriologists who are currently in Japan received their PhDs abroad. One of the earliest Japanese Assyriologists, Yomokuro Nakahara, studied at Oxford with Stephen Langdon, to then return to Japan and teach at Kyoto University. Nakahara taught the next generation of Japanese Assyriologists, including both Kazuya Maekawa and Mamoru Yoshikawa, the latter of whom went to work at Hiroshima University and focused on the study of the Sumerian language. Many of Yoshikawa’s handwritten notes on Sumerian vocabulary are searchable online.
The history of ancient Near Eastern studies is actually connected with the Imperial House of Japan. Following World War II, Prince Mikasa, the youngest son of Emperor Taisho (r. 1912-1926), began the academic study of Christianity and the Bible, as well as Biblical Hebrew and the ancient Near Eastern. While studying at the University of Tokyo, he worked with Professor Kiyoshi Ohata in religious studies. In his class, Prince Mikasa met Nakayama Shōzen, the leader (Shinbashira) of the Japanese new religion Tenrikyo. These three men decided to found a new society called the “Japan Society of Near Eastern Studies” (Orient Gakkai), which continues to this day. Kiyoshi Ohata was also the supervisor of Dr. Akio Tsukimoto, the current director of the Ancient Orient Museum, thus setting Ohata as another of the important figures of Japanese Assyriology from the post-war period. Unsurprisingly, having these high-profile figures involved in the study of the ancient Near East helped to build attention for the field in the decades following World War II. The tradition of Assyriological research continues in Japan, with longstanding research workshops and meetings. In 2017, the research workshop for the study of Sumerology in Japan, “Sumer Kenkyu-kai,” celebrated its 60th meeting; an event also recorded in the IAA’s Mar Shiprim.
What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities ahead for Assyriology, in Japan and elsewhere?
Although the Project has provided a welcome infusion of energy and new activity as connected to the study of Assyriology here in Japan, the situation is still challenging. Unfortunately, the positions of several prominent Assyriology professors have not been filled upon their retirement, leading to a loss of Assyriology at several universities. Despite this, research projects, existing faculty, and students continue the tradition of Assyriology in Japan.
As a whole, Japanese universities have seen increasing initiatives supporting internationalization and globalization. Assyriology has a long history of international scholarly cooperation, and the Research Center and the Project hope to continue to deepen such connections, as well as forge new links with scholars in other countries.
In 2014, Professor Shigeo Yamada and Dr. Raija Mattila, director of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, collaborated to organize the seminar “Interaction, Interplay, and Combined Use of Different Sources in Neo-Assyrian Studies: Monumental Texts and Archival Sources” at Tsukuba. This conference was supported by both the Academy of Finland and the JSPS. Two years later, the international conference “Calendars and Festivals” was also held at Tsukuba.
More recently, we have pursued JSPS programs to invite foreign scholars for research stays, and we were able to welcome Dr. Fiona Pichon to Tsukuba for three months. Moreover, Tsukuba has a long history of collaboration with Iraqi and Syrian scholars, and we have been able to invite our Iraqi colleagues to present and visit Tsukuba in recent months, and only hope that such activities will continue.
University of Tsukuba; South Campus and Amakubo Ike