Few bicultural institutions can boast such a long and rich history as Tokyo’s Maison franco-japonaise (MFJ), which celebrated its centenary on December 14. A research center aimed at a better mutual knowledge of Japan and France, the MFJ is a place for scientific exchange, where many figures from the French intellectual world have been brought to present their work in the context of conferences with simultaneous interpretation in Japanese.
“In the current context of the cultural dominance of the English language, the cultivation of scientific cooperation and dialogue in French and Japanese seems to me essential to provide a not only Anglo-Saxon picture of globalization”estimates Thomas Garcin, director of the French Institute for Research on Japan at the MFJ and a specialist in contemporary Japanese literature, especially Yukio Mishima (1925-1970).
From the Western-style wooden house, decorated with a turret and garden, provided by a Japanese patron at its creation in 1924, MFJ migrated to Ochanomizu (the equivalent of the Latin Quarter), then to the neighborhood residential area of Ebisu, where occupies an imposing glass and concrete building. With a rich library and conference room, it hosts four French researchers in the humanities working in Japan for stays of two to four years. For decades, most of those who counted and count today in the field of Japanese studies in France remained at MFJ.
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