History of the Japan-Center
Along with the Institute of Oriental Languages in Berlin and the Institute of Japanese Language and Culture in Hamburg, LMU Munich’s Japan-Center is one of the oldest university programs for research on Japan in Germany. The “Institute of Japanese Studies” at LMU was officially created in 1956 and Horst Hammitzsch (1909-1991) became its first chair. Since 1949, Hammitzsch had already been working in the Institute of Sinology, first as a lecturer and then as a professor for Japanese studies. After Hammitzsch left Munich in 1965 to accept a position at the newly founded Ruhr-University Bochum, the position in Munich remained vacant until 1969.
Between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, however, a number of researchers earned a doctoral degree or habilitation in Munich whose contributions to the field of Japanese studies remain relevant today. These include (in alphabetical order): Oscar Benl, Lydia Brüll, Hans Adalbert Dettmer, Geza Dombrady, Ulrich Goch, Bruno Lewin, Klaus Müller and Peter Weber-Schäfer.
This generation of scholars included Hammitzsch's successor, Wolfram Naumann (1931-2021, retired 1996), who completed his doctoral degree in Munich in 1960 and his habilitation in 1964. He served as chair of Japanese studies from 1969 to 1996 and laid the focus for research and teaching on premodern Japanese literature. In the 1970s and 1980s, Wolfgang Schamoni and Klaus Antoni—both of whom later went on to occupy the position as chair of Japanese studies themselves—first worked as assistants in the department. During this period, the field of Japanese studies profited from the general development of the subject at universities throughout the German republic.
Inge-Lore Kluge (1919–1995), who had already worked as Hammitzsch’s assistant, taught and researched Japanese history at the university in Munich, first as a lecturer (1971–1980) and later as a professor until her retirement in 1985. In 1985 she was succeeded by Carl Steenstrup (1934-2014, retired 2000), who in addition to political history specialized in the legal and institutional development of Japan.
A couple of years later, an additional professorship for modern Japanese religion and philosophy was established. Johannes Laube (1937-2012, retired 2002) held this position from 1987–2002. By the end of the 1980s, therefore, scholars at LMU covered a broad range of research on Japan in the tradition of liberal arts and cultural studies. This was complemented by the research foci of the assistants Stanca Scholz (1990-96) on Nō and Kyōgen Theater, Verena Blechinger (1993-97) on Politics, and Jutta Haußer (1993-95, 1997-2006) on pre-modern literature; as well as by a number of temporary lecturers.
Given Japan’s growing significance on the global stage, in the 1990s, the university’s executive board decided to deliberately systematically social science research on contemporary Japanese society, politics, and economy. This resulted in the foundation of the Japan-Center in 1991. In 1992, Peter Pörtner (retired 2018) assumed a professorship for Contemporary Japan society. His assistant Holger Wöhlbier has since expanded the focus on “State and Society”. In 1997, a professorship for Japanese economics was added to the Japan-Center, which was occupied by Franz Waldenberger until 2014 (since 2014 director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies DIJ, Tokyo).
Ever since the administrative reorganization of the LMU in 2002 and the dissolution of the Institute for East Asian Studies, the Japan-Center is affiliated with the Department for Asian Studies.