Natsuko Kuwabara: Exploring the World of Knowledge

April 2004. Having just entered Keio, I stared wide-eyed at the syllabus I was handed. "What is this? It looks so interesting! Is this the kind of thing you study at university?" Although I had wanted to study Western Art History since before entering, I found myself registered for plenty of subjects that seemed to have little to do with my major. Every day spent learning things I didn't know was so much fun that by the time I graduated, I had earned 208 credits (apparently there is a credit cap now).

At one point, I noticed that both the Western Classical Studies course on Homer and the Sociology of Japanese Anime course I was taking shared the theme of "proof of self-existence." In that moment, I felt as if the roots of different pieces of knowledge had connected underground. Filled with the excitement of learning, my step was light, and the Mita Hill I saw that day looked particularly beautiful.

I went on to the Major in Aesthetics and Art History, and later researched the theme of "how the final years of the Virgin Mary, which are not described in the Bible, have been depicted in paintings." My subject matter spanned the entire Mediterranean region from the 5th to the 15th centuries. During my studies in Italy, I was instructed to investigate works thoroughly, as if extracting their entrails, and was deeply immersed in the research methods of art history. I was both obsessed with and desperate to master them. Looking back, it could be said that I had no room to look at anything else.

After returning to Japan, as I had more opportunities to speak with researchers from other fields, I realized there were aspects of my research subjects that I had previously failed to see. At those times, my days at Keio suddenly came back to me. Different disciplines actually share the same problems, and by looking at things from different perspectives, forms that were previously unnoticed begin to emerge. I wanted to try finding that within my own research. I thought that crossing the gaze of other fields while digging deep into my own specialization might lead to intellectual individuality. With that in mind, I deconstructed the doctoral thesis I had struggled to write and decided to re-examine my research from the perspective of disciplines other than art history. My first single-authored book, "The Final Years of the Virgin Mary: An Iconographic Genealogy in Medieval and Renaissance Italy" (Nagoya University Press, 2023), was the result of that process.

I am grateful that my book received the 6th Faculty of Letters Junzaburo Nishiwaki Academic Award this year. Mita Hill, which I visited for the first time in a while for the award ceremony, was just as beautiful as it was on that day I saw it as an undergraduate.