Research projects

This study has contributed to an deeper understanding of sermon materials on the teaching of the Eucharist in late medieval England: differences in types of audiences and messages, and over the period, shedding light on how it spread by the means of preaching. In doing so, it also has provided insight into the development of sermons and preaching during the period, exploring the frontier of integrated research of ‘media’ history and religious history.

This project focuses on the mendicant orders, a new form of religious order that emerged in the 13th century, including the Franciscans and Dominicans. Unlike the contemplative monasticism, which in ideal terms distanced itself from the pastoral care of the laity, these friars actively engaged in their mission of 'pastoral care' outside the monastery walls, preaching and listening to laymen and laity, and were the leaders of the 'pastoral revolution'. This project analysed the various ‘media’ developed by the mendicant orders in terms of preaching as a mass discourse dissemination device, the forms of writing that supported preaching and scholarship, the iconography in books, the production and reception of wall paintings and religious writings in the secular language.

mages in works of art have both symbolic/representational and material aspects, and in recent years, research focusing on elucidating the presence and action-performance of images based on the latter has been gaining momentum. In this study, we have advanced the concept of a new iconolography that integrates the two. Specifically, researchers in the history of Christian art, history, anthropology, and Buddhist iconography collaborated to construct a model of meaning production/abundance that is integrated with religious experience based on the materiality of images, and clarified various aspects of this model through the practice and accumulation of case studies of Christian art and other art forms. Based on these results, we have systematized and proposed a new definition and effective method of iconography that integrates meaning and materiality, leading to the development of a more comprehensive and integrated iconographic inquiry.

The present research identified significant elements of changes in the sermon form which occurred during the second half of the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century through comparative analysis of works which belong to the genre called

Presented a paper at the Annual Meeting of Japan Society for Medieval European Studies, held at Nagoya University in June 2010, which was published later in the year on the peer-reviewed journal, European Medieval Studies, vol. 2. Made a presentation about the project at the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society Symposium, held at Salamanca in July 2010.

This project focused on Christian monasticism in medieval and early modern Europe, the Americas and Japan, and on temples and shrines in medieval Japan. In order to clarify how monks, Buddhist priests and priestly orders, oriented towards religious transcendence, created and utilised a wide variety of media and developed a movement of cultural and ideological innovation through their will and energy for social change, the four research teams (Contemplative Orders, Mendicant Orders, Society of Jesus, and Medieval Japanese Temple and Shrine) worked together to carry out cross-cultural comparative research.

As a result of this project, the principal investigator published a German-language monograph "Orval und Himmerod. Die Zisterzienser in der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft (bis um 1350)". Furthermore, the project promoted international joint research, hold an international symposium in March 2019, and edited an English-language proceeding "Pastoral Care and Monasticism in Latin Christianity and Japanese Buddhism (ca. 800-1650)", which will be published in the summer of 2022.

Developing my early research projekt "A comparative study on mutual effect relationship between monasteries and parish communities", the aim of this research is to clarify more comprehensively the roles that Cistercian monasteries played through pastoral care in the formation and sustainable development of secular society. As a result of the collection and analysis of published and unpublished historical materials that show the relationship between the Cistercians and parish churches, focusing on the German regions, the monks were interested in pastoral environment of rural and urban people.

中近世の主要な修道会（シトー会、托鉢修道会、イエズス会）を取り上げ、それぞれに伝来する歴史叙述の分析を通じて、修道士の間で共有されていた記憶文化の性質とその変容過程を比較史の手法により解明する。そこでは主に、修道士たちが①記憶を取捨選択しつつ共同体や個人や理念の歴史をどのように叙述し、②それによって自らの宗教生活、価値観、組織、アイデンティティをどのように規定し、さらに③自らの共同体と外部社会との関係をどのように規定し、それが両者の関係にどのような影響を与えたのか、の3点を問う。記憶文化の理論的枠組みを構築することで、修道制と歴史叙述の関係史に人類史的意義を見出す道を拓く。

本研究の目的は、活版印刷術に先立つ大量言説普及装置であった托鉢修道会の説教の諸側面を研究することのうち、本年度は、その中心課題であった、托鉢修道会の説教の「心的暦」(mental calendar)について、成果をまとめることに多くの力を注いだ。 具体的には、説教集執筆の段階で「心的暦」が説教執筆者に及ぼした規範的な影響と、そのなかで執筆者がどのような創意工夫を発揮しようとしたかを、ひとつの説教集全体を取りあげ分析する「垂直的アプローチ」の成果を、これまでの主な研究が用いた、多数の説教集の一部のみを扱う「横断的アプローチ」の成果と組み合わせることによって、なぜ同じジャンルの範例説教集が新たに数多く執筆されねばならなかったのかという問いに一定の結論を出した。この内容については論文を2008年1月に学会誌へ投稿した(現在、査読・審査の結果をまっている) 一方、「心的暦」を復元する過程において検討することが必要となった説教形式について、ベルギーの国際的学術出版社Brepolsから共著書を出すことができた。この説教形式の探求の結果は、聴衆がどのように説教を理解(情報処理)することを説教者が期待していたか、という説教の受容に関する問題系に示唆するところが大きく、古代の記憶術とアウグスティヌスの「記号論」の関連を論じるにあたって、説教形式の問題を含みこむかたちで成果を論文にまとめているところである。