International Institute for Linguistic Sciences (1978-2001)

Past Directors

Hisanosuke IZUI
Shichiro MURAYAMA
Tamaki OGAWA
Funio YAJIMA
Iwawo UMEDA
Kenji MATSUURA
Junnosuke MIYOSHI
Takakatsu HASHIMOTO
Michio YANO

Final Greeting

The International Institute for Linguistic Sciences was created in 1978 by Prof. Dr. Toshima Araki, the founder and the first president of Kyoto Sangyo University. Dr. Araki was well aware of the importance of linguistic sciences both in practical and theoretical aspects. In spite of Araki's sudden death in the same year, the institute was well managed by the strong directorship of Profs. Hisanosuke Izui and Shichiro Murayama. The institute attracted a good attention of the scholarly world when Prof. Murayama organized an international symposium on the genetic relationships of the Japanese language in October 1980. After the retirement of the founding professors, however, the university did not recruit distinguished scholars and it became difficult to keep the high level of researches.

Anticipating the financial difficulty in the `winter time' of Japanese universities which is to come to the peak in 2009, the university decided to reorganize the institutes and our institute was closed in the end of March 2001. I feel very sorry remembering the night when we had a farewell party to Prof. Izui. He took my hands firmly and said to me `please take a good care of the institute'.

The end of the institute does not mean the end of our researches in linguistics, since language is one of the most essential human activities and linguistics is the foundation of all the scientific researches. We hope our activities in this field re-appear soon in some other forms.

We thank very much those institutes and individuals who supported our activities.

March 31, 2001

Michio Yano