Facts and figures
The official capacity of the Faculty of Letters is 175 students per year. In some years, we are able to admit even more students.
Most students in the Faculty of Letters finish their degrees within four years.
The majority of our students (95%) go on to get jobs in industry, construction, information technology, banking, insurance, healthcare, national or local governments, sales, or education. In short, studying in the Faculty of Letters can prepare you for a very wide range of careers.
Around 10% of our graduates decide to purse further study at graduate school, either here at Okayama University, elsewhere in Japan, or abroad.
For more information, see the current Faculty of Letters pamphlet [Japanese].
History
When Okayama University was founded in 1949, the Old System Sixth Senior Higher School was one of its main parent institutions. The Department of Humanities of the Old System Sixth Senior Higher School was inherited and established as the Faculty of Law and Letters, the predecessor of the Faculty of Letters.
In 1980, the Faculty of Letters was given autonomy from the Faculty of Law and Letters. Originally, it had a three-department system, including Philosophy, History, and Literature. Following a reorganization in 1995, it came to be composed of four departments : the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Behavioral Sciences, the Department of History, and the Department of Language, Literature and Culture.
From April 2004, the four departments were merged into one department, the Department of Humanities, offering five major courses: Philosophy, Theory and History of Art; Behavioral Sciences; History and Archeology; Linguistic Science; and Language, Literature and Culture.
In April 2016, in accordance with the implementation of the 4-semester, 50-minute class system, the educational system and the curriculum were reformed. Today, the Faculty of Letters consists of eight departments: Philosophy and Ethics; Aesthetics and History of Art Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, and Socio-Cultural Studies; Psychology; History and Archaeology; Linguistics and Linguistics of Modern Japanese; Japanese Linguistics and Literature; and Chinese, English, French, and German Linguistics and Literatures.
Timeline
| 1949 | Okayama University founded; Faculty of Law and Letters established |
|---|---|
| 1980 | The faculties of Letters, the Law, and Economics were separated from the Faculty of Law and Letters and reorganized |
| 1993 | Graduate School of Letters established |
| 1995 | Faculty of Letters reorganized into a four-department system |
| 2004 | Faculty of Letters reorganized to form a single Department of Humanities |
| 2006 | Graduate School of Letters reorganized into the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| 2016 | Curriculum reformed in reorganization of the Faculty of Letters into eight fields |
