Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts
In the 86 years since its founding, the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum (Waseda University) has become the only specialist theatre museum in Asia to accumulate over one million items related to theatre studies.
Between 2009 and 2013, the Theatre Museum was included in a scheme by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to “promote the maintenance of joint research Centers within the humanities and social sciences” (renamed in 2010 as the scheme to “promote the maintenance of distinguished joint research Centers”). The Museum was granted the status of a “Joint Usage and Research Center” and labeled “the Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts.” This status was rescinded on March 31, 2013, but re-granted from April 1, 2014 (until March 31, 2020) by the Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
As part of the scheme, the Museum will make public a list of previously unpublished items, offering these items as valuable objects of research to a joint research team publically recruited from across Japan comprising of some researchers working on areas of collaborative research. This direct publication of such items is notably unusual, and is a unique feature of the Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts as a branch of the Museum. The previously unpublished items will allow the research team to make fresh discoveries, as well as offer unchartered possibilities for the development of theatre and film studies and the reform of existing research.
The Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts seeks to further the social benefits and effective applications of research assets accumulated by the Theatre Museum, as well as promote open and mutual exchange of research in cooperation with associated researchers and research institutions in the fields of theatre and film studies.