Britain to get new Japanese studies center in September

Efforts by Japan experts in Britain to boost Japanese studies in the country will bear fruit this September with the opening of the National Institute of Japanese Studies in the new White Rose East Asia Center.

"The subject is strategically important for our country," Glenn Hook, a professor at the University of Sheffield's School of East Asian Studies, said in a recent interview with The Japan Times in Tokyo. "We've often lost good students who decided to go overseas for postgraduate programs."

NIJS is part of WREAC together with the National Institute of Chinese Studies. The center will get £4 million from the government over the next five years. After it opens in September, WREAC will be managed jointly by the University of Sheffield and the University of Leeds.