This Part contains six papers by ten writers which trace the development of area studies in post-war Japan: East Asia, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the USSR and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Americas. With Japan's economic and political comeback to the world scene during the after the post-war reconstruction for ten years, area studies began to make progress in this country to reach a new stage some ten years later. The strong influence of the past overseas trends in this field of study, especially of the orthodox Marxism and the American approach, started waning, while Japanese researchers came to find their own methods of study and produce many dependable works. According to some contributors to this Part, a new generation of area studies researchers, who have a good command of the languages of the areas to study, have published a number of excellent works. Today researches in this field in Japan are beginning to take on an original character based on the new research methods and produce works which on the whole are creative. But the current disciplinary situation is not free from shortcomings or unbalance. There remains a need for more systematic or organizational researches.

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