East Asian Studies job data annual report [premodern Japan mini-update]

[Paula R. Curtis]

Dear colleagues,

I write to announce that I have released my annual report on job market data in East Asian Studies, which is available open-access on my website: https://prcurtis.com/projects/jobs2025/ 

Tracking categories such as desired discipline, desired region of specialization, track, location, and more, I provide a variety of information on the market in EAS for the most recent hiring season. This year also marks five years of collecting job data, so the report includes comparative examinations of the last four job market cycles with this year's advertisements. Please view the report in a browser rather than a phone for full use of the interactive visualizations. The "About the Data" section at the top provides detailed information on how this data was collected as well as strengths and weaknesses in the dataset.

It is possible throughout the report to filter and explore the data in various ways, but for PMJS community members, I also offer the following brief notes about premodern Japan as a subfield: 

There were 1,058 total ads this year (globally), and 483 ads therein that were looking for specialization in Japan, roughly 45.6% (this count includes Japan and/or another location, there were 469 ads for just Japan). There is, however, a strong bias for Japan in the data because of jRec-in's excellent data. Consider these numbers the jobs ads most easily availability to a job seeker with some but not superior, multilingual proficiency.

The 483 Japan ads included 338 ads at institutions based in Asia, 95 ads in North America, 49 ads in Europe, and 1 ad in Oceania. The almost half of these ads are language instruction focused (202 ads in Language).

Globally, there were 57 job ads seeking the subset of premodern Japan specialization. This does not count ads that did not specify time period or wanted both modern/premodern ability, just those explicitly for premodern Japan. By comparison, there were 88 ads for modern Japan, 92 ads for any or both, and 246 ads for N/A (meaning time period isn't relevant--201 of these were Language).

Of the 57 ads for premodern Japan, 50 ads were based in Asia, 4 in Europe (Autonomous University of Barcelona, The British Museum, Oxford), and 3 in North America (Columbia, Harvard, Indiana University Bloomington).

The disciplinary/location breakdown of these 57 ads was:

• 21 ads in Literature & Culture (19 in Japan, 2 in the US)
• 13 ads in History (Japan)
• 7 ads in Archaeology (Japan)
• 5 ads in East Asian Studies (2 in Japan, 2 in Spain, 1 in UK)
• 3 ads in Museums, Curator, Conservation
• 3 ads in Art History (Japan)
• 2 ads in Religious studies (1 in Japan, 1 in US)
• 1 ad in Performing Arts, Drama (Japan)
• 1 ad in Linguistics (Japan)
• 1 ad in Language (UK)

Last year there were 61 ads for premodern Japan globally, 53 of which were in Japan, 5 in the US, and 1 each in Germany, Sweden, and the UK. 

This year there were 29 ads globally for premodern China specialization (14 of which were for Lit & Culture, 4 for the similar EAS category, and 5 for History), and only 2 ads globally for premodern Korea (one for Lit & Culture, one for History). If the jobs based in Japan were removed from the equation, however, premodern Japan positions would drop to only 7 ads outside of Japan, with premodern China persisting at 18 ads outside of Japan and Korea remaining at 2 ads. 

I won't go into larger 5-year trends here, as you can explore what interests you on my webpage (the report is probably about 40 pages long, with a dozen or so subsections!), but this was a taste of the kinds of comparisons we're able to make with this information. Since everyone asks every year, I will add that no, I do not have information on who was hired where, or whether they stayed there--unfortunately that is not something institutions are eager to advertise, and this is already an entirely volunteer and time-consuming project I do in my spare time.

I hope this data will be instructive for thinking about the directions in which our fields have developed and where they may go from here. Please contact me with any inquiries, particularly if some specialized data would be helpful to make arguments that your institution/department needs more premodern Japan!

All the best,

Paula

--

Dr. Paula R. Curtis

Operations Leader, Japan Past & Present
Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities

https://japanpastandpresent.org/

Academic Administrator

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA

https://alc.ucla.edu/

Portfolio & Projects

http://prcurtis.com/