Motoko Katakura
| Motoko Katakura 片倉もとこ |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
Motoko Niiya 新谷素子 October 17, 1937. Nara, Nara |
| Died | February 23, 2013 (aged 75) |
| Nationality | Japan |
| Other names | 片倉素子 |
| Occupation | Cultural anthropology (Middle Eastern Studies) |
| Known for | the first woman director of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (May 2005) |
| Notable work | "Bedouin village: a study of a Saudi Arabian people in transition" (1977) |
Motoko Katakura (片倉もとこ (素子)) (née Niiya, 17 October 1937 - 23 February 2013) was a Japanese anthropologist specialized in Islamic and multi-culture of desert.
Born in Nara Prefecture in Japan, she moved to Kanagawa Prefecture and finished high school in 1956. She was admitted to Tsuda College, English Language major, and studied abroad during her senior year to graduate in 1962. She took Master of Letters, in 1968 at the Chuo University Graduate School, and researched at Columbia University between 1971 and '72 as a Visiting Research Fellow.
Katakura's main field of study was focused on the Islamic world including bedouin, and multicultural studies. In late 1960s she visited bedouin camps in Saudi Arabia for her first field research in Islamic culture, while the Katakuras lived there. Abdur-Rahim Al Aḥmadī was the best supporter for Katakura's field work in Saudi Arabia since the early stage of her research in late 1960s. He witnessed that Katakura went into the nomad society of Wadi Fatima (western Saudi Arabia) and lived among those people for a period, and she visited them several times over the years. Katakura proceeded on-site research while winning the trust and affection of those people, observing the cultural heritage of their society. Working as a lecturer at her alma mater Tsuda College between 1973 and '74, she obtained PhD. of Geology at Graduate School of University of Tokyo, faculty of Science in 1974. Promoted as an associate professor, she continued working at Tsuda College, and her hard work and tenacity on research and field work was rewarded when she published the survey results in her first book under the title of "Bedouin Village" in 1977. She appreciated the contribution and support Abdur-Rahim Al Ahmadi had offered her, and asked him writing the preface to the Arabic version of that title.
With thorough academic papers followed the first book, she proofed that scientific values and her challenges in cultural anthropology was confirmed. Katakura started to extend the basis of her research during and after her tenure as a lecturer at University of Tokyo between 1975 and 1977, that Katakura gave lectures at International Christian University for the term of 1975/76 and 1977/78. Her teaching carrier extended at Tsuda College in 1978 to 1981. At the National Ethnographic Museum in Osaka she researched the Islamic world and multicultural studies including bedouin and desert culture in 1981 to 1993 at National Museum of Ethnology as a professor, where she became a professor emeritus in later years.
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