The Italian School of East Asian Studies was created in 1984 within the Italian Cultural Institute to promote reasearch on East Asia and assist Italian researchers in Japan in all fields of humanities and social sciences.
Kyoto was choosen as an advantage observation point, because its ancient tradition of learning, its high concentration of academic institutions and its nature as an international crossroads for specialists of East Asia.
From 2001 the Italian School of East Asian Studies is under the joint administration of the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Is.I.A.O. and the Universita degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, the two leading italian institutions in the field of East Asian studies, and has an official agreement with the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient (EFEO), whose Kyoto centre is located on the 3rd floor of the same building.
