ABSTRACT
In 2015 (Kakuchi, 2016), the Japanese government threatened to withdraw funding for the humanities. In 2003, the UK’s minister responsible for education wondered why taxpayers’ money should be spent on the study of ancient civilisations (Vasager and Smithers, 2003). And in 2018, in Australia, the Minister of Higher Education blocked certain research proposals in the humanities (Piccini and Moses, 2018). Across the world, the place of the humanities in universities is being questioned, and across the world, too, arguments in defence of the humanities have been mounted.1
