In 2021, the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, Kanagawa University celebrated its 100th anniversary, the Centennial of its Founding. The Institute began as a small museum that Keizo Shibusawa (1896–1963) built with friends in the roof space of a storage shed at his home when he was still a student at Tokyo Imperial University. In May 1921, shortly after graduating from college, Shibusawa consulted with friends and founded the Attic Museum Society, a society for academic research. In 1925, the society’s name was changed to the “Attic Museum.”
　Together with his colleagues, Shibusawa conducted historical and ethnographic research on the life and culture of jomin, or commoners. The driving force that motivated Shibusawa was his passion for making the studies he undertook in his spare time from his work in banking into genuine research that would contribute to humanity around the world.
　In 1942, the Attic Museum changed its name to the “Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture.” In 1981, the Institute was invited by Kanagawa University to become an affiliate organization, and in 1993 the Graduate School of History and Folklore Studies, Kanagawa University Graduate School, was established. This was followed in 2020 by the Department of History and Folklore Studies, Faculty of Cross-Cultural and Japanese Studies. In 2023, the former Exhibition Room was reopened as the Jomin Bunka Museum. The Institute, which began in an attic, has grown into a research and educational institution that interacts with researchers from Japan and abroad and hosts both Japanese and international students.　
　Over the five years from 2021 to 2025, the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, Kanagawa University is holding a series of seminars and publishing centennial commemorative publications.　
The intellectual curiosity that was once limited to the confines of an attic is still growing
in anticipation of the next 100 years.