the daily Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun. In 1988, armed with another scholarship from the Japanese government, Nicolas Fiévé returned to Japan to work again in Katō's research unit where he remained for the following five years. In 1989, Nicolas Fiévé completed his Master's thesis on the architecture of tea houses and obtained his master's degree in Japanese Studies at University Paris VII. He pursued his doctorate studies within Katō's research group at the Department of Architecture, Engineering Faculty of the University of Kyoto (1990–93), and, under the supervision of Jacqueline Pigeot, began writing his thesis (in French) on the elite classes during the Ashikaga shoguns. During this period he attended Professor Katō's lectures on major Japanese works pertaining to Japanese aesthetics and architecture, such as Masuda Tomoya's (Spiritual) Landscape of the House and Garden, Watsuji Tetsurō’s 和辻哲郎 (1889-1960) Fūdo and Kuki Shūzō’s 九鬼周造 (1848-1941) The Structure of Iki. At the time, he also worked at the Atelier Ryō run by the architect Kinoshita Ryōichi and participated in the complete survey of rural houses in the Shiga region. Upon his return to France in 1993, Nicolas Fiévé obtained his PhD degree and title of Doctor in East Asian Studies specialized in Japanese Civilization and joined the CNRS as Researcher. He was first appointed to the Institut d’Asie Orientale in Lyon for three years before becoming a member of the Collège de France's Japanese Civilization research team, where he continues to work alongside several of his former professors: Paul Akamatsu, Francine Hérail, Jacqueline Pigeot, Jean-Noël Robert, Jean-Jacques Tschudin and Cécile Sakai. In 2006, the Japanese Civilization research team —founded as a joint research unit with the CNRS by the Collège de France professor Bernard Frank— merged with two other research units, the Chinese and Tibetan Civilizations Studies teams from the EPHE, to form the Far Eastern Civilizations research Centre (Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l’Asie Orientale) or CRCAO (UMR 8155 of the CNRS in partnership with the EPHE, the Collège de France and Université Paris-Diderot). Actively involved in the creation of the CRCAO, Nicolas Fiévé was appointed the unit's Deputy Director, working alongside the archaeologist and Sinologist Alain Thote (EPHE), from 2006 to 2010, and was nominated Director, from 2014 to 2016. In 2007, Nicolas Fiévé became a member of the History of the Modern and Contemporary World Section (Section 33) of the National Committee for Scientific Research and was