Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Japan

Kenji TSUTSUMI(School of Letters)

Objective
   The purpose of this course is to outline the cultural and linguistic diversity of Japan and invalidate the long-established myth that Japan is s homogeneous community. The course will be divided into two parts. The first half part will focus on various attributes and subcultures of Japan, including such topics as Japanese geography, gender, minorities, religions and so on. The second part will examine what is involved in acquiring Japanese as a second language. The lecturers belong to the Sections of Human Geography, Japanese Studies or Japanese Linguistics.

Course Schedule
   (1) Kenji TSUTSUMI: INTRODUCTION. "Regional Changes in Japan: Cases in Depopulated Regions"
   In fact, depopulated areas in Japan account for 52% of the national land area. The aim of this lecture is to offer the outline of depopulated regions in Japan in order to show the situation of regional differentiation in this country and to think some problems about such regions.

   (2) Kunimitsu KAWAMURA: "Japanese New Religions and Shamanism ".
   The purpose of this lecture is to outline Japanese new religion, the characteristics of its founders, and shamanism.The characteristics of new religion is that there are many female founders.They belong to the long tradition of shamanism which is practiced from ancient times in Japanese folk religion.

   (3) Shoya UNODA: "Literacy and Publishing in the Edo Period(1603-1867)" .
   In the Edo period, Japanese society achieved relatively high literacy rate compared to other pre-modern societies and publishing flourished in Kyoto, Osaka, Edo(Tokyo) and other cities. Relatively high literacy rate and flourishing of publishing are very important characteristics of the Edo period. This class outlines how people acquired literacy and how publishing developed in 17th and 18th century Japan.

   (4) Megumi KITAHARA: "The Visual Representation of 'Nippon': The Art Works by Woman Artists in Contemporary Japan"
   What do woman artists create and express in Japan? How do they describe the family, the role as housewives and women, the history and war, the memory, sexuality, gender and so on? We will explore the Japanese society from the representation by their works.

   (5) Ichiro TOMIYAMA: "The Issue of 'Emotional Memories' in Historical Narrative: With Reference to Testimony on the Battle of Okinawa".
   Relating certain events causes insufferable anguish and they can only be endured by forgetting them, or when some incidents are put into words, they cause an uncontrollable anger to boil up. The individual events and experiences which constitute history first realize their expression within the bounds of this anguish and anger. When faced with a verbal domain which cannot be separated from emotion, what words can historical study possibly add? In other words, this is a problem of how much history can be learned from words, when the subject is linked with an uncontrollable anger. Of course, we can ensure the methodology of historical study by using classifications such as daily life and academia, emotion and reason, subjectivity and objectivity, the specific and the generalized but in this paper, I would like to proceed to set out my argument by passing over these classifications.

   (6) Toru SUGIHARA: "Koreans in Modern Japan : Centering around Colonial Voyages from Cheju-do in Korea to "Manchester of the Orient" before World War II"
   The main route of emigration from modern Japan and immigration into modern Japan was between Japan and Korea. Why are so many people from Korea living in Osaka? When did they come and what part of Korea did they come from? To answer these questions, my lecture will focus on the history of Korean immigration to Osaka in the modern era.

   (7)-(12) Naoko AOKI: "Language Learning as Ethnography"
   Learning a language is learning to participate in a relevant speech community. For that end learning linguistic features of the target language is not enough. I will introduce you to a more holistic approach to language learning.

  

Grading
   Quizzes: 48%
   Term paper to be submitted at the end of the course: 52%
   (The term paper can be connected to only one of the 7 themes of the course.)