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This book focuses on the historical construction of language norms and its relationship to actual language use in contemporary Japan.
The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The ‘state’ itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people - bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader - and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students (themselves an increasingly diverse community), staff, families, employers and businesses (local, regional and multinational). This volume explores the rapidly evolving relationship between the state and higher education in Europe and in East Asia through a combination of empirical studies, secondary analyses and personal observations from many of the lea...
Masao Maruyama was the most influential and respected political thinker in post-WWII Japan. He believed that the collective mentality, inherent in the traditional Japanese way of thinking, was a key reason for the defeat in WWII and was convinced that such thought needed to be modernized. In this book Fumiko Sasaki argues that the cause of the prolonged political, economic and social decline in Japan since the early 1990s can be explained by the same characteristics Maruyama identified after 1945. Using Maruyama’s thought Sasaki explores how the Japanese people see their role in their nation, the democracy imposed by the US, and the relationship between power and international relations. F...
This is a fun and entertaining beginner level children's Japanese language book (9 years old and up) that is also appropriate for adults. I'm Learning Japanese! takes a lighthearted approach to the Japanese language by using fun anime-style manga characters to teach Japanese. The book starts out with the main characters, Emily, Nico and Teo sitting on the grass after school, minding their own business, when--unbelievable!--a giant talking fox dressed in a kimono appears. Explaining that he knows magic, speaks many languages and is respected as a sensei master, he wonders if the three kids are ready to learn Japanese from him. During the next 128 amusing pages, the three friends learn to spea...
The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy and was the first western style government in Asia when the parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s. It has a multiparty system, free elections, and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament functions, however for much of its existence the Japanese party system has been dominated by one party. This fact is crucial to understanding contemporary politics in Japan, especially since the long term ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is once again back in power. This book presents an up-to-date analysis of the political parties that make up the Japanese party system and their impact on...
This book looks at Japanese, and examines where it is spoken, who speaks it, what alphabet the language is written in, and other interesting facts. The book also includes introductions on how to say key phrases in Japanese, such as how to say hello and goodbye, or talk about your home, school, and family. A pronunciation guide at the back of the book explains how to pronounce the Japanese words used throughout the book.
This is the first complete translation of Tandai shÅ shin roku, which provides the best source for an understanding of the eighteenth-century Japanese literary figure Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) â a man of many talents and wide-ranging interests: haikai and waka poet, writer of fiction, commentator on Japanese classical texts, doctor of Confucian medicine, keen student of history and botany, tea connoisseur and amateur potter. In this highly personal work dating from his last year, when he was almost blind and in poor health, Akinari allows his writing brush to wander at will, giving his unvarnished opinions on contemporary and historical people and events, commenting on various social customs, criticizing friend and foe alike, defending the existence of the supernatural and sharing his love of nature. Akinariâs candour, humour, curiosity of mind and impressive erudition make Tandai shÅ shin roku an unusual and interesting text that has long deserved to be better known.
This book provides an overall picture of East Asian international politics during the early interwar period and examines the various foreign policy trends of the major powers involved, including Japan, China, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Based on extensive original research, it posits that East Asia experienced four waves of international change during the interwar period: the transition to the post-World War I international order; the appearance of Nationalist China and the Soviet Union as actors in East Asian international politics; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; and Japanese implementation of the North China Buffer State Strategy. It considers the new challenges ...
This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems, from regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the European Mediterranean, and Slavic regions as well as specific speech communities such as those speaking Nivkh, Jamaican Creole, North Saami, and Central Yup’ik. In nineteen chapters, the specialist authors look at key sociolinguistic aspects of each region or speech community, such as gender, politeness strategies, speech patterns and the effects of social hierarchy on language, concentrating on the differences from mainstream models. The volume, introduced by Miriam Meyerhoff, has been written by ...
In our globalizing world of today, the significance, status and demand of languages are experiencing changes which are unmatched in human history. These changes also relate to the languages of Japan as well as to the way that they are being taught and studied. In this book 14 authors from four continents present their research results on Japanese as foreign language (JFL) in the age of globalization. The participation of these authors reflects the fact that research into JFL has itself become global. Since JFL in the age of globalization is a field too extensive to be comprehensively covered by a single book, we restricted ourselves to three topics which we believe are central in discussing this issue. New kinds of language learners and new teaching paradigmsNative – non-native speaker interaction or contact situations in a more general senseNew insights into cognitive processes in language learning