Dissonance: Coexistence with Foreigners vs. Coronavirus Epidemic Countermeasures in Japan

Countermeasures against the coronavirus epidemic resulted in a blanket ban on the entry of foreign nationals into Japan, including Japan’s legal foreign residents, resulting in great personal distress to the many people affected. This paper examines how individual people, academic institutions, the business community, as well as Japanese society, were affected by the countermeasures, the government’s (lack of) explanations for the countermeasures, and the impact of these countermeasures on the government’s own declared goals of ‘Internationalization’ and ‘Coexistence with foreigners’. It also touches on the possible legal and long term consequences

Conspicuous Absence: ‘National Language’ in Japanese History Textbooks

In spite of great diversity within the dialect continuum, stretching from Kagoshima to Aomori, consistent state-endorsed language policies since the later Meiji Period were highly successful in achieving, in the first half of the twentieth century, a high degree of homogeneity regarding ethnic and linguistic identity, contributing to the establishment of a stable modern nation-state in Japan. The present study deals with the conspicuous absence of appropriate treatment of the role these policies played in high school history textbooks. 要旨 日本の方言は、鹿児島県から青森県にまで及ぶ連続体であり、その中身はきわめて多様である。それにも関わらず、明治後期から国家によって進められた言語政策の結果、日本では２０世紀前半までに国内の民族的・言語的アイデンティティが高度に均質化し、近代的国民国家を確立させた。本研究では高等学校の歴史教科書に焦点を当て、これらの言語政策に対する記述が極めて限られた形でしか行われていない問題を取り扱う

Overview of the Session on Disaster and Civil Society

An overview of the issues discussed in the session on Disaster and Civil Society

Maintaining Identity and Rights of National Minorities: Visibility, Linguistic Landscape of the Slovene Minority in Carinthia

This paper deals with the visibility of the autochthonous Slovene minority in Carinthia as one of the crucial factors contributing towards maintaining its identity in the territory of its traditional settlement. The paper focuses on the language of a subset of public signs, i.e., topographical signs, erected by the regional government; a controversial issue that has been exploited for political reasons. In order to elucidate the motivations for this controversy the legal framework concerning national minorities, Article 7 of the Austrian State Treaty being central to it, is examined. Further, the resulting solution of the topographical signs dispute is examined in the light of other areas concerning minority rights as reported in Opinions and Reports under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM). Following on, section 2 provides a brief historical background, section 3 presents the findings of FCPNM reports concerning the implementation of bilingual topographical signs, as well as comparing the trends with minority demography and minority policies regarding media and education. Section 4 discusses the issues from section 3, leading to the conclusion in section 5, that the chronic passivity of central authorities regarding obligations based on international treaties, combined with active anti-minority policies supported by the local German-speaking majority, lead to accelerating language and identity shift and thus assimilation of the Slovene minority.要旨本稿ではオーストリア・カリンシア州に固有のスロヴェニア少数民族の存在がどのように目に見える形で現れているかについて論じる。この少数民族の可視性はその居住地域で少数民族のアイデンティティを維持するために、欠かせない要因の一つである。本論考では、カリンシア州政府に政治的に利用されようとした道路標識の一つ、市町村の入り口に立って地名をあらわす標識を巡る論争、およびその背景に焦点を当てる。論争を理解するためにはまず、オーストリア国家条約、その中では特にスロヴェニア系などの少数民族保護に触れる第 7 条に注目する。続いて、地名の標識を巡る論争の解決としてできた結果である二言語併用の標識を、「少数民族保護のための枠組み協定」<Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM)> の報告書を基に、オーストリアにおける少数民族保護という文脈で検討する。本稿の第 2 節ではまず歴史的背景を短く紹介してから、第 3 節で、二言語併用の交通標識の設置を巡る FCPNM の報告を検討し、第 4 節では第 3 節で明らかにされた諸事実を考察する。第 5 節で、国際条約や協定から生じる義務に対する、オーストリア中央政府の慢性化した消極的態度と、カリンシア州のドイツ語話者の多数が指示する反少数民族的政策が組み合わさったことにより、スロヴェニア系少数民族において、多数派民族の言語の受容、及びアイデンティティの転換が加速化し、同化が進んでいるという結論に至る

Main Characteristics of the Japanese Studies Programme at the University of Ljubljana and Historical contingencies That Shaped It

University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts The Japanese Studies programme at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana has been established on October 1, 1995. Its main characteristics are: 1) a double major programme with a possibility to combine it with about 60 other double major programmes in humanities and social sciences, 2) openness, with 50–55 students enrolled every year and with Japanese language courses for non-specialists, 3) in close co-operation with the Chinese Studies programme, a wider East Asian perspective, 4) lively international exchange based on co-operation agreements with several major Japanese universities. These characteristics are the result of historical contingencies, necessity and available possibilities. With the curricular reform along the Bologna guidelines, a possibility for further improvement has been offered

Report on the Euro-Japan Academic Networking for Humanities Project (2013 Forums)

This paper reports on the Third, Fourth and Fifth Forums of the Euro-Japan Academic Networking for Humanities Project held during 2013. Round table discussions and presentations of research to date by representative groups of each university focused on issues of culture and identity, peace and human security, diversity and fragmentation. The academic and institutional frameworks of each university were examined in detail with a view to exploring avenues for trans-university research co-operation. Finally a common research body with a defined scope of research was agreed upon. 要旨 本稿は2013年に開催された「人文系欧州・日本学術ネットワーキングプロジェクト」の第３回、第４回、第５回フォーラムの議事録である。各大学の代表グループによるラウンドテーブルでの議論や研究発表では、文化とアイデンティティ、平和と人間の安全保障、多様性と断片化の問題をテーマに議論が行われた。また、研究活動における大学間のパートナーシップ強化のための方策を模索する観点から、各大学の学術的・制度的構造について詳細な検討が行わた。最終的に各大学に共同研究ラボラトリーを設置するという提案に合意した

Measures of topic continuity and the wa-topic in Japanese

In this paper I examine three statistical measures of topic continuity, i.e., Topic Quotient (TQ), Referential Distance (RD) and Topic Persistence (TP), using the text of a short novel, Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. It turns out that these measures are very unreliable as predictors of the WAtopic in Japanese. Even worse, in the case of TP, and for different referents, contradictory results were obtained. At closer inspection it turns out that this is due to the differences in status which referents possess within some segment of a text. What matters is not the numerical frequency of a referent, but its status, i.e., whether it referrs to a topic entity, or, from the expression point of view, to a topic chain of referential forms within the text, or not

Report on the Euro-Japan Academic Networking for Humanities Project

This paper reports on the seventh Forum of the Euro-Japan Academic Networking for Humanities Project held in Paris, France, in March 2015. Keynote lectures, presentations and round table discussions were organized around the six themes of: Environment and Landscape; Social Justice and Equality Beyond Violence; Disaster and Civil Society; Demography and Immigration; Impact of Art and Culture; and Intercultural Dialogue and Education. At the conclusion of the two-day forum, the participants called for the creation of a common Laboratory of Thought which would bring together specialists from all domains on issues of planetary import.要旨 本稿は、2015年3月パリで開催された第7回人文科学のためのユーロジャパン学術ネットワークフォーラムに関する報告である。フォーラムでは、基調講演、個別報告、ラウンドテーブルディスカッションがおこなわれ、6つのテーマを中心に議論された。具体的には、環境と景観、暴力を超える社会正義と平等、災害と市民社会、移民と人口統計、そして異文化間の対話と教育における芸術と文化の影響についてである。2日間のフォーラムの結論として、参加者は地球規模のあらゆる課題に専門領域を超えて結集することのできる知の横断型研究室の創設を呼びかけることにしました

世界の言語研究所（18） スロベニアの言語研究所と言語資源 （スロベニア）

鳴門教育大学リュブリャナ大