Abstract
In this rejoinder, the author replies to the arguments made in Amano's comment (1999) on the author's paper (Dairoku, 1995). (1) Dairoku (1995) named, perhaps incorrectly, the Amano theory as “kana naming” hypothesis, because the theory was not accompanied by data showing that reading a kana syllabic letter involved more processes than kana script naming. (2) Amano divides reading a single kana letter into primitive and proper types, but it would be a tautology if the difference between them is defined in terms of syllabic analysis. (3) When Dairoku (1995) used the term “awareness of morae, ” his intention was that it included a synthetic process. (4) The study (Dairoku, 1995) investigated reading comprehension without referring to a synthetic process, because its purpose was to find out a requisite for understanding written words, and not to study the process underlying it. (5) The same study (Dairoku, 1995) included an associative learning task between sounds and letters. The task might seem incoherent from the phonological viewpoint concerning reading instructions, but could be useful in showing that instructions without regard to phonological skills indeed had their limits. Finally, the author offers an apology and correction for some misleading characterization of Amano's theory in his previous paper (Dairoku, 1995).
