Conceptual transformation of Japanese language education by NISHIO Minoru : Rediscovery of "speech" after his visiting of colonized countries

Abstract

This paper intends to clarify conceptual transformation of Japanese language education by NISHIO Minoru. After observing Japanese language education in Manchuria and China, he changed his view. He changed his focus on language education from "literal language" to "oral language". This change was derived from his characteristic view of "KOKUGAKU (discipline of Japanese culture)", which he studied at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1910s. He claimed "Gyou-teki-ninshiki (understanding by doing)" in pursuit of training the soul to bear beyond repetition, up to the 1920s. Therefore he regarded it as the center of Japanese language education to read repeatedly or to polish. He began to claim "language activism" in the first half of the 1930s. In the second half of the 1930s, he was engaged in textbook compilation and went to Manchuria and China for investigating the substance of Japanese language education. In such colonized areas, Japanese was taught by starting from speaking. This landscape changed his theoretical framework for language education in Japan.