A Report on Some Pedagogical Practices in Classes of Early-Modern Written Japanese

Abstract

This paper reports on some pedagogical practices in my reading classes of Early-Modern written Japanese (kindai bungobun) for advanced level international students. In the classes we are mainly reading two essays, by Yukichi Fukuzawa and by Chōmin Nakae, in the original. The participants are required to have advanced level knowledge of Modern Japanese but need not have any previous knowledge of classical grammar. The goals of the classes are to become able to read original texts of modern Japanese thinkers and to deepen the participantsʼ knowledge of the Japanese language by comparing Early-Modern and Modern Japanese. For the former goal we are focusing on central topics of the essays: the concept of fundamental human rights (kenritsūgi, corresponding to kihonteki jinken in Modern Japanese) in the Fukuzawa essay, and, in the Nakae essay, on some fundamental requirements for both politicians and bureaucrats and their necessity in the present-day Japanese society. For the latter goal, we are observing, from a contrastive linguistic perspective, how Early-Modern Japanese sentences can be translated morpheme-by-morpheme into Modern Japanese, thereby deepening participantsʼ knowledge of the Modern Japanese language.