This study uses a multiple-choice vocabulary survey containing 50 Japanese words of Chinese origin to examine the effectiveness of presenting both the Cantonese and corresponding Japanese pronunciation of the characters in the phonetic teaching of Kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) to Cantonese-speaking learners of Japanese at a large urban university in Malaysia. The average score for the correct answers achieved by the 30 respondents was 35.7 out of 50. The average amount of Kanji newly acquired by the participants was 30.83 out of 50. At a 5% confidence level, a clear significant difference was found in their scores before and after the Cantonese pronunciations were presented (t = 26.41, p = 0.000). From these results, this study concludes that the explicit presentation of Cantonese pronunciation benefits Cantonese-speaking Malaysian university students when beginning to learn Japanese as a foreign language.

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Pitch pattern is one of the prosodic characteristics of language. Pitch pattern in many languages affects various linguistic aspects, such as word meaning, sentence structure and prominence. Consequently, teaching good pitch pattern in a second language promotes development of good communication skills in the learner’s second language. In this paper, I will introduce and evaluate three pitch pattern notation systems in Japanese which transcribe the Japanese pitch pattern not only at the word level, but also at the sentence level.

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This paper presents the continuation of a fundamental research by the author in the field of new Japanese poetry since the Meiji era. The long term research, accompanied by the publication of several anthologies of Japanese verse in translation, found its final implementation in the History of New Japanese Poetry issued by AIU University Press (v.1 The Silver Age of Japanese Poetry, v.2 The Bronze Age of Japanese Poetry, v.3 The Fading Golden Age of Japanese Poetry). The paper contains a thorough analyses of gendaishi (modern verse in non-traditional forms) in the first postwar decade that became the starting point for various poetic groups of the late XX c. Japanese literature of the so called first postwar wave (dai ichi sengoha) was marked by a growing controversy between the modernist escapist groupings alienated from the social problems of the time and the faction of politically engaged writers who wanted to contribute with their works to the revival of the nation and restoration of cultural values after the humiliating defeat. In the domain of poetry the most talented young literati who had survived through the hard years of war launched a powerful movement aimed at the radical renovation of gendaishi verse in the age of troubles. Many suffered a serious psychological trauma and were deeply disillusioned in the ideals of their youth. In the poems by the authors of the major groups formed around the leading poetic groupings like “Arechi” (“The Waste Land”) and “Retto” (‘Archipelago”) they summarized the tragic experience of the wartime and tried to discover some light in the end of the tunnel. Their works reflected the painful process of transformation that the whole country had to face in the transitional period, waking up from the nightmare of military propaganda and paving the way for the new democratic society. Their lyricism brought “the sweet sad sound of humanity” in the world of grief and frustration. Serious research in the postwar gendaishi is crucial for the proper understanding of the great legacy of the late Showa period when modern poetry for a short while became the main consolidating force and the spiritual stem of the nation.

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The trans-geographic development of modern artistic movements related to artist relocation has become a specific field of research in early 20^th century Art History. The artists’ “Passage” to Paris, Walter Benjamin’s “City of Lights”, is a good example of this. During the first three decades of the 20^th century these artists, predominantly non-French and from various countries including Japan, constituted the École de Paris (School of Paris). This paper examines those Japanese artists who came to Paris from post-Meiji modern Japan, focusing on two contemporary painters: Tsuguharu Léonard Foujita, emblematic artist of the École de Paris, and Koichiro Kondo, impressionist ink painter, model of Kama of La Condition Humaine (Man’s Fate, 1933) by French novelist André Malraux.
The modern artistic Japanese scene is characterized by a complex situation of double challenges: continuation of traditional Japanese artistic values encouraged by Fenollosa and Okakura while catching up with Western knowledge and technology. Each artist was highly tempted by the West. Once in Europe, though, they suffered from the confrontation of cultural identity, universal artistic values, and fundamentally imposed Eurocentric aesthetics. Through contemporary European avant-garde art and spiritual dialogue with past master works, these artists experienced an awakening of Far East identity, while searching for and assimilating to European aesthetics. They found their “other self” in Paris.
The analysis of the awakening process of these two artists reveals a complex artistic identity affirming a hybrid style, a fusion of East and West. This synergy of two complementary entities generates a new and dynamic spirit. Through intercourse with the West, artistic Japan has achieved far-reaching dimensions.

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Clearly, most students and their financial supporters hope to spend as little time as possible in an EAP programme and to enrol for content classes as soon as possible. However, from a pedagogical perspective there may be disadvantages to exiting an EAP programme too quickly. This paper focuses on the benefits of spending a longer period in EAP in relation to reading skills, by comparing the reading sub-skills of students who have already spent one semester or more in the EAP programme with others who enter the programme and are placed at the same level, in order to determine any advantages that might be offered by spending a longer period of time in the EAP programme. Overall, the results show no clear superiority in language proficiency for one group over the other at the time of entering EAP level 3. The new students had significantly higher TOEFL reading section scores and total vocabulary size, whereas the continuing students were found to have more knowledge of high frequency vocabulary. In terms of TOEFL Listening and Written Expression section scores, total TOEFL scores, word decoding speed and knowledge of words at the 1,000 and 4,000 word levels, the lack of statistically significant differences indicates that despite entering the university with a lower proficiency level, one semester of EAP instruction was sufficient to lift up the proficiency level of the continuing students to that of the new students.

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