Japanese language education for foreigners living in Japan has been accorded much importance recently. The number of Japanese language learners, including young children accompanied by their parents, has increased dramatically since the revision of immigration law in 1990. This paper presents an overview of past and present policies and practices undertaken in the last quarter century in regard to Japanese language education. This study identifies several thorny issues in Japanese language teaching that deserve serious attention from educators and policymakers, and examines the major progress that has been made. It discusses how Japanese language policy in Japan relates to social change and the growing needs of foreigners as citizens. It also addresses education from the viewpoint of language policy and language planning, and how to create a vision for its realization.

The current increase in the number of foreign tourists to Japan is the result of former Prime Minister Koizumi’s declaration on tourism in 2003. Since then, there has been considerable focus on the promotion of tourism in Japan and improvement of facilities for foreign tourists. One government policy related to this is the promotion of a multilingualism in tourism-related facilities including railway stations and museums. Under this policy, English is given priority as the preferred language of communication with international tourists, while other languages are sometimes provided in addition for their convenience, which reflecting a hierarchical view of language. Policies regarding the utilization of foreign human resources and automatic speech translation devices are also relevant in this context. Another issue is the expected increase in interactions between foreigners and the Japanese due to foreigners staying in Japan longer and their increased participation in Japan’s workforce. While multilingual education is important in light of these developments, this topic has received inadequate attention and has not been considered in relation to Japan’s tourism policy.We propose that the further development of Japan’s tourism industry requires a proper language policy which goes beyond mere translation and incorporates consideration of language rights.

This study examines how the intelligibility of official documents was treated in post-war language policies. Based on the findings, the following four points are highlighted. First, although the general public could read documents, official documents were primarily drafted for internal use. Second, while much effort was given the standardization of writing and notation, discussion of content was extremely limited. Third, while some rephrasing was done on the level of words or phrases, nothing was done on the level of dialog. Fourth, the intelligibility of dialog in documents is not cannot be compatible with considerate expressions (beautiful or polite expression) and detailed narration. Based on this, it is possible that an analysis of the intelligibility of such documents has yet to be performed. Therefore, this study presents three proposals:

1) Divide official documents according to whether they are for internal or external use.

2) Propose a discourse level solution for the content of documents.

3) Clarify and extract factors that inhibit intelligibility.

It is sometimes said that Japanese language does not have an orthography. However, in the 1930s, during the Showa era, the Japanese National Language Council examined Japanese orthography. In government documents of the time, ‘correct notation’ was defined. This paper outlines the content of the deliberation on orthography by the Japanese National Language Council, and then reinterprets the notation of government documents being a small model of an orthography of the Japanese language.

Although there is reasonable consensus concerning the concept of language rights within the field of social linguistics, it is not well-known within the field of constitutional studies. Taking into consideration the present understanding of language rights in Japan, and from the viewpoint of legal studies, this study examines how the concept of the language rights within international law can be adopted into Japanese domestic law and under what conditions. First, I look at the development of the concept of language rights within international law and consider the situation of review on this concept in relation to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Next, I consider the aspects of the Constitution of Japan that is hampering the acceptance of language rights into Japanese domestic law. Specifically, I point out that because of Article 13, 14 and 96 of the Constitution, the government’s legal obligation to accept the contents of the International Convention on Human Rights in domestic law becomes merely an issue of political effort. Finally, I review the conditions and issues to accept the concept of the language rights under international law, which is currently being reviewed by CRPD, into Japanese domestic law.

Although the difficulty of using written language by foreign residents in Japan is well recognized, there has been little study or discussion of actual problems and how to deal with them. To study the problems of written language use in actual situations, this paper presents a framework based on “literacy practice studies” and “language management theory”, incorporating the concepts of written language use as social practice, domains, agents to manage problems, ideology/interest, linguistic environment, contact situations and literacy events, networks and mediators, and management process and adjustment. Based on these concepts, this paper describes the written language problems found in the daily life situations of foreign residents and discusses them in relation to multicultural policy.

The Japanese government decided to establish new visa categories for foreign workers in the fiscal year of 2019 based on the policy titled, “Basic policies for the economic and fiscal management for reform,” announced in December 2018. This means that the government will introduce new positive strategies to accept more foreign workers including overseas students graduating from universities in Japan. However, the levels of Japanese language proficiency needed for these visa categories have not been adequately discussed. This article investigates practices and debates on citizenship tests for migrants in Germany, Australia and England, and examines the relationship between the tests and governmental policies. Based on this investigation, new possibilities for Japanese language education are proposed.

In this paper, we consider the language problems of people who reside in Japan but have roots in a foreign country, through a study of their narration. These residents can also be referred to as “people-on-the-move”. We conducted language biography interviews of three foreign residents, and analyzed the narratives which reflected how they summarized and evaluated their own Japanese language ability and Japanese usage. We then examined how these evaluations relate to their development of networks after arriving in Japan and how they participate in these networks so as to know about their language problems when interacting with Japanese society. It became clear that their language problems were characterized by the fact that diverse Japanese repertoires were formed, that they were positioned as a non-native Japanese speakers, and that the style of social participation was related to how conflicts of identity were handled. Using this kind of fundamental data, we propose that it will be possible to establish language policies for dealing with diversity in multilingual society.

The purpose of this research is to clarify the structure of the discourse of assistance and problems in the use of Japanese language in care training seminars attended by EPA (Economic Partnership Agreement) certified care worker candidates. In this study, twenty-four examples of assistance discourse used in role plays in five areas of care (assisting with movement, toileting, dressing, meals and bathing) were collected by attaching IC recorders to the EPA candidates throughout the seminars. In the analysis, the discourse of assistance was initially divided into five smaller discourses: (1) greetings, (2) confirmation of statement, (3) explanation of assistance, (4) preparation for assistance, and (5) execution of assistance, following which the number and function of utterances were classified and counted separately for each small discourse. The results showed that the number of utterances was large in (4) and (5), and various utterance functions are used. For (5), a type of assistance behaviours was often used. In the analysis of Japanese language problems (grammar, expression, pronounciation, and usage), many cases of Japanese errors were seen in (4) (5), specifically in the use of certain grammar. This study shows that similarly structured discourse and similar Japanese language problems were seen in different care situations.

This paper studies the diversity of language use and awareness of ethnic Koreans in China. A questionnaire survey was conducted in Korean–Chinese schools in three different areas of China, Yanji, Tonghua and Dalian. The results of the quantitative analysis, clarified that diversity in language use and awareness in Korean Chinese were related to regional area and gender. This paper also looks at previous studies and the results of an interview survey. It concludes that although there are several factors underlying language use and awareness, these may be explained in terms of the concept of ‘socialization’.

This research focuses on the new roles dormitories undertake in Bhutan, a multilingual society. In Bhutan, many students live in dormitories. At school and in dormitories students are permitted to use only English or Dzongkha, so students who live in dormitories have little opportunity to be in contact with their mother tongues and cultures. This is why dormitories are said to be one of the reasons for the decline of Bhutanese traditional sense of values (Ueda,2003). Because of the rapid spread of education and changes in society that come with this, some parents are at a loss, not knowing how to bring up their children. This encouraged the government to provide opportunities for all students to live in dormitories, and dormitories have taken on the responsibility of taking care of children on behalf of their parents. This survey shows that students living in dormitories use much more Dzongkha and have a stronger sense of national identity, which is what the government aims for in education. It may be true that dormitories interfere with the inheritance of ethnic languages and cultures, but this system meets the expectations of parents and the government.

Within the movement to enhance the visibility of sexual minority individuals, bisexuals and their identity are still found to be at a “loose end,” that is, they are left out of the dichotomy of the “homo/hetero sexual” debate and there are few studies about them. In this study, I analyze how bisexual identity is constructed in narratives and investigate cultural differences. The results reveal the following: 1) bisexual speakers, as shown in previous research, position themselves based on both their own and others’ viewpoints of themselves, 2) speakers construct their bisexual identity and positioning in response to narrative context while eliciting different dimensions of their identity, and 3) the narrated experience of bisexuals is associated with cultural differences.

This is a contrastive interlanguage analysis of caused motion event descriptions. It compares four intermediate level L2 Japanese learner (J-L2) groups (English, Hungarian, Chinese and Italian L1 speakers learning Japanese) with a native Japanese speaker group (J-L1) to examine how L2 learners describe caused motion events and how they are different from L1 speakers. The description pattern of all the learners’ L1s in caused motion descriptions is different from the target language, Japanese. We conducted a video-based production experiment that consisted of 52 video clips and analyzed how each group refers to each semantic component. The target events of this study are three types of caused motion events: co-motional (CARRY), ballistic (KICK) and manipulative (PUT). We examined the occurrence of INTO-path and means of causation in each group. The results showed similar tendencies in all J-L2 groups regardless of their L1s. J-L2 groups express INTO-path less frequently than J-L1 groups. Moreover, while J-L1 learners frequently used compound verbs, J-L2 learners rarely used them. This may result from the Japanese description patterns being complex, which leads to difficulty for learners regardless of the typological patterns of the descriptions.

This study discusses how signers of Fiji Sign Language (FJSL) deal with the interactional aspect of the use of space in sign language. Previous studies have revealed that signers express a variety of linguistic information by using the “signing space,” which is the space in front of a signer. These studies have also revealed diversity in the use of space in sign language. However, since most of these studies aimed to unravel the linguistic features of sign language, little attention has been given to how signers deal with the interactional aspect of the use of space, namely how signers share this space with others. Considering the above, this study analyzes the use of space in a multiparty FJSL interaction in an environment familiar to signers, from an interactional perspective. The results are as follows: (1) FJSL signers prefer to use space depending on shared background knowledge and the environment surrounding them in order to deal with the interactional aspect of the use of space. (2) Thus, shared background knowledge and a common environment were seen to motivate their repetitive co-use of space, co-constructing a “signing interaction space” that encompasses the group and this cannot be reduced to an individual's signing space.

This study verified and analyzed the motivations of Russian university students learning Japanese. Setting the index of autonomy, that is, when learners personalize a theme and try to improve on that theme, this paper verified whether the participants’ motivations were spontaneous. In regard to direction of motivation, we adopted a task-value evaluation scale, and examined the composition of participants’ motivations. We then divided subjects into two groups: one of subjects that prioritise finding a job that utilises Japanese language, and another of subjects looking for other jobs. We compared the two groups, analysing the gaps between them and the relationships between the index of autonomy and the task-value evaluation scale. In the former group, while the utility value (with an objective learning value) was high, it was also related to the index of autonomy. This sugests that motivation was caused by something more than just exterior stimuli. On the other hand, in the latter group, the public attainment value (the desire to learn content from another’s point of view) was seen to be functioning. We are thus hoping to increase classroom activities that bring social values into the classroom for this latter group.

The current study investigated Japanese university students’ attitudes towards Japanese English speakers. Participants were asked to evaluate speakers of different language varieties and different spoken content. The results show that Native-like English speakers were evaluated more positively than Katakana English speakers for competence and spoken content, whereas Katakana English speakers were evaluated more positively for social attractiveness. On the other hand, looking at the effect of spoken content, participants evaluated speakers more positively for social attractiveness and spoken content when speakers supported the topic (the introduction of English as a subject in Japanese elementary schools) than when they opposed it. Moreover, an interaction between language varieties and spoken content was revealed for four items, ‘trustworthy,’ ‘fluency,’ ‘intelligence,’ and ‘social status.’ These findings are considered as evidence of the need to introduce the concept of World Englishes in Japanese education.

This study focuses on repetition used by native speakers in contact situations and in situations with other native speakers. The subjects were strangers who were meeting each other for the first time. The investigation examined whether the act of repetition functioned differently depending on (1) the experience of the native speakers when interacting with non-native speakers in daily life and (2) the Japanese proficiency levels of the conversation partners of native Japanese speakers. The findings were discussed from the perspective of the communication accommodation theory. The analysis demonstrated that native speakers with more experience in communicating with non-native speakers tended to (1) frequently use repetition to convey information to intermediate-level learners and (2) frequently use repetition as a form of echo question regardless of the Japanese proficiency of their conversation counterparts. Furthermore, the results showed that native Japanese speakers frequently used repetition for the purpose of confirmation and approval with intermediate-level Japanese learners regardless of their own experience of interaction with non-native speakers. These adjustments can be interpreted as cognitive or emotional convergence.

This paper reports on the preliminary results from our ongoing variationist research on dialect and language contact and its subsequent koine formation in a Nikkei (Japanese) Brazilian community in Japan. Recordings of spontaneous speech, together with the reading aloud of a wordlist, as well as ethnography were collected from 60 speakers (first and second generation speakers) in Joso City, Ibaraki Prefecture for qualitative and quantitative analyses. This paper focuses only on Strong-R realized through the Brazilian Portuguese wordlist, adopting “koineization processes”, “Founder Principle”, “feature pool” and “colonial lag” as the theoretical frameworks. Our results provide some evidence of dialect leveling and focusing in Brazilian Portuguese as well as xenolectal inputs from Japanese, suggesting that the newly emerging variety in Joso resembles the Southeast and South Dialects in Brazil, where the majority of first generation speakers come from. These findings support the validity and applicability of the koineization processes, the Founder Principle and the concept of feature pool. Furthermore, by pinpointing the demographic evidence that Japanese emigrants to Brazil have been concentrated in these dialect-speaking regions in Brazil, this paper indicates the possibility that similar dialectal makeup may result in similar koine in other Japanese Brazilian communities across Japan.