eynote Speeches and Special Lectures

Keynote Speeches

Joseph Lo Bianco "Japanese in Australia: A Return of the Good Times? "

July 14th, 9.30-10.45, Clancy Auditorium

Abstract: There is much to celebrate today about language education policy in Australia, especially related to the teaching and learning of some key Asian foreign languages, and some things to lament. We have renewed public funding, positive media coverage and persistently positive public attitudes towards the teaching and learning of languages. This is all good news for Japanese, which has a special place in the pantheon of Australia language learning and language education policy. Unlike its presence in many, perhaps most other education systems, its special place in Australia is due to timing, esteem, and criticality. Japanese I believe came at a critical time, achieved a critical prominence and ‘broke’ a critical problem. Japanese was the first foreign language many Australians truly found a reason to learn. Japanese was the first Asian language many Australians truly came to esteem and Japanese remains for growing numbers of Australians the first foreign language and culture whose ‘difference’ from the western canon Australian society has felt positive messages about. Today there are reasons for optimism but also reasons for concern. It is reassuring that Japanese retains its attractiveness, it is significant that Australia has an indigenous national capability in Japanese language and culture studies, and that this public investment in knowing Japan and Japanese is deeply embedded in our educational and cultural institutions. It is also likely to have future significance that Japanese is steadily if slowly being transformed into a ‘community’ language as well, with increasing numbers of heritage speakers. It is less reassuring that we now have many Australians with memories of having tried but not succeeded in learning Japanese through a plethora of unsupported, low-commitment, improvised, non-articulated and discontinued programs in schools.

In this paper I will discuss what I will call the policy-sociology of Japanese in Australian education, comparing and contrasting it with other, especially English speaking settings, as well as some broader considerations of the role of English in Japan and Asia more broadly. The Australia, the Japan, the Asia and indeed the world into which this sociology of language and culture has been experienced is now deeply changed so along with the optimism and confidence there are also uncertain prospects and challenging times ahead.

Profile: Professor Joe LO BIANCO is the Chair of Language and Literacy Education and Associate Dean (Global Relations and Knowledge Transfer) at Melbourne Graduate School of Education in the University of Melbourne. He is also the Chair of Language Studies Committee and Council Member of the prestigious Australian Academy of the Humanities. Professor Lo Bianco has numerous publications, but, he is most well known as one of Australia’s most influential language policy makers. He has played major roles in the creation of Australia’s language policies including the one which made the Japanese language one of the priority languages of the country. He has also given input to national language policies of other countries such as Ireland and Thailand.

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Link to the Keynote Powerpoint presentation by Professor Joseph Lo Bianco »

Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry "Is City Life a Good Life? Views from Tokugawa Japan" ( University of California, Berkeley)

July 15th, 9.30-10.45, Clancy Auditorium

Abstract: In one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in the premodern world, city dwellers in Japan increased from roughly 3% to roughly 12% of the population between 1580 and 1700. This presentation surveys empirical and qualitative evidence to explore how contemporary witnesses experienced this social revolution. In particular, it probes the new sources of anxiety and pleasure that variably bound and divided new urbanites of disparate station.

Profile: Mary Elizabeth Berry is the Dean’s Professor of East Asian History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has previously taught at the University of Michigan and has been visiting professor at Kyoto University. She is renowned for her works on the Sengoku and Tokugawa periods, notably her path-breaking study of Hideyoshi (1982), and the culture of civil war in Kyoto (1994) for which she was awarded the Berkeley Book prize in 1995. Her most recent book, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (2006), is also making a significant impact on historians’ understanding of Tokugawa developments, receiving effusive reviews in prominent Asian studies journals. In addition to her many contributions to the Japanese studies profession, Berry, who has occupied various important functions in the Society of Japanese Studies and in the American Historical Association, was elected President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2004-2005.

Professor Jay Rubin "See, Hear, Smell, Touch, Taste" (Harvard University)

July 16th, 9.30-10.45, Clancy Auditorium

Abstract: The one quality that makes Royall Tyler's new (2001) version of The Tale of Genji perhaps the finest literary translation ever made from Japanese is its total sensual reimagining of the world created in its pages. Even a cursory examination of the English text suggests that Tyler never wrote a sentence without first clearly picturing to himself the imagery contained in Lady Murasaki's eleventh-century work: he knows where the characters are standing (or, more often, lying), he knows the colors of their robes, he can hear the sounds in their surrounding neighborhood, and smell the incense wafting through their dusky corridors.  Great translation moves not from a page in one language to a page in the other but through the active imagination of the translator, and unless this happens the results
are not going to be literature.  Taking Tyler as a model, we discuss the role of the translator.

Profile: After many years as Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities, Jay Rubin continues research and publishing as Research Professor of Japanese Literature at Harvard University. Before taking up the chair at Harvard in 1993, Rubin was Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Washington. Although his book, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State, is highly regarded by modern historians, Rubin is probably best known for his numerous translations and essays about modern and contemporary Japanese fiction. In particular, he is noted for his translations and studies of Natsume Sôseki and Murakami Haruki. His translation of Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimakidori kuronikuru) won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Japanese Literary Translation Prize in 1999 and the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2003. His Murakami Haruki and the Music of Words is the most comprehensive study of Murakami and was translated into Japanese in 2007.

Special Lectures

Second Language Acquisition

Professor Yasuhiro Shirai,  "Second language acquisition research and Japanese language instruction: A functional approach" (Department of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh)
Dr. James Lee, "Processing Instruction and the Second Language Acquisition of Japanese" (School of Languages and Linguistics, University of New South Wales)

Language Assessment

Professor Chris Davison, "Assessment for Learning" (School of Education, University of New South Wales)

Japanese Language Education

Professor Akito Ozaki, "Social contexts of Japanese language education and Japanese language education policies" (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies)
Professor Yi Dok Bong, "Interrelational, Comprehensive and Interdisciplinary Attributes of Communication Competences" (Dong Duck Women's University)

July 13-16, 2009

University of New South Wales | University of Sydney

Sydney, Australia