armour 2011 learning japanese by reading 'manga'_ the rise of 'soft power pedagogy

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Learning Japanese by Reading 'manga': The Rise of 'Soft Power Pedagogy'

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Article

Learning Japanese by Reading ‘manga’: The Rise of ‘Soft Power Pedagogy’

William Spencer ArmourUniversity of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

AbstractMultimodal examples of Japanese language input (such as ‘manga’ and anime) have now become the default choice for curriculum designers, material developers, and classroom teachers to make learning ‘fun’. More traditional written only text-based materials are now in direct competition with such materials. While there has been a comfortable relationship in additional language (L2) teaching between using text and image, for example, pictures, fuzzy felt boards, and now much more sophisticated technology (e.g. Rosetta Stone™) to explicitly teach the lexico-grammar, the proliferation of ‘manga’ in Japanese language textbooks and as stand alone course materials, for example, has largely been left unproblematized. In this paper I explore three issues to using material examples of Japanese popular culture in the Japanese language classroom and beyond. First, I focus on ‘manga’ as a case study and relate it to a course that I have been teaching for the last five years using ‘manga’ as artefact. Second, I explore how using ‘manga’ and other J-pop artefacts can impact on how the notions of legitimacy and appropriateness are linked to constructions of learner and teacher identities. Third, I will introduce the concept of what I’ll call ‘soft power pedagogy’ as a way of theorizing the use and potential abuse of ‘manga’, anime and other examples of Japanese popular culture in and out of the classroom.

Keywords‘manga’, Japanese language, anime, teaching, soft power pedagogy

IntroductionChapter 2 in the ‘manga’Nihonjin no shiranai Nihongo (Hebizo and Umino, 2009) is entitled Sonna Nihongo tsukaimasen (We don’t use that sort of Japanese). When asked to self-introduce, the jôhin na Furansu-jin (refined French woman) says: ‘Ohikaenasutte!!

Corresponding author:William Armour, Japanese Studies Program, Morven Brown Building 208, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia 2052.Email: [email protected]

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126 RELC Journal 42(2)

Watashi Marii to môshimasu’(Hebizo and Umino, 2009: 22). Ohikaenasutte is typically reserved for the likes of yakuza (Japanese mafia) when meeting for the first time. This French woman has used ninkyôeiga (chivalry films) as her ‘textbook’. In another frame she asks the native Japanese teacher to call her nêsan (also anesan literally meaning elder sister, it can be used between women to show closeness and it has some under-ground overtones too) to which the teacher replies, ‘yobemasen’ (I can’t call you that). When the student asks, ‘Tsukaikata machigatte’mashita ka?’ (Have I used it incor-rectly?), the teacher replies, ‘Bunpô-tekiniwa mondai nai kedo konpon-tekini machi-gatte iru’ (there’s no problem grammatically [but] it’s fundamentally wrong) (Hebizo and Umino, 2009: 23).

In the same chapter, the same teacher says to a second student, a fan of Kurosawa films, ‘Serifu takusan oboete’ru deshô’ (You’ve probably remembered lots of lines) to which the student replies, ‘Kore wa itami irimasu’ (I’m much obliged to you). The teacher thinks, ‘deta na bushikotoba’ (There you go ... samurai language) (Hebizo and Umino, 2009: 26). At the end of the chapter both students are using lines from movies to annoy the teacher who has told them not to use such language (but does not correct them): the last frame on page 29 shows the teacher, fingers in her ears, saying, ‘kikoen kikoen na – mo kikoen’ (I can’t hear, I can’t hear ... I can’t hear!).

In contrast, how to use the film Shiawase kazoku keikaku (Tsutomu, 2000) was the theme of Japan Foundation representative Ms. Nobuoka Mari’s presentation at the NZALT International Biennial Conference held in July 2010. Japan Foundation has produced a DVD kit featuring the film and on a second disc various Japanese language learning and cultural supplementary materials (mini lessons, quizzes) that teachers and learners use to, in the words of Ms. Nobuoka, ‘eiga o tôshite yutakana bunka, nama no Nihongo o keiken suru koto ga dekiru’ (you can experience language in an aural and visual context which is culturally rich and authentic).1

What interested me about this presentation was the time devoted to pre-movie view-ing activities to raise awareness of social problems in Japan, to discuss Japanese televi-sion programs, to introduce main characters in the movie, as well as questions that focused on specific aspects of the movie such as language usage, physical setting, and food culture. Though there were also activities to do post-film watching, the pre-watch-ing activities functioned to bring the Japanese language learner closer to the necessary assumed cultural and linguistic knowledge that a Japanese viewer already brings to the movie. Post-viewing tasks merely provide opportunities for checking comprehension, discussion, critique and production tasks that encourage the use of some of the language featured in the movie.

Issues Raised in This PaperThese two examples raise three issues that will be explored in this paper in relation to using ‘manga’ as well as other types of Japanese popular culture in the Japanese language classroom. Issue one concerns ‘authenticity’ and how it relates to teaching and learning materials such as ‘manga’ that are typically designed for one purpose but used in a com-pletely different context for completely different reasons. The issue of authenticity also links to motivation or making additional language learning ‘fun’ (Cary, 2004: 13).




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The second issue emerges from the first, that is, how do the notions of legitimacy and appropriateness link to constructions of learner and teacher identities? That is, while the author of Nihonjin no shiranai Nihongo2 purports to represent the many humorous expe-riences of a Japanese (national) language teacher teaching Japanese language to foreign-ers in Japan, I get the sense that it plays up to the mostly Japanese national readership in terms of the linguistic quirkiness of how foreigners use Japanese. For example:

page 31:

Jakku: Sô de gozaru ka (Is that so?)

Teacher: Bushi-kotoba hiromattoru!! (Samurai language is widespread/popular)

Jakku: Erên-san kara naratta? Ie chigaimasu. Watashi no motte’ru kyôkasho ni kaite arimashita. Hora. (Did I learn it from Ellen? No. It was written in the textbook I have. Look.)

He shows the page in the textbook to the teacher:

Gozaru ‘~desu’ no kenjôgo (Gozaru: a humble form of ‘desu’)

Teacher: Itsu no hon? (When was that book written?!)

Certain aspects of the Japanese language teacher’s implicit power are challenged by students in terms of what she is expected to know about Japanese language and culture. When making a judgement about the French woman’s yakuza and the Swedish student’s samurai variations, this Japanese language teacher is, rightly or wrongly, censoring both language and identity choices based on the spurious assumption that they are konpon-tekini machigatte’ru, thus un-Japanese in some way.

In contrast, the Japan Foundation materials have been designed to be imitated by learners due to a perceived authenticity based on how the Japanese families in the movie use both Japanese language and cultural practices, becoming konna Nihongo tsukaimasu (We use this kind of Japanese) or sonna Nihongo tsukaimashô (Let’s use that kind of Japanese!). It is fine for Japanese language learners to produce phrases such as sugoi, yatta, saiaku and the like since these are deemed acceptable because the kinds of Japanese who produced them are themselves acceptable, unlike yakuza or samurai.

Issue three concerns how Japanese ‘soft power’ is influencing decisions about what and how to teach and learn about Japan including Japanese language . Coined by Joseph S. Nye Jr, ‘soft power’ has gained notoriety when talking about examples of American and Japanese popular culture. Rather than discuss it in detail in this paper, Tsutsui (2010) provides a comprehensive treatment. In this paper, I will briefly explore what I will call ‘soft power pedagogy’ or a way of teaching and learning Japanese language and culture that relies on using and consuming examples of Japan’s‘soft power’ such as ‘manga’ and anime in and out of the classroom to perpetuate a positive interest in Japanese culture and language in the face of decreasing numbers of learners, competition from other addi-tional languages in the curriculum and other factors related to the choice of Japanese language as an ‘investment’ (Norton Peirce, 1995).

In this paper I draw on epistemologies that drive and shape presumptions about the researcher and researched, validity, the legitimacy of methods to produce knowledge.





This suggests an ‘epistemological pluralism’ since it contributes to four ‘crucial elements to the practice of interdisciplinary enquiry’ (Miller et al., 2008):

1. It acknowledges the validity and value of multiple ways of knowing.2. It asserts that integrating these epistemologies results in a more complete under-

standing of complex issues.3. It accepts that operationalizing these different approaches may require continual

negotiations.4. It requires disciplinary researchers work together to find ways to accommodate

each others’ approaches rather than compromise them.

Since I am the sole researcher in this instance, point 4 may be difficult to reconcile, how-ever, I draw from a range of disciplines/social theories that inform both my research and teaching practices: second language acquisition/development theories, applied linguis-tics, cultural studies, media, education, post-colonial and queer theories. McLennan (1995: 6) argues that pluralism involves three broad levels: methodological, socio-cultural and political and for this paper the latter two are more salient since they deal with multiplicity of truths, worlds, identities and selves. Therefore, I am, based on the simplest analysis of my discourse so far, a bricoleur (Denzin, 2010: 13).

Issue One: Positioning ‘manga’ as Authentic MaterialsMultimodal examples of Japanese language input (e.g. ‘manga’, anime and film) are now becoming3 the standard choice for curriculum designers, material developers, classroom teachers and Japanese language learners to make over more traditional written text only based materials. While there seems to have been a comfortable relationship in additional language teaching between text and image (we have all used pictures, fuzzy felt boards, and now much more sophisticated technology to teach lexico-grammar), the use of ‘manga’ in both Japanese language textbooks and as stand alone materials have prolifer-ated. It has been claimed that authentic texts may help to motivate students to engage with the target language (Gilmore, 2007: 106-108).

I have been a Japanese language teacher since 1980 and have accepted the almost folkloric view that authentic materials are the superior choice. I have been critical of how model dialogues in Japanese language textbooks are used to get students to say something (anything) in Japanese (Armour, 1998). More recently I have had students who, though they have only formally studied Japanese language for two or three weeks, come out with some pretty impressive Japanese that they have memorized from popu-lar anime series such as Naruto (Date, 2002-2007) and expect to be given a good mark for it. By drawing upon scholars such as Breen (1985), Arnold (1991), Lee (1995), Shomoossi and Ketabi (2007) as well as Gilmore’s (2007) review, I have been able to grasp some of the issues emerging from research surrounding authentic materials and authenticity in the additional language classroom. While much of this literature dis-cusses issues pertaining to English language teaching, I am also positioning this paper into the discussion of tadashii Nihongo (‘correct’ Japanese; see Thomson, 2010) and




Armour 129

kyôsei gengo toshite no Nihongo (Japanese as a language for co-living;4 see Miyo and Chung, 2006).

I begin by arguing that the generic term ‘manga’ (note the single inverted commas that have been used so far) should be divided into three types for clarity:

1. Type 1: MANGA – authentic texts defined as ‘those written and oral commu-nications produced by members of a language and culture group for members of the same language and culture group’ (Galloway, 1998: 133); enjoyed as entertainment (also sometimes referred to as ‘story manga’).

2. Type 2: Manga – authentic texts that have a pedagogical purpose (such as gakushû manga and other expository texts).

3. Type 3: manga – non-authentic texts which have been specifically constructed for pedagogical purposes and designed for people who are learning Japanese as an additional language.

This delineation attempts to answer the question, what is an authentic text? (Breen, 1985: 61). However, as Breen has pointed out many discussions regarding authentic texts stop here. What I would like to do in this section is to consider Breen’s other questions (he asks four in total). I am also sensitive to how Widdowson highlighted the distinction between a text (‘genuineness’ as a characteristic of the passage itself and an absolute quality), and the reader’s response (‘authenticity’ as a characteristic of the relationship between the passage and the reader to the text) [cited in Breen, 1985: 69, footnote 5]which will become significant for my discussion of ‘soft power pedagogy’, that is, what authenticity has to do with appropriate reader’s response. Tatsuki’s (2006) discussion regarding authenticity (in particular her Tables 1 and 2) is also highly relevant.

When ‘manga’ are divided into the three types, I can then begin to consider other questions (see Table 1 below). Gilmore (2007: 98) argues that ‘the concept of authentic-ity can be situated in either the text itself [e.g. MANGA], in the participants, in the social or cultural situation and purposes of the communicative act, or some combination of these’. Furthermore, while Gilmore (2007: 98) restates the views of others in regards to making the judgment about ‘authenticity’ as good and, in his words, ‘contrivance’ as bad, he argues that the ‘key issue then becomes “What are we trying to ACHIEVE with class-room materials?”’ and suggests that the goal is to produce ‘learners who are COMMUNICATIVELY COMPETENT’ (Gilmore, 2007: 98).

Arnold (1991) considers task-based approaches to materials design, in particular, for vocational settings such as using English in business contexts. He points out that authen-tic materials do not guarantee that tasks will be authentic (Arnold, 1991: 238). For exam-ple, he observes that while his Asian and Omani students are able to hear authentic conversations between British English speakers on commercially available tapes, this one particular variety of English cannot be deemed authentic given his students’ pur-poses for learning English: his students will most likely have to interact with other non-native English language speakers. This example suggests that there may not be a goodness of fit between the authentic text and its pedagogical roles in learning.





Lee (1995: 325) echoes Arnold’s concerns, ‘[teachers] seem unaware that authentic materials can appear “unauthentic” to learners, just as unauthentic materials can appear “authentic”’. She also considers Breen’s questions and arrives at five inter-related factors (Figure 1) in relation to how they contribute to ‘the quality of learner authenticity’ or the learner’s interaction with authentic materials in terms of appropriateness of response and psychological reaction (Lee, 1995: 323). Chinami (2005) also argues, in the case of ‘manga’, that text selection is the first vital step for creating a pedagogy that focuses on purpose for reading.

I will use a course entitled Learning Japanese by Reading Manga (offered 2005-2010) as my case study. Though tasks encouraged students to focus on both bottom-up and top-down approaches to reading MANGA, the primary objectives were for students to learn new lexico-grammar and to improve expressing emotions through ondoku (read-ing aloud). The course was taught in both Japanese and English languages. My attitudes towards the MANGA as a non-native Japanese language teacher were mixed. I mean that I have always considered MANGA a potentially effective way to learn Japanese (see Corkill, 2009) This Japan Times article informs about Japanese television celebrity Dave Spector and how he initially learned Japanese by reading ‘manga’) and I wanted to tap into student interest in Japanese popular culture. However, once I began using MANGA,

Table 1. The Use of ‘manga’ in the Japanese Language Classroom (Based on Breen, 1985: 62-63)

‘manga’ type

Preliminary questions about use

MANGAMangamanga

What are the primary communicative purposes of ‘manga’ texts?To share an experience with us?To amuse us? To have fun?To awaken in us a new way of perceiving things?To learn a new kanji, vocabulary item, new grammar point?To learn something about Japanese culture?To express myself in informal Japanese?To learn how to swear in Japanese?To speak more like a woman, a man, a samurai, a maid, and the like.

What might be the various authentic approaches to and interpretations of any text which my learners may adopt?Can the learner’s own prior knowledge, interest, and curiosity be engaged by this text?How can such prior knowledge, interest, and curiosity—about meaning, about structure, about how language might work, or about language use—be activated by this text?

Other considerations about use

To appear ‘cool’ in front of others?To feel a sense of satisfaction that I can understand something a native speaker can?To speak like a Japanese speaks?

To get a good grade?To consume something I enjoy?To feel less anxious about learning Japanese?




Armour 131

I realized how time consuming it was in terms of preparation, that is, in regards sustainable teaching, using MANGA has its limitations.

I asked my students in the 2010 course why they read ‘manga’. Some of their responses appear in Appendix 1. While most of the students conflate reading ‘manga’ with fun and entertainment, some also mention they ‘learn’ a particular type of Japanese language through this medium, notably informal Japanese. More will be said about ‘fun’ below. These ‘manga’ serve as ‘learner-authentic materials’. Lee (1995: 324) echoes Breen’s views pointing out that ‘learner-authentic materials ... can serve to promote learners’ interest in language learning’ as well as providing opportunities to develop linguistic and communicative competence. Lee (1995: 325) also argues that ‘the needs of the learner should play a central role’ to govern all five factors. What are the potential consequences of the discussion so far on the construction of teacher and learner identities? This becomes the topic of the next section of the paper.

Issue Two:Teacher and Learner Identities and ‘manga’I have written extensively about identity and additional language learning (Armour, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2008) so will not revisit the territory here. Instead, I would like to explore how the notions of legitimacy and appropriateness are linked to constructions of learner and teacher identities, especially in connection with the consumption of Japanese popular media culture such as MANGA. By doing this I hope to understand the complex relation-ship between ‘consumers’ and ‘producers’ of Japanese as an additional language.

My thinking has been influenced by three major sources: Kôichi Iwabuchi (2001, 2010, among others), Henry Jenkins (2004) and Gordon Mathews (2000). Iwabuchi (2010: 87) uses the somewhat awkward terms ‘imaginative prosumer’ (producer-consumer) and ‘approreader’ (appropriator-reader) as more suitable motifs for the more ubiquitous yet problematic term ‘fan’. These two identities describe the French and Swedish

text(materialselec�on)

learner(individual

differences)

lear(indiv

differe

task(task design)

ttas(task d

learner seng(learning

environment)

learner seng

teacher(atude and

teachingapproach)

Figure 1. Five Factors Related to Authenticity (Based on Lee, 1995: 325)





students who appear in Nihonjin no shiranai Nihongo. Moreover, rather than consuming textbook Japanese, something that many of my students and I have deemed unauthentic (i.e. unacceptable), by reading/appropriating MANGA, we have consumed Japanese lan-guage that is directed to a Japanese domestic audience with the view to produce it in another future context. It is either a kind of harmless plagiarism or an example of inter-textuality, a term coined by Julia Kristeva in the 1960s to suggest a transformation of self through borrowing another’s text.

Iwabuchi’s views have been influenced by Henry Jenkins. Jenkins (2000: 116) writes about media convergence and focuses on the interplay between ‘corporate convergence’ and ‘grassroots convergence’ which, when redesigned for a classroom context, could describe on the one hand the concentration of power in the hands of Boards of Studies, syllabus designers, textbooks writers, publishers and teachers and on the other hand the roles that learners themselves play when they come into contact with authentic material. Hence, a dialectic is being constructed, one that requires a sensitivity to specific learning and teaching context(s), learners, and teachers. In its original context, corporate conver-gence often takes into consideration the views of its consumers since there is a vested interest for consumers to actually consume more. In an education context however, one significant difference is that those involved in corporate convergence rarely take into consideration what students/learners are saying. My intention is not to demonize teach-ers, quite the opposite: my intention is to draw attention to some of the issues that teach-ers must face when choosing to use MANGA or other examples of Japanese popular media culture in their classrooms.

Jenkins (2004: 117) coins the term ‘pop cosmopolitanism’ to refer to ‘the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspire new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency’. Since ‘manga’ and other examples of popular Japanese media culture have become a commonplace in the lives of our Japanese language stu-dents, one that appears to be accepted voluntarily rather than something imposed like a textbook, their influence on student learning should not be underestimated. Nostrand (1989: 50) argues that ‘the fact that a text is authentic…does not assure that it gives a true impression unless one adds to it the context it evokes in the mind of a person who lives in the culture’. What is being argued is that the notion of authenticity embedded in MANGA helps with the development of a L2 learner’s quest for cultural and communi-cative competence.

However, the quest for seeming to appear authentic can sometimes backfire. Consider the phrase~dattebayo! spoken by Uzumaki Naruto (see Naruto written and illustrated by Kishimoto Masashi). According to http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword, this phrase is ‘Uzumaki Naruto ga gobini tsukeru kuchiguse’. Since kuchiguse has two senses: i) one’s favourite phrase and ii) one’s own peculiar manner of talking, the choice of gloss can directly impact on how I as a teacher may react or respond to students who have decided to use the phrase in the classroom, especially when they are being tested. If sense i), the gloss becomes: the favourite phrase that Uzumaki Naruto attaches to the end of sentences, however if sense ii): the peculiar way of talking that Uzumaki Naruto adds to the end of sentences. Note too that the grammatical particle ga indicates that Naruto is the only one to do it.5




Armour 133

Following on from Thomson (2010), my point is that when MANGA are selected as target language/culture input, since it is authentic Japanese (though not necessarily ‘cor-rect’ or tadashii), it should have universal applicability, that is, if Naruto uses it, so why can’t I, even though I am not Naruto? A few years ago when I got my students to read Motomiya Hiroshi’s MANGA Saraîman Kintarô, it become clear to all of us that the view that the Japanese language has a paucity of swear words was in fact a myth. I warned the men in the group that reproducing the language in the first few pages of the narrative would probably land them in hospital (another example of sonna Nihongo tsu-kaimasen). It would be unlikely that a commercially produced Japanese language text-book would ever print the same kind of language.

Here is the dilemma: even choosing a ‘safe’ MANGA such as Doraemon, there is going to be consequence for learning in terms of learner identity development. I person-ally have no issue with students who want to speak like a chimpira or punk, or like the French madam, express their identity based upon an authentic text. The caveat is that the teacher inside me wants to control what they say to protect them since speaking like a yakuza at Narita Airport may not be that appropriate.

To understand this dilemma more fully, I turn to Mathews (2000: 1) and his con-cept of culture as ‘the information and identities available from the global cultural supermarket’, that is, how culture and subsequent identities are shaped by the state opposed to the market. I represent Mathews’ view in Figure 2. The arrow indicates the relative depth of each level: the cultural supermarket level is the most shallow. When Mathews’s cultural supermarket level and Jenkin’s pop cosmopolitanism are over-lapped, we can begin to picture the role that Japanese popular media culture plays in the curriculum. Mathews (2000: 21) argues that ‘We fashion ourselves from the cul-tural supermarket in a number of areas, among them our choices in home décor, in food and clothing, in what we read, watch, and listen to in music, art, and popular culture, in our religious beliefs, and in ethnic and national identity itself…’. The final section of the paper extends the reach of the cultural supermarket placing it firmly into the classroom.

Figure 2. Global Culture/Individual Identity (Based on Mathews, 2000)





Issue Three: The Rise of Soft Power PedagogyIn a recent talk6 entitled ‘Why not continue Japanese?’ PhD candidate, Barbara Northwood, presented some preliminary findings into why students continue (called ‘stay-ins’) their Japanese language studies. According to Northwood’s research, the stay-ins indicated that their consumption of Japanese popular culture was a significant motivator to keep them going in terms of Japanese language learning. Stevens (2010: 202) makes the point that consumption is ‘not just about financial exchange. Socially, consuming is both a bonding and an individuating experience’ and it also ‘engages ... abstract ideologies of pleasure, power and status’ (Stevens, 2010: 202). Steven’s discus-sion regarding the consumption of Japanese popular artefacts such as ‘manga’ (specifi-cally MANGA) is also relevant to Japanese language learning when Northwood’s research is taken into account.

I would like to consider Anime•Manga no Nihongo (Japanese in Anime & Manga), a site in-progress created by the Japan Foundation designed to ‘power up your Japanese!!’(available at: http://anime-manga.jp/; see Figure 3). Since coming on-line in February 2010, a Spanish version of the site was released on 22 October 2010 and a Korean version was released at the end of January 2011. A detailed analysis of the site is beyond the scope of this paper, however, this example of Japanese ‘soft power’ is impor-tant in promoting Japanese language learning worldwide. This Japan Foundation site gives rise to ‘soft power pedagogy’ or a style of instruction that is directly influenced by the artefacts of, in this case, Japanese ‘soft power’. Ren Zhe (2010) notes that in contrast to China’s Confucius Institutes that focus on ‘traditional culture’ that hampers the prolif-eration of Chinese soft power, ‘manga serves as a point of identification and introduction for Japanese pop culture that strengthens Japan’s soft power’.

The above announcement confirms the view expressed by many of my students regarding the attractiveness of ‘manga’ as a medium for learning Japanese language and challenges a more traditional pedagogy that employs the textbook to provide input. Moreover, ‘manga’ and anime, J-pop music, video games and the like could be grouped as tools that encourage what Jenkins (2009: xi) calls participatory culture, that is, ‘a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expressions and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices’.

Analysing the attraction that Japanese popular culture has for American youth, Allison (2006: 15) notes, ‘Such signs of Japaneseness signal … an authenticity that is taken even further by avid fans of anime and manga whose preferences for the nontranslated or dubbed originals are driving the study of Japanese language in university (and high school) across the country’ (underline for emphasis). Soft power pedagogy contradicts the view7 that what is being consumed requires deodorizing, in fact, it is usually the case that the smellier the better. When MANGA are deodorized they become manga or unau-thentic which is not what Japanese language learners want.

In soft power pedagogy, the trope of ‘consumption’ as used by Stevens augments learning. I am not making a judgement here about the rights or wrongs of this. My point is to ponder the influx of Japanese soft power artefacts into Japanese language teaching and learning. Some may say that if it promotes the learning of Japanese language and




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Website ‘Japanese in Anime & Manga’ Opened!

Today, Japanese anime and manga are winning high favor with young people around the world and are motivating many to start learning Japanese. Many of the words and phrases in these media are, however, not found in Japanese textbooks or dictionaries, because the characters and genres found in anime and manga are too broad to be completely covered. This makes it even more difficult for foreigners to under-stand the contents in Japanese. For these Japanese learners who love anime and manga, the Japan Foundation, Japanese-Language Institute, Kansai has launched an e-learning site ‘Japanese in Anime & Manga’ to offer a fun way to learn a number of character/genre-based Japanese expressions that appear in anime and manga, as well as underlying Japanese culture.

Site features(1)This website was created with lines actually used by characters in anime and manga works popular over-seas as a basis. Users can learn a casual style of Japanese not found in the usual textbooks and dictionaries.

(2)With anime-style characters and manga-style explanations, users can learn through a perspective unique to anime/manga.

(3)Users can learn in a fun way through quizzes and games, choosing their own preferred study contents and method, according to their own level and interests.

culture then all well and good, use any means to do so. However, Japanese language educators also need to consider the consequences.

Gee (2003, 2004 and 2005) argues that video games assist learning because they can be highly motivating: ‘Many children are exposed to language and other symbols con-nected to modern technologies and media (e.g., the Internet, video games, text messaging) that seem more compelling and motivating than school language’ (Gee, 2004: 37-38). He claims that (traditional) schooling focuses too much on ‘the content fetish’ (Gee, 2004: 117) or privileging facts rather than experiences, simulations, tools, information and technologies from which they need to learn (Gee, 2004: 117-18). He posits that, ‘all learning involves “playing a character.” In a science classroom, learning works best if students think, act, and value like scientists’ (Gee, 2003: 3). I agree with Gee’s views however he is writing from the perspective of promoting L1 language and literacy skills. When my Japanese language learners use MANGA to guide their ‘playing a character’, there are certain consequences. To be fair to Gee, he states that ‘if any variety of lan-guage is to be learned and used, it has to be situated’ as well as guided by a ‘master’ (Gee, 2004: 117), however, in the case of additional language learning, identity construction is somewhat different to what has been socially constructed through developing the L1.

To finish off this section I’d like to consider the concept of investment (Norton Peirce, 1995) and how it might relate to soft power pedagogy. Before doing this, I will begin by con-sidering the view that ‘Branded consumption is a powerful identity-constructing tool — if we

Figure 3. Anime•Manga no Nihongo(taken from http://www.jpf.go.jp/e/japanese/report/23.html; italics added for emphasis)





are what we buy, then we choose to buy objects that project our identity in ways that please us’and continues by arguing that after consuming, fans reflect on their consumption and that ‘their main motivation in participating in this kind of consumer behaviour is the ‘fun’ they have’ (Stevens, 2010: 209).

It was pointed out that consumption does not necessarily involve financial exchange. For the concept of ‘investment’ as applied to additional language learning, Norton Peirce (1995: 17) draws from Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital taking the position that ‘if learners invest in a second language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic [language, education, friendship] and material [capital goods, real estate and money] resources which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital. Learners will expect or hope to have a good return on that investment ... this return on investment must be seen as commensurate with the effort expended on learning the second language’. She states that ‘an investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner’s own social identity, an identity which is constantly changing across time and space’ (Norton Peirce, 1995: 18).

I am thinking about how ‘once upon a time’ many learners invested in Japanese lan-guage for purely instrumental purposes such as getting a ‘good’ job. This was, in Australia at least, part of government rhetoric resulting in millions of dollars being poured into the teaching of Japanese language in the late 1980s through to the mid 1990s. Nowadays, while some students still consider Japanese language skills necessary to acquire material resources, when Northwood’s preliminary findings and Stevens’ analysis of fandom are taken into account, the shift towards the symbolic as mediated through the material seems for stronger investment by Japanese language learners. Given how easy it is now to consume (invest in) Japanese soft power artefacts by opening one’s laptop computer, it comes as little surprise that strategies and styles of teaching Japanese language have been adapted to include them as part of the broader curriculum that seems eager to cater to the discourse of fun.

I asked my students the question, ‘what’s fun?’ (see Appendix 2). There is a strong sense that these students are dissatisfied with their Japanese language textbooks, that materials are not aligned with their interests (student 8’s view is particularly scathing), and that the investment required to actually learn Japanese language needs to be some-how rewarded. Reflecting on what my students have written here, what I am alluding to is whether soft power pedagogy also assists in another act of transgression, one that takes learners and turns them into fans. Stevens (2010: 212) concludes her paper by defending fans: ‘for the majority of consumers, sociality is key: pleasure and power are achieved; horizontal social relations are cemented’ and while there can be painful out-comes through too much consumption, ‘the majority of consumers strive to moderate behaviour that maximises pleasure while minimising capital, emotional and time invest-ment’, something that seems antithetical to Norton Peirce’s conception of investment discussed above.

Concluding RemarksMy purpose has been to raise some issues regarding the use of authentic materials such as MANGA in Japanese language pedagogy. Henry Giroux (1994: x) reminds me how




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pedagogy and politics come together and how they struggle over knowledge, power and authority. How this struggle is being translated in Japanese language and teaching must now be spoken about. My hope is that this is a starting point. Given its trajectory to date, the more potent that Japanese soft power becomes, the more influential it will be on how future Japanese language learners engage in developing communicative competence. On this, we can begin to actually question whether Japanese language teachers should con-tinue to teach Japanese for communicative competence.

Authentic texts such as MANGA do not always conflate with the notion of a correct text in terms of content and form. Given Gee’s comments regarding content fetishism above this view may be a reasonable springboard from which to consider other issues such as the types of inputs both teachers and learners want to have to achieve mutually negotiable outcomes as well as matters of trust that learners place in what teachers, texts and the like inform them about the target language.

Notes1 English glosses are taken directly from Ms.Nobuoka’s presentation slides that were given to

participants as a handout. Underline for emphasis: literally ‘raw Japanese language’.2 I am referring to Book 1 here. Like many ‘manga’, the story was adapted to television and

broadcast as live action: http://www.ytv.co.jp/nihongo/index.html3 In 1988 the foundations of Mangajin were being laid. From mid-1990 until late 1997, Man-

gajin provided a brand new way of learning Japanese (a detailed history of Mangajin is avail-able at: http://www.mangajin.com/mangajin/story/). Furthermore, the June 1993 special issue of Aruku’s monthly Nihongo featured Manga o kyôshitsu de tsukau (Using ‘manga’ in the classroom) that provides some of the first practical examples of how to use ‘manga’ in the classroom (Manga o tsu kutta oshiekata iroiro).

4 The term kyôseigengo can be glossed as ‘symbiotic language’, however, it is used in the lit-erature written in Japanese to connote a Japanese language to be used for a more harmonious co-habitation, specifically in Japan.

5 One view is ‘‘‘-ttebayo”, which is not a well-known ending, has no literal meaning and can-not be translated, but carries the connotations of the speaker being uncultured, brusque, and seeming tougher than they really are’ (see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dattebayo, accessed 24 February 2011).

6 This presentation was part of a series given by PhD, Masters and Honours candidates studying in the Japanese Studies program in the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, in 2010.

7 Proposed by Iwabuchi Kôichi (2002), the view is that unlike American cultural power, Japan’s cultural power has been systematically deodorized according to the country in which Japanese cultural power products are being consumed (cited in Allison, 2006: 18).

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Appendix 1. Why Do You Read ‘manga’? Taken from Students’ reflective Logs (in 2010)

1. I can actually learn many things by reading ‘manga’. It is fun and interesting. 2. When I’m bored and got nothing to do. 3. Reading Japanese ‘manga’ helps me learn/practice Japanese whilst the English ver-

sions entertain. All ‘manga’ have, sometimes, beautiful images and incorporate human emotions into their storylines. It is an enjoyable pastime.

4. It is basically for fun. 5. The graphics and cartoons look interesting. The way they speak and express them-

selves are funny. 6. ‘Manga’ is unique for me because it combines a sense of aesthetic and great

storytelling. 7. Since I was interested in learning informal Japanese and I didn’t want to talk so

formally, I used ‘manga’ as the medium to learn the informal, everyday phrases and grammar.

8. I like reading ‘manga’ because the art is beautiful and the storylines are always very interesting and engaging.

9. Fun … it’s another way to learn.10. Most ‘manga’ have good story and it’s easier to read than to read a novel.11. I love reading ‘manga’ and watching anime for entertainment and I find that reading

‘manga’ is a more interesting way to know about Japanese culture and Japanese lifestyle. Once I can read ‘manga’ in Japanese, I can learn how to use and speak in Japanese in a more informal way.

12. For leisure … I find the stories in ‘manga’ generally interesting.





13. I want to know more about Japanese culture and lifestyle.14. It is one of the most interesting and funny media I know … and it helps me to learn

some Japanese culture that I have always been interested in.15. Recreational purposes … more interesting than books with just words … good sto-

rylines … influenced by friends …

Appendix 2. What’s Fun? Answers Taken from Students’ Reflective Logs (in 2010)

1. What’s fun for me is learning new content towards something that is of interest to me or may aid in my interests, in this case ‘manga’. How this course uses a medium that interests me and further aids me to improve reading on my own. What’s also fun in learning is not only obtaining knowledge to aid me in my interests but also the methods used to learn it, such as ondoku [reading aloud] for example where we are encouraged to consider the tone and emotions of the character ... it makes it more engaging.

2. Learning and studying Japanese by reading ‘manga’ is fun because it is different from learning from a boring textbook. ‘manga’ has images and it is sort of like a movie on paper. I find relating study of words to images and graphics an appealing way to learn a language. In addition, I find the other students pretty funny to study with and this made the course more enjoyable for me.

3. Fun means something I am motivated to do over and over again because it is enjoy-able or makes time fly in a positive way.

4. Compared to traditional classes where we chew on grammar structures with a text-book, it is always more enjoyable to learn by reading a ‘manga’ or watching a movie/anime.

5. A ‘fun’ class involves almost everyone involved in learning and interacting with each other and the teacher because people have a chance to express themselves and usually jokes or humorous comments are told which makes learning interesting.

6. Actually learning things from something I enjoy – I would probably read ‘manga’ by myself anyway but in English. Doing it in Japanese takes longer but it gives a differ-ent feel. It is slightly challenging but understanding the text is very rewarding.

7. ‘Fun’ things are things, even work, that coincide with our interests. I think it’s the same premise that, time flies when you have fun, and time goes on forever when you’re doing something you don’t like ...

8. Fun ... because this course is different to my other university courses - look at the textbook and remember the theory.




armour 2011 learning japanese by reading 'manga'_ the rise of 'soft power pedagogy

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