Nippon dotcom just reported that a "survey found that Japan currently ranks eighty-seventh out of 113 non-English-speaking countries and regions for English language abilities. This is a fall of seven places from last year and relatively low among Asian countries." In a discussion I saw, one Japanese noted that IT competitiveness is also declining. Another stated that the problem was actually that Japanese do not need English.
Some Japanese professors have agreed with me that Japanese do actually need English. Poor IT is also connected to this, because English is essential in IT. Our son is a key person in one of Japan’s top global companies because of his combination of systems engineering and ease with foreign languages.
Japan's economic future depends on tourism and increasing foreign residents. In my bilingualism and intercultural communication classes with English majors now, students understand the need.
Deeper and deeper into #Japanese#culture and people, I went into the #Kyoto Imperial Palace for a special performance of #Gagaku (雅楽), imperial court #music and #dances of #Asian mainland origin that have been performed there since the Heian Period over a thousand years ago. An acquaintance who is a Shintō priestess (see photo) from Nara played two types of traditional flutes that sustain an eerie or higher-worldly atmosphere. The relatively slow and deliberate movements of the mostly male dancers in many-layered gorgeous contumes stand in contrast with the frenetic tempo of modern #entertainment. We experience #time as the pace of transformation, and that brief time transfixed with the Gagaku performance was but an interlude from an ancient era in a workday preparing for university classes and a keynote address. Photos will have to suffice to evoke the special atmosphere.
My keynote address for the Contemporary Studies in Management (CoSiM) online conference is on Sunday the 26th from 9:10 AM Central European Time.
ABSTRACT: This presentation opens a window into the process of applying for a research grant offered jointly by the governments of Japan and India. Grant proposals could be a genre for publications of reference to younger scholars. A grant is not just fixed-term funding but a whole process of organizing researchers and a proposed vision that maps onto the procedures and conditions set by the agencies offering competitive grants. Dimensions addressed include documentation and publications (see the forthcoming Proceedings paper), the cultures involved, intercultural communication challenges, and definitions for the research topic of humanizing online educational experiences.
Distance works in time as well as space. Frequency of contact indicates closeness, so contacting someone often can be a transgression. Rather than 'getting to know you better,' they can maintain the same distance as the circumstances when you first met. Thus, many foreigners say they can't make friends with Japanese.
Much use of silence. Large private self vs. small public self. The same act, such as posting one's photo & real name online, falls into the public #self of Westerners but the private self of Japanese.
Most Japanese are undemonstrative of emotions & affection. Standing close or touching them can easily be taken as a sexual or presumptuous invasion of their private realm.
Japanese feel personal space palpably. They make a cutting #gesture when passing someone closely.
Re-evaluating various things lately, this was a job for Philosophy Path (哲学の道) along the eastern mountains of #Kyoto. Writers have asserted that Japan doesn't do #philosophy, mais non. To be sure, Mahayana #Buddhist#ontology eludes our grasp.
Thus, I was #walking along the #path and not #philosophizing per se, but just absorbed in the scenes like these captioned #photos, and that was quite refreshing.
I'd say that bodhicitta (菩提心), consciousness-only, and such metaphysical concepts are indeed Mahāyāna #Buddhist#philosophy, but not #ontology. I alluded to our not being able to grasp it intellectually.
Frankly, I dislike the #Japanese emphasis on 'emptiness' or non-being (無), since we'll have all eternity minus our lifetime for that. I've always been in the kill-the-Zen-master camp. I rebel against their regimentation and the haughty disrepect all gurus have for what naturally wells up in the independent person, who might be #liberated to an extent -- without their knowledge (in both senses), who sees for oneself.
Having said that, if I had to define Mahāyāna ontology, it is in the Heart Sūtra (心経, Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sūtra) that #Buddhists here are always chanting, essentially that being and non-being are the same.
I'm in the #Humanities Commons instance, and we have free profiles like https://hcommons.org/members/stevemccartyinjapan that include a link to the old blue bird of Twitter, and members are increasingly leaving, so our admins at @hello might want to reconsider having that item in the next version of profiles.
Dr. Markus Launer, Professor of Management at Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences in Germany is "looking for a psychologist to research the topic Mood and Intuition. Urgently. Do you know someone? For now it is a presentation at CoSiM Conference on Sunday Nov 26, later a global study."
CoSiM is the 7th International Conference on Contemporary Studies in Management, a free online conference throughout global time zones from November 24th-27th. I'll be presenting a keynote address related to international grantsmanship and intercultural issues, specifically between India and Japan (where I live permanently). I accepted his repeated request after all the deadlines, but still could submit a short Proceedings paper, so you need not necessarily be deterred by the suddenness. The conference homepage is https://institutfuerdienstleistungen.com/en/7th-conference-2023
His requested topic is very specific, but if you could do something similar, or recommend another [email protected]
The 7-5-3 festival (七五三) started in the Heian or Muromachi Period to pray for the survival of #children, and, like many practices, spread from the aristocracy eventually to all citizens.
Age three for #girls is especially adorable, and our 3/4 #Japanese granddaughter just went through that rite of passage, posing in a #festival kimono.
With deaths in both families this year, it was moved from a Shintō shrine to a #Buddhist temple, reflecting the division of labor served by the two #religions in Japan. We could thus do it up on a mountain in our city (between Ōsaka and Kyōto) and see changing leaves of #autumn early.
All major ceremonies are finally accompanied by a restaurant meal, and the Japanese-style food and service, by normal standards in Japan, were superb.
Our granddaughter, nearly three, also seemed to start realizing that my English and the usual Japanese were different languages (technically, nascent metalinguistic awareness and bilinguality).
Dear family friends here in #Japan, a sumi-e (墨絵) ink painting artist and a Paris chanson singer invited Chisato and me to a unique event in #Osaka. An iemoto of #Japanese dance Nihon buyō (日本舞踊の家元), renowned for onna-gata female roles, led a tribute to #Ukraine, with the heads of lettuce representing skulls, a stark demonstration for #peace. Then singers performed a variety of genres in Japanese, French, English, and Italian, with a skilled electric piano accompaniment - bravo!
It is typically Japanese to combine the traditional with the modern, European with Japanese artistic sensibilities. Many venerable cultures have a sense of time that is more cyclical than linear. In Japanese religion the tendency to agglutinate rather than to choose and exclude is seen in #Buddhist syncretism.
A long train ride to Nara and hiking many kilometers around Asuka Village, the cradle of Japanese civilization. The Asuka period ca. 592-710 marked the introduction of Buddhism, Mainland-inspired reforms, and a change of the country name from Wa (倭) to Nippon (日本).
I went to three early 7th Century sites. Okadera was one of the earliest temples, later Kūkai's Shingon, with a large statue of him as a pilgrim.
Ishibutai Kofun means stone stage, the largest megalith in Japan, probably the tumulus of Soga no Umako, a promoter of Buddhism and a reformer with Prince Shōtoku. Dolmen - rock slabs over graves - were common around the ancient world, but the ones at Ishibutai must weigh tons.
Tachibanadera commemorates the birthplace of Prince Shōtoku. It is rich in historical artifacts and beautiful with a field of cosmos blooming now. There is a formation in the temple 二面石 meaning two-faced rock. I'm tempted to use it like an emoji 👺 .
We have looked to MOOCs, OERs, open access publications, and online education generally to widen access to higher education for those disadvantaged by the digital divide as well as for learners worldwide who are not affluent enough to access f2f higher education.
@SteveMcCarty@edutooter@academicchatter@OnlineEducation Steve McCarty, It’s the tools that we have in our daily possession that allow us to have daily access to Higher Education. Ideas have not changed that much from allowing general public access to published books at Carnegie Mellon Libraries, University Repository Library Depositories, Public Broadcast System (PBS/NPR) via TV & radio, World Wide Web/Internet via personal computers & SMART phones. New tools improve general public HE access.
I've been surrounded by people of #Japanese and Asian heritage since my 20s in #Hawaii, so it's an odd feeling to see mostly foreign tourists in #Kyoto on a weekday. They seem to be fanning out to places I go for walks but are less spectacular than the famous temples you pay to enter. In the future I think much of #Japan could be like Hawaii, with tourism and immigrants like myself attracted to the relatively well-preserved culture and nature.
On a typical spur-of-the-moment walk, I spent no money except on a short train ride and walked through the tourist street past Gion, through Yasaka Shrine and Maruyama Park to the temple Chion-In. It's a headquarters of a major Pure Land sect with numerous parishioners, some tending to their ancestors, unlike either the open air museum type of temples or Zen centers.
I slipped into Kyōto and back home just before an explosive thunderstorm. Limited to four photos and captions, here is a bit of the flavor of Chion-In.
Veteran academics have grown used to pulling up the stakes of our yurts. In 1998 I noted in an online keynote address from Japan to the U.S. that EdTech early adopters were like so many masterless samurai roaming from site to site, so I founded the World Association for Online Education.
Like the migration from X to Mastodon, I anticipate a #migration from commercial to open source research repositories. Slideshare was acquired and monetized, although we did not sign up to have our IP sold. AcademiaEdu has gotten more restrictive to non-payers and non-members, while greater prestige alone might not sustain non-member access to ResearchGate. The reach those two offer for free is unsurpassed at this time.
However, in principle, and as circumstances change, a respository such as Humanities Commons @hello becomes more attractive.
"Dual Nationality in Japan: Learning to Love Ambiguity" - new upload to Humanities Commons, which has a Mastodon instance.
Dual nationality is in the news again in Japan, where parents of happy-go-lucky haafu kids don't want the light to shine (haafu has a mostly positive meaning). Deeply in Japanese culture, custom is stronger than law, and so is unspoken consensus. Nearly everyone benefits from dual nationality. Though it is against the law, no country wants to lose productive young citizens by forcing them to choose. The issue has been smoked out by cases of famous people. In the 2020 Olympics, haafu Sky Brown - raised in Japan - competed for the UK. Naomi Osaka renounced her American citizenship to compete for Japan. She illustrates the strain of having to choose between national allegiances or parts of one's multicultural identity.
The Kashihara shrine (橿原神宮) area of Nara is a cradle of Japanese civilization formerly known as Yamato. I especially didn't want to miss the archaeological museum, so a couple of its treasures are included here. The shrine is dedicated to the legendary first Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇). The Buddhist temple Kumedera (久米寺) near Kashihara Jingū is a Shingon temple, but it predates the founder Kūkai. It was where Kūkai found the indecipherable Mahāvairocana Sūtra (大日経) that justified his precious voyage to Chang'an, as I alluded recently in the journal paper "Translation Issues in the Rapid Transmission of Esoteric Buddhism from India to China to Japan" at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371965557