野村 和之

Research has shown that Japanese language learners in Hong Kong are affectively rather than instrumentally motivated. Put simply, they tend to learn Japanese because they like people or things associated with Japan(ese). To better understand their affection for Japan(ese), I explore how Japanese language learners’ imagined target language communities shape their symbolic investments in Japanese and Japanese-speaking cultural identities in contemporary Hong Kong. To this end, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 ethnic Chinese Hong Kong learners of Japanese. After data analysis, three main themes emerged: “symbolic investment”, “perceived marginalisation”, and “voluntary peripheralisation”. My findings suggest that these Japanese language learners make diverse and personalised symbolic investments in exchange for valuable intangibles, particularly security and well-being. While they perceive themselves as marginalised from imagined Japanese-speaking communities, they also tend to remain voluntarily on the periphery of such imagined Japanese-speaking communities to construct positive Japanese-speaking (but non-Japanese) cultural identities and to secure their imagined “Japan” as a safe haven from the difficult realities of Hong Kong. These learners of Japanese thus see their “Japan” as imagined “foreign” communities to which they do not want or need to fully belong. I conclude this paper with useful implications for researchers and educators.

In the most recent Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS2018) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the percentage of Japanese teachers who taught critical thinking (CT) and professed self-efficacy in CT teaching was by far the lowest among participating economies (OECD, 2019). This research explores the emic or indigenous understanding of CT in Japanese education through in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 schoolteachers of diverse backgrounds. Japanese schoolteachers find the nuance of CT undesirable. Yet, a particular facet of CT, namely multidimensional-multiperspective thinking (MMT), is well-received since the national curriculum guidelines, which most participants find to be their teaching foundation, lay strong emphasis on MMT. Almost all participants agree that low socioeconomic-status (SES) schools have difficulty teaching CT/MMT. Furthermore, a hidden curriculum in Japanese schools, namely valuing empathy, also affects CT teaching. Being empathetic constitutes a core value in Japanese schooling, so participants find it impossible to practice CT without teaching empathy. The findings suggest that the curricular power, whether official or implicit, is forceful in Japan. Still, schoolteachers practise indigenous versions of CT teaching and manage to keep away from the power of the etic/global model of CT teaching. This paper concludes with practical implications for educators to reconcile the etic and emic understandings of CT teaching.

教育現場で教えられる（が，学ばれるとは限らない）体系化はされていない価値観や行動規範を潜在的カリキュラムと呼ぶ。参与観察・ナラティヴを融合したエスノグラフィーを手法とし，香港の日本語教育現場でどのような潜在的カリキュラムが教えられ，香港人学習者がそれをどのように学ぶ（学ばない）のかを分析したところ，挨拶・時間遵守・美意識・丁寧さ・共感などが，教師の人生経験・ビリーフやコンテクストを反映した潜在的カリキュラムとして教えられていた。特に香港人非母語話者教師は，日本語母語話者らしさを潜在的カリキュラムとして明示的に教える傾向が強く，国民国家＜日本＞とは異なる，香港人のアイデンティティを反映した＜日本＞を学習者と協働して構築していた。一方，香港人学習者は自律性が高く，自らの価値観が潜在的カリキュラムと食い違うと無関心・抵抗を見せた。更に，近年では教室で政治的な話題を避ける行動規範も広がりつつある。

千葉大学国際教育センターでは、2021年度前期に日本語教育プログラムの授業を受講した者を対象に質的インタビューを実施し、29名から回答を得た。学習者は総じてオンライン授業より対面授業を好んだ。主な要因として、オンライン授業では対面授業に比べ、学習者間のインタラクションが取りにくい点が挙げられた。一方、学習管理システム（LMS）を活用したフィードバックには高い評価が寄せられるなど、コロナ後のカリキュラム設計に有益な知見が得られた。

Fluent speakers of a target language choosing to enrol in beginner-level courses at tertiary institutes could be considered unfair. In this paper, however, based on data obtained from in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 students at a Hong Kong university, we show that fluent speakers of Japanese – a widely-spoken foreign language in Hong Kong – were motivated to engage in learning activities during beginner Japanese lessons, as those lessons constituted ‘safe houses’ in which the participants shaped subversive identities against the perceived institutional dominance (GPA-oriented system) of the university and negotiated security. Our key findings related to the participants’ L2 motivations are three-fold. First, perceived ease pertained to the participants’ motivations to enrol in the course. Second, the participants were motivated to ‘outsmart’ the university’s dominant GPA-oriented system and ‘cash in’ their accumulated effort to achieve fluency in Japanese, ‘converting’ it into good grades. Third, the participants showed motivation because they believed beginning Japanese lessons to be sites in which they could feel secure, due to being able to speak Japanese and extend their Japanese-related social networks. This paper concludes with implications for L2 motivation research and suggestions for language teachers who are faced with such fluent speakers in beginner-level language classrooms.

To understand long-term motivations for second language (L2) learning/socialisation, this study analyses the biographical narratives of 30 Hong Kong Chinese who are proficient in Japanese by using ethnographic interviews. From a situated learning perspective, our research findings originate in the participants' transformational episodes and centre on the following three dimensions of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP): (1) gaining legitimate access to L2 socialisation in Japanese-speaking communities of practice, (2) evolving processes from LPP to fuller participation in Japanese-speaking communities, and (3) constructing identities as L2 users of Japanese. Participants gained legitimate access to L2 socialisation relatively easily in Hong Kong, where interests in Japanese popular culture tended to initiate motivation. This accessibility increased owing to the internet, particularly online social networking services, leading to ongoing motivation development. Due to perceived cultural homologies between China and Japan, participants’ motivations were found to be fuelled by a sense of ownership regarding social ethics and other aspects of Japanese culture as part of their cultural identities as Chinese. The study concludes with useful implications for both classroom teaching and future research on long-term L2 motivations.

点数至上主義の競争文化で学歴が社会的威信に直結する香港では，学校が強い影響力を 持ち，学校での競争で優位に立てない青少年は抑圧や劣等感に晒される。本稿はエスノグラフィーの手法で香港人青少年の日本語学習を社会文化的文脈に絡めて分析し，青少年学 習者にとって，日本語学習が学校での抑圧から逃れるための「心の拠り所」(safe house) として機能していることを明らかにする。香港において日本語は大学入学資格試験の選択 科目になるなど十分な威信を持ち，学校内外での日本語学習は青少年が学校からの抑圧への「対抗的アイデンティティ」(subversive identity)を構築する基盤となっている。その 反面，心の拠り所となるはずの日本語学習も香港の競争文化と無縁ではない。香港で広く 普及する SNS を媒介した青少年学習者同士の繋がりの中にも，言語能力・文化的知識・ 新情報の入手速度などをめぐり，学校での競争と共通した優越感と劣等感のせめぎ合いが存在している。

Native-speakerism is defined as forms of prejudice and discrimination typically against (but possibly in favour of) non-native-speaking teachers (NNSTs). This qualitative case study explored native-speakerism perceived by two non-native-speaking teachers of Japanese in Hong Kong. The data were obtained from semi-structured interviews. Our main findings are twofold. First, native-speakerism is largely context-dependent, and researchers should pay heed to small culture inherent in each setting. The data indicate that the inequalities between native-speaking teachers (NSTs) and NNSTs can be imperceptible in one context, but obvious forms of prejudice or discrimination in favour of NSTs may be observable in other contexts. Second, despite individual differences, each participant as a learner of Japanese wishes to attain native-level proficiency and ultimately pass for a native speaker. That is, the two participants internalize a linear continuum of proficiency ranging between zero beginners and native speakers. This is a form of implicit native-speakerism in favour of native speakers, because non-native speakers are excluded from models for language learners. This paper thus problematizes the paucity of non-native-speaker models in Japanese language teaching, with native-speaker models being taken for granted.

This chapter argues that Japanese language has functioned as soft power in Hong Kong in Joseph Nye’s terms since the Umbrella Movement of late 2014, the largest sit-in protest for full democracy in Hong Kong’s history. Although the movement was ultimately unsuccessful, Hong Kong gained attention—and often sympathy—from Japan through media and the Internet. Consequently, Japanese language—which is widely studied and used in Hong Kong—expressed such favourable gazes on Hong Kong from Japan. Since the Umbrella Movement, Japanese language as the vehicle of gazes from Japan has empowered largely pro-democracy young Hongkongers. Further, it has encouraged them to feel an attachment to Japan, Hong Kong’s most significant democratic neighbour.

In the 2000s, the new national curriculum, dubbed as the ‘yutori curriculum,’ introduced a new subject for project-based learning ‘Integrated Study’ as its prominent feature. Comparing curriculum orientations in project-based learning in three historical periods after the WWII including Integrated Study, this paper aims to offer a genealogy of post-war Japanese school curriculum primarily based on a critical reading of the national curriculum guidelines on project-based learning, which is emblematic of the extending power of post-war Japan’s curriculum authorities. Although Integrated Study was purportedly child-centred and put emphasis on each child’s personal relevance and each school’s autonomy, the finding of this study shows that Integrated Study in the yutori curriculum was rather a technology that disciplined schools, teachers, and classroom processes to shape children into morally good and cognitively flexible Japanese nationals. Despite its rhetoric of child-centeredness and personal relevance, the introduction of Integrated Study as part of the yutori curriculum was ultimately part of the state’s move to gain further control over schooling.

Japanese is a major foreign language in Hong Kong with an estimated 90,000 Japanese-speaking Hong Kong Chinese today. This thesis examines how sociocultural contexts feed into various motivations behind Japanese language learning in contemporary Hong Kong. By observing interactions at eight classrooms in four educational institutions and analysing life history narratives from 29 proficient speakers of Japanese, I look into how Hong Kong Chinese learners of the Japanese language craft their social identities through their language socialization. Language socialization is defined as motivational processes in which a novice learner seeks competence in the target language, and simultaneously desires to become associated with the target culture. My findings are two-fold. First, while the “Chinese learner” is often characterized as a passive or non-autonomous learner, the Hong Kong Chinese learners of Japanese language I studied are active learners who self-select what they want to gain or not to gain from language learning. Second, Hong Kong Chinese learners of Japanese language are generally motivated to become socialized to Japanese social ethics and aesthetics beyond mere pragmatic purposes. Related to the second finding, Japanese language learning offers a way of claiming an imagined Chinese identity through a shared past of Confucian tradition. Many Japanese-speaking Hongkongers perceive ethnic/historical legitimacy in claiming Japanese social ethics/aesthetics to which they have socialized themselves. While this may imply that learning Japanese language in Hong Kong is ultimately traditional, their self-identification and distinction, as well as claims of a romanticized ancient China are a modern project, being fuelled by the current sociopolitical and sociocultural tensions between Hong Kong, China, and Japan. This thesis should be of interest to educators of Japanese and other languages who wish for a contextualized understanding of time and effort made by each learner beyond particular cultural or economical appeals. It should also be of interest to researchers of education, linguistics, anthropology, and social science in general who wish to explore language, society, and culture in today’s Hong Kong, where political tensions are rising and where language is implicitly tied to ways in which people are navigating and crafting their social identities.

香港において、年少の日本語学習者が存在感を増しつつある。本論は、年少の日本語学習者に大きな影響を与えると思われる保護者を対象にインタビューを実施し、保護者が年少者に日本語を学習させる際の意識を考察する。全体的な傾向として、日本への親近感・好印象が、統合的動機へと結びつく。同時に、保護者の意識の中にある子どもの就職や旅行など具体的な目標が、道具的動機へと結びつく。加えて、統合的でも道具的でもない「学びそのものへの積極性」から生じる学習動機が存在する。香港においては、「学ぶこと」を肯定する意識が非常に強く、英語と中国語の習得が前提付けられた多言語社会にありながらも、日本語が第三の言語として学ばれるのである。