Japan Society for the Promotion of Science:Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
Date (from‐to) : 1996 -1998
Author : TANAKA Nozomi; SAITO Satomi; OKAZAKI Toshio; YAMADA Izumi; HAYASHI Satoko; UENO Tazuko
What we have learned in the course of three-year-research can be summed up as follows :
1.Teaching Japanese language to the Asian women we studied, in most cases, has an innately assimilative and repressive nature, and may funcrion to mold theminto onveniently invented pseudo-Japanese roles.
2.Among a number of support activities organized by the local Japanese volunteers we found a few which succeed in helpingthe Asian wom.en gain their'voices' in the local communities.
3.Which of the two approaches, namely there pressive teaching of Japanese language and movements that help to aquize one's voice, to take has become an issue in the commnunity, and Japnese-language-teaching paradigm is being questioned.
Also in the course of these three yeas, pep1e who were the subjects of this research made the researchers re-examine the framework of the research itself, which we consider now the most significant event. Being ethnographic doesn't mean we are free from the exploiting nature of 'reseaches', and we had to reoconsider our position and stance in the local commmunity. We need to free ourselves from the socially recognized framework of'researches' and relate ourselves to local communities as simply another'other.