Lecture Information:
Japanese language learners often consider kanji (i.e., Chinese characters borrowed into Japanese) one of the most challenging parts of the learning process. Challenges in kanji learning include difficulty in retention, multiple readings of a single character, visual similarity, the polysemic nature of kanji words, the large number of characters to learn, and visual complexity.

In her presentation, Prof. Mori will examine Japanese language students’ beliefs about kanji and kanji learning, and their relationship to the ability to learn novel kanji words. A questionnaire survey identified six attitudes toward kanji represented by the following beliefs: (a) kanji is fun; (b) kanji is difficult; (c) kanji has cultural value; (d) kanji has a future; (e) kanji is useful; and (f) kanji learning requires special abilities. It also identified the following six kanji learning strategies: (a) morphological analysis; (b) rote memorization; (c) context-based strategies; (d) associational strategies; (e) metacognitive strategies (i.e., strategies used to increase awareness of one's own learning); and (f) helplessness.

Further analysis indicated that students considered rote memorization most effective and metacognitive strategies least effective. An examination of the relationship between learner perceptions and learners’ performance on tests, however, revealed that belief in the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies accounted for 14-16% of the variance of success in compositional analysis. Based on these research findings, Prof. Mori will argue that (a) Japanese language students should reflect upon their own kanji learning from various perspectives, (b) students' task-specific beliefs have a significant impact on their achievement in a given task, and that (c) metacognitive awareness plays an important role in dealing with learning challenges.

This lecture is offered as the Sixth Shirato Lecture on Japanese Language.

Lecturer Information:
Yoshiko Mori is Associate Professor and Director of the Japanese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Georgetown University. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in second-language learning and instruction from a psycholinguistics perspective. Her research interests include second-language kanji learning and instruction, the role of metacognitive awareness in vocabulary learning, student perceptions, individual differences in language learning, and heritage language learning. Her work has been published in Reading Research Quarterly, Language Learning, Modern Language Journal, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Foreign Language Annals. At Georgetown, Dr. Mori teaches advanced Japanese reading, Japanese linguistics, and the acquisition of Japanese as a second language. She has also taught courses in second language acquisition and teaching methodology in the Japanese Pedagogy MA program at Columbia University.

 

Lecture Information:
The eighteenth-century lacquer market in Paris was governed by the need for large-size Chinese panels, but also the smaller, delicately executed Japanese lacquer objects were highly valued. The utmost luxury was the combination of the rare Japanese “antique” lacquer and their setting into gilded bronze mounts. Many of the chinoiserie cabinets in France were executed for women which suggest an image associated with China and Japan at that time: secluded, but elegant, luxurious feminity. Similar notions were applied to collecting Japanese lacquer: a pastime or a kind of parlour game, the field of the ‘amateurs’. The prices at the art market around the mid-eighteenth century were set or at least greatly influenced by the royal family, Madame de Pompadour and the financiers (fermiers généraux), like Randon de Boisset, friend of the painter François Boucher and owner of a significant lacquer collection. The financiers were buying art as investment – knowing the vulnerability of the property values. As a result of the weakness of the contemporary economy structure, money that couldn’t be invested safely found its way to the sale rooms and art dealers.

Madame de Pompadour purchased most of her Japanese lacquers from Lazare Duvaux. The Marquise from 1746 to 1762 bought, built and leased a total of fifteen properties, the decoration of these required numerous art objects. Her personal tastes were reflected in the interior concepts, she preferred the small-sized, intimate rooms when status and political representation required the monumental. Between May 1750 and June 1758 she acquired about sixty Japanese lacquer objects from Duvaux, including panels re-used to decorate furniture as well as lacquer boxes of different sizes and small maki-e (sprinkled picture) decorated boxes mounted as snuffboxes. Some of the highest quality Japanese maki-e objects to ever reach Europe were in the collection of the Marquise.

Lecturer Information:
Dr. Monika Bincsik, a specialist in Japanese lacquer and the history of its reception in Europe and the United States, has served as the Curator of Japanese Art at the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest, and is currently a Research Assistant at the Art Research Center of the Ritsumeikan University.

 

Lecture Information:
The talk uses three quotations as departure points for exploring the free-wheeling economic climate of early Edo. "Freedom of trade is necessary for the people" (Kyoto city statute, 1622). "The remarkable foods of our country number in the thousands of ten thousands" (popular cookbook, 1643). "By working diligently, you will store up ample grain and gold and thus establish your house. No official will lawlessly take away the surplus" (shogunal statute, 1649).

Lecturer Information:
Mary Elizabeth Berry is the author of Hideyoshi, The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto, and Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period.

 

NOVEMBER 2010

November 11th, 2010 (Thursday) 6:00 PM
"Rōdoku Workshop"
Workshop by Michiko Shirasaka, Vocal Artist
Venue: Room 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University