Why I study Japanese

Besides fulfilling the PhD language requirement, I study Japanese because I want to be able to read and communicate in Japanese.

One particular incident triggered my interest for the language. In 2017, when I was attending a summer school on Digital Humanities at Lausanne, I subsequently made a tour to Matterhorn, where I met a Japanese traveller. He was a hearing-impaired architect but we had a great time communicating, through gestures and by writing down words in English and kanji. I really admired his courage and passion for learning. He inspired my interest in the Japanese sign language, among other things. We keep regular contact over the Internet (in English for the time being) and I hope that one day I would be able to communicate with him fluently in Japanese.

I also read lifestyle and productivity books by Japanese authors, in Chinese translation. These books cover topics as varied as effective note-taking, organization method, daily routine management, voice training, etc. Although they are already massively helpful to me, I figure that if I learn Japanese, I would be able to discover more of interesting books are available in that language.

I spent over a decade living and studying in Singapore. There is a vibrant Japanese community in the West Coast region, where I used to live. Although the size of the Japanese community in Singapore is not particularly large (numbering 36,423 as of October 2017 [1]), they have a comprehensive range of amenities. Walking past the Japanese Primary School and the High School Affiliated with Waseda-Shibuya is a daily experience for me, not to mention time spent in the numerous Japanese restaurants, the gigantic bookstore Kinokuniya and department stores such as Takashimaya and Isetan. They are very impressive. Coincidentally, one of my first hiking tours in Singapore took me to the quiet (imagine the difficulty of getting quietness in Singapore) and well-maintained Japanese Cemetery. I will never forget the combination of perfect sunshine, brilliant flower corridor and the reassuring aura surrounding the shrine on that day.

This semester I am taking a course on Japanese esoteric Buddhism, in which I study the various gods, such as the Myōken 妙見菩薩. My readings also take me to the various places for important shrines, such as 山口Yamaguchi, 八代Yatsushiro, 日枝Hie, 千葉Chiba, the 房総Bōsō peninsula, etc. I look forward to embark on a field trip in the future to see the shrines and their collections. In sum, this Buddhism course gives me great exposure to the names and pronunciations of the different deities in Japan. An interesting link to what we have learnt in the First Year Japanese course so far is the names of the days of the week, i.e. the five planets plus the sun and moon have connection to the seven stars, an important contribution of esoteric Buddhism to Japanese culture [2].


References:

[1] https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/singapore/data.html, retrieved 1 Oct, 2018.
[2] Bernard Faure, "Under the Gaze of the Stars: Myōken and the Northern Dipper", The Fluid Pantheon, University of Hawai'i Press, 2016.