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high-school level history lectures in Japanese translated to English; poll
Topic Started: Jan 13 2017, 03:33 PM (443 Views)
samanjm
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Peasant
Someone please point me to the correct subforum if you can think of a better place to post this.

Recently I started watching a series of about 200 or so video lectures of Japanese history originally aimed at Japanese high school students. I really liked the lecturer's style, so I messaged him, we talked for a bit on skype and he asked me a question to which I wasn't quite sure how to answer, so I'm going to ask here, first.

Do you think there would be any demand at all for high-school level lectures of Japanese history in Japanese with English subtitles and/or slideshows with explanatory notes in English?

Before you answer, I should point out a few things first.

First of all, the contents would be in line with japanese high school curriculum, specifically the Yamakawa shousai nihonshi B. It would be a Japanese point of view as it is currently promulgated at schools. This has its downsides and upsides, which would probably be interesting to discuss.

Secondly, Japanese history at high school is pretty heavy on dates, names, places and boring stuff like that. It's not for everyone, and almost certainly not a good entry point for newbies, who would more likely than not be put off by all those details.

On the one hand, I thought it could be a good resource for example for university students who want to brush up their academic Japanese, so to speak. Then, on the other hand, I'm not sure a crutch like that would be a good idea if those people aren't advanced enough to listen to the lectures as-is. This is something I would also like to ask your opinon about.

You can surely imagine this would be a huge project if someone wanted to do it. And that's why I'm asking: Do you think anyone would appreciate it in the first place? Or do you think only people confident enough to tackle the native sources by themselves should tackle them, and thus, anyone else is just out of their league?

I can imagine SOME people would watch it...but I'm not sure it would be enough to make the effort worthwhile.

So...what do YOU think?
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ltdomer98
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Daijo Daijin

First off, can you post the link so we can take a look at it?

samanjm
Jan 13 2017, 03:33 PM
Secondly, Japanese history at high school is pretty heavy on dates, names, places and boring stuff like that. It's not for everyone, and almost certainly not a good entry point for newbies, who would more likely than not be put off by all those details.


That's what history IS. "Boring stuff like that"? If that bothers someone, the History Channel would be happy to add aliens for them, but it becomes entertainment, not history. Dates are important. I'm tutoring an AP European History HS student, and last week we went over the French Revolution. If you can't sort out what happened in June 1789 from July 1789 or October 1789 or even from 1793, there's no way you can understand how the French Revolution actually happened. I don't mean to attack you for your phrase, but that attitude really frustrates me, and as a professor you're GD right my students are going to be responsible for knowing dates, and if they don't like it they can go take a literature class or some other touchy feely stuff. History isn't all dates, events, places, and names, but you can't have history without them. The only scathing course review I've ever written was for an art history professor who couldn't keep track important dates and kept calling Hideyoshi the "Shogun" and other BS. Art part of the class was fine, but he was absolutely horrible at the "history" part.

/soapbox

Quote:
 
On the one hand, I thought it could be a good resource for example for university students who want to brush up their academic Japanese, so to speak. Then, on the other hand, I'm not sure a crutch like that would be a good idea if those people aren't advanced enough to listen to the lectures as-is. This is something I would also like to ask your opinon about.


I think it'd be great. How else do you become advanced enough to listen to the lectures if you don't have tools to check your comprehension? It's like how I watch Japanese movies--first time I watch them with English subtitles, so I don't miss any meaning. 2nd time with Japanese subtitles, so I can associate the kanji to the words and it crystallizes. From the third time on, no subtitles needed. A movie taking place today I might not even need the English subtitles to get 85~90% of it, but for a jidaigeki it sure helps. (Of course, now I critique their 古文 but I blame class).

Quote:
 
You can surely imagine this would be a huge project if someone wanted to do it. And that's why I'm asking: Do you think anyone would appreciate it in the first place? Or do you think only people confident enough to tackle the native sources by themselves should tackle them, and thus, anyone else is just out of their league?


Again, why would we say that if you can't read Japanese sources yourself you shouldn't study Japanese history? That's ludicrous. This whole site is about introducing Japanese history to a non-Japanese audience and making it accessible. I doubt most people with only a passing interest are going to watch lectures as opposed to whatever crap is on the History Channel, but it's certainly a step people could take on the way to improving. I certainly hope somebody buys books on Japanese history written in English, otherwise I'm wasting my time. I'd say this would be worthwhile even for PhD students like me--even though I'm reading in Japanese for my research, I'm not "native"--it's a slow process. I can tell you all about Oda Nobunaga's political life in English, but explaining it in Japanese, even after 20+ years of speaking Japanese at a normal/business office level, isn't "academic." Being able to hear lectures, ID significant vocab and add it to my own would be fantastic.

The issue I see may be that some people may take issue with the high school curriculum. I'd counter that more people looking at the curriculum (and then pointing out problems) is a good step towards fixing those problems. It's not as if US history classes teach bias-free history. On the flip side, perhaps those in other Asian countries that keep saying the Japanese government is whitewashing things can see how it's being handled in the classroom.


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samanjm
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First off, can you post the link so we can take a look at it?


With pleasure!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL10Gth9S1y6U_ecXgnH6bF-7l6zbalyzW

This is the official video ist for his japanese history class. Among other things, he does the world history, too.
He also has a special blog for both of those where he posts fill-in templates to go along with the lectures in pdf.
Both of the history courses are completed, so you can take a look at whatever period you're interested in. I really like the comparably easy-to-understand language and the simple yet comprehensive study notes layout (the things he writes on his blackboard). As I understand it from what he told me, this pacing would be too slow for a real high school class, and deliberately so. He talks much more about stuff he wouldn't have time to cover in a real class, to make it more accessible and flesh it out a bit. Yes, he is a certified teacher. The contents is still limited to what students need to know for the exams, it's not a university level. But that still is quite a load from the perspective of a non-native japanese history buff. I, for one thing, have yet to see a one volume (sic!!!) English survey history as detailed as a japanese high school history textboook (seriously now, tell me if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to read it). Of course, there is some bias, bias that's getting quite some publicity especially in the modern-history part, but in terms of sheer amount of facts it goes pretty far. As should be expected for a native source, I guess.

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I don't mean to attack you for your phrase, but that attitude really frustrates me, and as a professor you're GD right my students are going to be responsible for knowing dates, and if they don't like it they can go take a literature class or some other touchy feely stuff.

Haha, I'm with you there, trust me! What I meant to say was that in case of Japanese high-school curriculum the narrative tends to drown in all the facts, because it's the facts, names, technical terms and dates that shows up in the tests (which are composed mostly of either fill-in or multiple choice questions, or a mix of both), because that's the easiest thing to evaluate. Result being the kids learn all the details but if you asked them what happened, they wouldn't know where to start and how to "tell the story". So without being able to see the big picture, the dates also eventually fall out of their memory and in the end, they know nothing...maybe I'm being too harsh and jaded here, it's pretty difficult to find the balance, but it makes me kind of sad when I try to talk about history with some of my japanese friends and all they remember are fragmented trivia without any real sense of continuity. That said, maybe I'm biased with that assessment, too. But this is a problem with every history curriculum, right? You need to provide the students with a decent amount of "facts", as you rightly said yourself. But this is a pretty broad topic, let's stick to Japan, shall we? :-D

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I think it'd be great. How else do you become advanced enough to listen to the lectures if you don't have tools to check your comprehension? It's like how I watch Japanese movies--first time I watch them with English subtitles, so I don't miss any meaning. 2nd time with Japanese subtitles, so I can associate the kanji to the words and it crystallizes. From the third time on, no subtitles needed. A movie taking place today I might not even need the English subtitles to get 85~90% of it, but for a jidaigeki it sure helps. (Of course, now I critique their 古文 but I blame class).

Yes, I've been thinking that, too. By the way, you're not the only one not too happy about the quasi-archaic language in jidaigeki, I've seen Japanese on chiebukuro writing not very nice comments about that. But since it's for general audience and not scholars, I guess it can't be helped.

Quote:
 
Again, why would we say that if you can't read Japanese sources yourself you shouldn't study Japanese history? That's ludicrous. This whole site is about introducing Japanese history to a non-Japanese audience and making it accessible. I doubt most people with only a passing interest are going to watch lectures as opposed to whatever crap is on the History Channel, but it's certainly a step people could take on the way to improving. I certainly hope somebody buys books on Japanese history written in English, otherwise I'm wasting my time. I'd say this would be worthwhile even for PhD students like me--even though I'm reading in Japanese for my research, I'm not "native"--it's a slow process. I can tell you all about Oda Nobunaga's political life in English, but explaining it in Japanese, even after 20+ years of speaking Japanese at a normal/business office level, isn't "academic." Being able to hear lectures, ID significant vocab and add it to my own would be fantastic.

Yes yes yes!! :-) This is what I wanted to know and wasn't sure about. I told him highlighting japanese history-specific terms would probably be much appreciated. Vocabulary that doesn't come up in casual (or business, for that matter) conversation but are very useful when it comes to Japanese history. You don't get to see so many japanese terms even in specialized english monographs. The authors simply render them to English because if they didn't, it would sooner or later get unreadable. And you are probably aware there's so much more than tozama/fudai daimyo, han, samurai shougun and the dozen or so others that most people reading in English run into.

And about the curriculum- this was the original reason I thought of looking into this. To see what the students are actually taught and how much it is or isn't biased. What I would like to stress out here is that at this stage, it would be rather pointless to spoil it for the guy by criticizing what he teaches and what he leaves out. I'd save that for other places. What he wants to do is spread the message, and that already deserves kudos in my opinion. All I'm saying is, let's give him support before passing any judgements.

Anyway, it should be noted all of this is still at the stage of planning. But I still think effort like this deserves publicity, so here I am telling you there's a person thinking of doing this in the future. In his own spare time, for free.
I feel pretty excited about it, even if it's just an idea at this point. And I wanted to make sure I'm not the only one. And I can see I'm not. I'm sure he'll be happy to hear about this, too. :-)
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ltdomer98
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Daijo Daijin

There's a lot to reply to that I can't now (knee deep in papers) but I looked at the link and will probably watch them next week.

Though to ask one question--what's your plan for subtitling? Or, I guess, his plan? This is the kind of thing there are grants and other funding sources for, depending on how he wants to do it.
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samanjm
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Though to ask one question--what's your plan for subtitling? Or, I guess, his plan? This is the kind of thing there are grants and other funding sources for, depending on how he wants to do it.


Well, he asked me for help for starters, and I will gladly do as much as I can. He plans to remake it for that purpose. Make for example a powerpoint presentation or write the main points on the blackboard in advance, hold the lecture normally in Japanese like he's used to and add English subtitles to translate what he's saying. He did mention he could try to make some money of off it via youtube based on the number of views (don't know what it's called now, but surely you know what I mean).

But...grants and/or fundraisers? We didn't think that far ahead since we weren't sure about the demand, but that's definitely something to think about. From what I know, the red tape in Japan is not gonna make it easy, but it's worth a ponder.
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ltdomer98
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Well, my school has a Digital Humanities center that's searching for projects to throw money at. I was just at a presentation they gave on how to apply for grants last week. He wouldn't be able to make money on it, it'd have to be non-profit, for-education, etc. Don't know if it'd pass all the checks to get funded, but doesn't hurt for me to check into it. Something like this would be pretty valuable for students, and we could probably get students (like me) to do the subtitling, and the grants would cover labor costs like that. Again, just a random off-the-top of my head thought.
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