Professor

Nobuko IKEDA specializes in educational technology for foreign language instruction and teaching Japanese as a foreign language. She is involved in researching the application of media and technology in teaching foreign languages from the perspective of creating an effective learning environment that transcends ① the effect of students’ learning and cognitive styles, native languages, and cultural backgrounds; and ② the time and place for distance learning, e-learning, and online testing. Recently, she has been conducting research on effective methods of Japanese language education for students with dyslexia, training Japanese language teachers to perform in multicultural societies, and working on examining the effectiveness of Japanese language education as a diplomatic strategy.

Major Topics of Research: Educational Technology for Foreign Languages, Japanese as a Foreign Language

Professor

Fumiya ISHIKAWA travaille du point de vue linguistique sur les processus de la transmission des savoirs (ou de l’information) dans et par les activités langagières ainsi que sur ceux de la (re)construction de la relation interpersonnelle et de celle entre individus et société. Il est intéressé aussi par le changement du système éducatif et celui de la société qui se produisent à l’échelle mondiale, pour mettre en lumière la « force » exercée par la structure sociale.

Sujets : réflexion sur la transmission des savoirs (ou de l’information).

Fumiya ISHIKAWA works from a linguistic point of view on the processes of transmission of knowledge (or information) in and by language activities as well as on the (re)construction of the interpersonal relationship and the relation between individuals and society. He also examines the diversions of global educational and social systems to highlight the “power” of the social structure.

Theme: reflections on the transmission of knowledge (or information).

Associate Professor

Ron MARTIN’s research interests are achievement motivation development and intercutlural communication in language teacher edcuation. Regarding achievement motivation development, he is interested in the development of children’s perceptions of their abilities and their value of foreign language learning and how this relates to issues of confdience, desire to study, and the future choice of learning another language. His research has shown that Japanese school children may lack some value in English language learning, and he has argued that without better assessment, elementary school children may not develop a clear sense of confidence in their language abilities. Regarding intercultural communication in language teacher education, he is interested in understanding how language teachers can be better equipped to present intercultural communication issues into their langauge learning classrooms for the betterment of students’ overall language use abilities.

Professor

Chika MARUYAMA specializes in Japanese language education and sociolinguistics. She is currently researching the following topics: 1. Learner factors and corresponding curriculum development, course design and Japanese language learning materials; 2. Language variation and Japanese language education; 3. Research on training proactive Japanese language teachers; and 4. Use of language education indices for international collaboration, through study of Japanese language education.

Research interests: Japanese language education and sociolinguistics.

Professor

Satomi MORI’s research has concentrated on language acquisition among young children who grow up in a multilingual environment, with specific focus on both pragmatic and syntactic development. Through discourse analysis of parent-child interactions in naturally occurring contexts she attempts to explore the development of pragmatic competence among bilingual children, as well as to pin down the determining factors for language choice in bilingual families which has important implications for heritage language transmission in multilingual families. She has also been investigating the systematicity of cross-linguistic influence between the two grammars taking an interdisciplinary approach, in an attempt to spread the idea that bilinguals have a unique set of linguistic systems distinct from those of monolinguals.

Fields of research: bilingualism, language acquisition, bilingualism

Associate Professor

Tatsuya NAKATA’s research interests include second language acquisition, English education, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL). His recent research examined the effects of a number of factors such as the distribution, type, and frequency of practice on second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. He has also published papers on topics such as the acquisition of L2 grammar and effects of corrective feedback on L2 acquisition.

Fields of research: Second Language Acquisition, English Education, and Computer-Assisted Language Learning

Professor

Kunihiko SATO specializes in linguistics (Spanish linguistics), especially in lexicology and semantics. His researches have been on construction of the meaning of a word, meaning change, relationship between meanings in a polysemous word, lexicon’s influence to speaker’s framework of cognition, rules of new word formation, with special interest in Spanish language. These may apparently be unglamorous topics, through which we can see, however, dynamism and creativity of language, and something on the foundation of speaker’s intuition.

Themes: Relationship between meanings in a polysemous word, Morphological and semantic tendencies in neology, Comparison of “fundamental meaning” theory and cognitive semantics.

Professor

Based on her years of experience both as an international journalist and a conference interpreter, Kayo MATSUSHITA specializes in news translation, a subfield of Translation Studies which focuses on translation and interpreting that takes place during international news production. Her research interests include but are not limited to a)the unique roles journalists play as news translators, b)specific translation strategies used in news translation, and c)the impact of technological advancements on translation practices in the media and beyond.

Professor

Holding translation and interpreting to be an act of mediating communication across languages and cultures, Kayoko TAKEDA has focused her research on the social and cultural aspects of translation and interpreting. In exploring the social, political, economic, cultural, and historical contexts in which translation and interpreting occur, she pursues an interdisciplinary approach, collaborating frequently with experts in diverse fields. Her research interests include the history of translation and interpreting, translator and interpreter education, interpreters in conflict, translation policy, and audiovisual translation.

Professor

After having worked as a professional translator and a localization project manager in the industry, Masaru YAMADA specializes in Translation and Interpreting Studies, with a focus on human translator’s interaction with translation technologies such as CAT tools and machine translation, translation process research (TPR), including post-editing (MTPE), translation in language teaching (TILT), corpus-based approach to audio video translation (AVT), and developing metalanguages for translation.

Associate Professor

Taketo ISHIGURO’s research interests are in intercultural communication, especially intercultural discourse in organizations. He uses qualitative research methods such as life story interview of a constructionist approach, modified grounded theory approach, and discourse analysis. In recent years, he has explored cognitive orientations of Japanese managers in “multicultural teams” where culturally diverse people work together. He has also developed a model called “context-shifting” which helps us intentionally become aware of varied latent contexts and thus become able to understand phenomena in many different contexts.

Professor

Yuko KAWAI’s research concern lies in analyzing communication and exploring conceptual and theoretical issues concerning nationalism, racism, and multiculturalism in Japan. She is particularly interested in critically examining the construction of Japaneseness in relation to its discursive Others historically and transnationally and thereby transforming the dominant idea of Japanese nationhood to construct a multiculturalist Japanese society in which diverse cultural identities and practices are respected without being essentialized. Her current and previous research topics include Japanese concepts of race and racism, the nexus of Japanese racism and nationalism, Japanese neoliberal cultural nationalism and globalization, and racial representations of Asians in the United States.

Professor

Basically, Wataru KOYAMA’s approach to “communication” comes out of the semiotic tradition of linguistic anthropology, developed by Peirce, Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Roman Jakobson, Dell Hymes, Michael Silverstein, Asif Agha, et al. and combining insights gained from the neighboring disciplines such as sociolinguistics, pragmatics, sociology, and cultural anthropology. In this socio-semiotic tradition, not only language, but also culture and society, including socio-cultural processes such as “modernization,” “globalization,” and “(trans-)localization,” as well as ideological regimentation and indexical ordering, are investigated and analyzed from the pragmatic, processual perspective that focuses on communicative events and practices.

Research areas: (socio)linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, (neo-)Pragmatism, post-Kantian critical philosophy.

Professor

Junya MOROOKA studies in the areas of rhetorical theory, history, and criticism. His current research interests include a critical-historical analysis of discourse on issues of labor migration (foreign workers) and immigration in post-World War II Japan. He is also interested in exploring the history of communication studies in Japan and has published articles on speech and debate education and the historical development of rhetorical studies and practices since the Meiji period.

Associate Professor

Ami Kaneko specializes in cultural anthropology, with primary interests in verbal and nonverbal communication in Christian missionization and conversion. Her research has focused on encounter and interaction between European missionaries and local population taken place from 17 th to 18 th centuries in the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos, colonial Spanish South America (what is now frontier region of Bolivia and Brazil). Major Topics of Research: Cultural Anthropology

Professor

Keiko HAMAZAKI’s research interests lie in the area of cultural representations of the “Other,” such as images of women and migrants in literature and film, especially those in travelogues or travel literature. Her research is based in cultural studies, gender theory,orientalism, and post colonialism and focuses on power dynamics between “writing and observing subject” and “the written and gazed object.” By analyzing literary texts of German emigrants writers, her research covers how the texts of immigrants can change the relationships between the “Other” and “the host society” and how literary texts can contribute to the coexistence of diverse cultures.

Professor

Hiromi HOSHINO’s field of studies is Musicology, especially Historical Musicology. Her primary research interest is the study of autograph scores and stylistic analysis of music, especially of the music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847). In a wider sense, she is also interested in the historical, social and aesthetic background of how the tone system established in Ancient Greece was adopted by the Western Christianity.

Professor

Masako ISHII studies the reconstruction and peace-building process of conflict affected areas. Her main research field is Southern Philippines. She especially pays attention to the issues of how the international soceity extend humanitairian and peace-building assistance to the conflict affected areas and analyse them from the perspectives of area studies.

Associate Professor

Naonori KUSAKABE specializes in South Asian studies, particularly themes such as international cooperation and development. International cooperation supports countries and people abroad towards the peace and stability of international society.　 However, there are a great many examples of assistance that do not achieve planned outcomes due to lack of understanding of the cultures and social structures of developing countries. Therefore, Kusakabe approaches social issues in the international community from the viewpoint of people living in developing countries, and considers how international cooperation should work on the basis of understanding different cultures.

Field of research: International Cooperation, Development Sociology and Area Studies(South Asia)

Professor

Mie KUROIWA has a PhD in history of Western art. Her field of research is late medieval and early Renaissance art. She has been conducting research projects on illuminated manuscripts of the period, analyzing in particular different aspects of the text/image relationship. Manuscripts that had been studied include both the latin and the vernacular, such as historiographical litterature, Arthurian romances, moral treatises, hagiographical litterature, liturgical books and the Bible. Of late, she studies books of hours and prayer books from a broader perspective. In addition to the text/image relationship of a given illuminated para-liturgical manuscript, she looks into a more “performative” function of the book in question. Taking into account, for exemple, talismanic aspect of ornamental elements of the manuscript or the symbolism of the place in which the manuscript was used, she tries to understand the image not only from a esthetic point of view but from a interdisciplinary standpoint that relies on studies of religion, social history and cultural studies.

Professor

Hyangjin LEE specializes in film studies and cultural sociology. Her research in East Asia with a focus on North and South Korea has resulted in publications on the identity politics of national cinema and transnational film culture, the cinematic representation of nationhood, war memories, gender, and sexuality, and the Korean wave. Her current research interests include the historicity and post-nationality of zainichi cinema, women’s bodies as national tropes and vehicles of feminist film criticism, and North Korea’s international co-production ventures.

Professor

Katsumi OKUNO’s specialty is cultural anthropology and his major concern is “what is mankind?” He started from ethnographic study of shamanism and magic among a slash-and-burn agriculturists of Indonesian Borneo in the 1990’s and shifted to the multi-species study of an hunter-and-gatherers in Malaysian Borneo. He has lectured on the topics related to religious anthropology and anthropology of sexuality.

Professor

Akiko SATAKE’s field of studies is the 20th century Irish Drama. She does a literary analysis of plays, with a special emphasis on history plays, folk plays and folk history plays, looking at the relationship betwen history and literature. In relation to the intercultural communication studies, she has lectured on the cultural differences in humour with Ireland and Japan as examples.

Associate Professor

Mariko YAMAGUCHI’s fields of research are as follows: philosophy (philosophy of language, philosophy of action, philosophy of art, metaphysics and epistemology), religious rituals, folk performance art. She currently focuses on analyzing the relationships among religious rituals/traditional performance art, the symbols and movements appearing in them and what they mean, the philosophy or cosmology underlying them, the performers’ intentions and how the audience come to interpret them.