Name: Akira R. Takemoto

INSTITUTION: Whitman College

LANGUAGE: Japanese

STATUS: Full-time, tenure track

TYPE: StudentAssistant

TYPE1: TravelFellowship

TITLE: Writing Japanese Beautifully

DURATION: winter - spring 99-00

DESCRIPTION: As described in the earlier proposal, this project will provide another tool to help students of Japanese learn how to write Japanese. Our goal, however, is to introduce the Japanese writing system as a living script to be drawn and produced with care, skill, and feeling we have mock video lessons for both the hiragana and the katakana. We need to continue working on filming and editing more kanji. We also need to film once more some of the characters that we did last summer. To continue with these tasks, I want to enlist the aid of a student technical assistant who is trained in the use of a Sony VX1000 digital video camcorder. The student will assist the project leaders in producing a series of short video segments that illustrate the writing tasks. We would also like to produce a series that introduces the IROHA poem in hiragana. The student assistant will capture the video on a Macintosh G-3 and use Avid Cinema software to edit the tape according to instructions from Takemoto and the calligrapher, Yoshiyasu Fujii. Eventually, we hope the video files will then be copied to videotapes or published to CD-ROM disks for student use with the workbook.

OUTCOME: Along with the workbook, we propose to create a series of video lessons that show students how the hiragana and katakana and kanji are written by a master calligrapher in real time. We want to show students how the calligrapher produces each stroke. We want them to appreciate how the hand holds the brush and how it allows the brush to work. We want students to see how the brush glides over the paper , both quickly and leisurely, as it produces an aesthetically pleasing character. Indeed, we want students to understand and to discover that learning how to write Japanese in this way will lead to a different kind of pleasure. We want to provide some bridges which will help students see that learning Japanese is more than a verbal or mental art, it is a visual art as well.

TIMELINE: Early versions of the material are currently being used in my Japanese classes at Whitman. Subsequent versions will continue to be used and modified as a result of teacher and student evaluation.

AMOUNT: $1569

BREAKDOWN: TRAVEL: I would like to request $1065 for three trips from Walla Walla to Seattle.

JANUARY: Takemoto to Seattle in order to continue working on the text for the workbook.

FEBRUARY: Fujii to Walla Walla to continue videotaping

MARCH: Takemoto to Seattle for continued work on the text. Proposed Travel Budget: Each Trip:

MILEAGE: $.31 x 500 = $155

LODGING: $75 x 2 = $150

MEALS: $50

TOTAL: $355.00 per trip $355 x 3 = $1065.00 STUDENT ASSISTANT BUDGETS: $504 $7.00/hour x 6 hours per week x 12 weeks = $504.00