Name: Akira Takemoto

INSTITUTION: Whitman College

LANGUAGE: Japanese

STATUS: Full-time, tenure track

TYPE: StudentAssistant

TITLE: Writing Japanese Beautifully

DURATION: continuing project: summer and fall 2000

DESCRIPTION: This is a continuing project: As I described in our initial 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 do not want students to consider written Japanese as a series of static symbols to memorize. That is, the sounds of Japanese, when written, represent a beautiful series of hand-drawn pictures. For this reason, we will ask students to begin seeing the hiragana and katakana and kanji not as mechanically produced symbols, but as pictorial images that can be produced beautifully and well. We hope that students will also learns to appreciate good writing implements and develop a spirit or heart that senses the aesthetic qualities inherent in “writing Japanese beautifully. One task will be to develop a new kind of workbook or (renshË-chŘ). The models will be done by master calligrapher Yoshiyasu Fujii. These models will be scanned into the computer so that we can manipulate the grayscale spectrum in ways that are not possible with photocopy technology. 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. To do this, we will enlist the aid of a student technical assistant who is trained in the use of a Sony VX1000 digital video camcorder and video editing software.

OUTCOME: The student will assist the project leaders in producing a series of short video segments that illustrate the writing tasks. 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: Our goal for the summer will be to complete editing of video lessons that cover the writing of the hiragana syllabary and to introduce approximately 15 additional kanji characters. We would also like to produce a series that introduces hiragana. The student assistant will capture the video on a Macintosh G-4 and use Final Cut Pro software to edit the tape according to instructions from Takemoto and the calligrapher, Yoshiyasu Fujii. The video segments will be recorded in a traditional tatami mat space specially designed by Takemoto. The video files will then be copied to videotapes or published to CD-ROM disks for student use with the workbook. The lessons will be used in my classes of beginning and intermediate Japanese.

AMOUNT: $600

BREAKDOWN: 75 hours @ $8 per hour