NihonGO NOW!: An Alternative Way to Learn Japanese
Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun, has been a key player in modern history. Especially its role in the electronic media entertainment industry. From anime like Pokemon and Dragon Ball, that shaped most of our childhoods, to video games like Mario and Resident Evil. All have their roots in Japan. Whenever it came to car or home appliance manufacturing, the Japanese topped the other countries. With so many people interested in Robotics, Japan became a symbol for the Scifi future many people envisioned out of the 21st century. This meant Japan attracted a large crowd of different people who were interested in the futuristic, materialistic culture of Japan. The only barrier for many around the world in assimilation was the Japanese language. With its many nuances and dialects, learning Japanese can become a very difficult hurdle for many people. And the entertainment industry has been at work for years now. Language teaching cartoons and video games work for younger audiences but older people also need to find a relaxing way to learn Japanese. Our very own, Hiroki Ohsawa came up with a Solution he calls, NihonGO NOW!
NihonGo NOW! is a web series designed for older audiences where US residents Sasha, Brian and Amy try to learn the Japanese language and mix in with the Natives of Japan. NihonGO NOW! sources its inspiration from a textbook series of the same name written by authors Mari Noda (The Ohio State University), Patricia Wetzel (Portland State University), Ginger Marcus (Washington University in St. Louis), Stephen D. Luft (University of Pittsburgh), Shinsuke Tsuchiya (Brigham Young University), and Masayuki Itomitsu (Linfield College). Hiroki Ohsawa feels that Japanese holds an artistic edge over English because of the complexity of its written form. Compared to English, written Japanese has three different scripts, Hiragana with 46 letters, Katakana with 46 more and over 2000 distinct Kanji for daily use.
Written Japanese is very comprehensive when it comes to portraying mixed feelings. You can control the atmosphere, sense, or taste of words and sentences depending on which type of writing system you use in Japanese. For example, “apple”. Apple is Ringo in Japanese, and it is written in Hiragana りんご, in Katakana リンゴ, and in Kanji 林檎. All are pronounced Ringo, but what a reader feels from each writing is very different. Hiroki explains that he personally feels something soft, adorable, and childish atmosphere from Hiragana りんご. Something flat, mechanical, and exotic from Katakana リンゴ. Something formal, traditional, and dignify from Kanji 林檎. Therefore, it can be challenging to adopt the Japanese script.
Hiroki feels that in an era of globalized communication, we must move forward with removing linguistic barriers easier and quicker than ever before. This is the idea of keeping a very ethnically diverse acting cast and this is one of the most innovative parts of NihonGO NOW! web series. The story has three protagonists, an African American woman, a Chinese American man, and a Caucasian American woman. As we see in current Hollywood film industry, this is the era of diversity and so are Japanese learners. The story does not focus on one person, one ethnicity, one gender, but different types of people to remain relatable to a large international audience.
The web series supports a Japanese language textbook for beginners. The twelve conversations chosen from the textbook are short and linguistically simple. The story progresses according to the book using these very restricted dialogues, imitating the text word for word. No adding, no deleting, no changing. The technique in such a restricted environment is to portray characters’ emotions nonverbally. With acting and visual techniques. Giving the Web Series an understandable flow and interconnecting between isolated episodes, making it a unified story.
This process upgrades the web series from being just a set of educational videos to more cinematic episodes. The focus being simplification so that everyone all over the world can enjoy visually even if they don’t know characters’ dialogues in Japanese.
Hiroki Ohsawa highly recommends that you use the textbooks and the activity books of NihonGO NOW! to be published by Routledge, Tayler & Francis Group in the near future. The project aspires to extend to be a conclusive series on Learning Japanese.
The makers feel that audiences are tired of fake, imitated, mimicked Japanese culture in many visual materials including movies in Hollywood.
So many movies have tried to create “real” Japanese culture with production designs, wardrobes, and dialogues but most of them have failed because they did not perform enough research about the real Japanese culture. A culture that is over a millennia old. The biggest goal of “NihonGO NOW!” project was showing the “real” Japanese culture.
We needed real Japanese people, real Japanese behaviors, real Japanese conversations, real Japanese situations, real Japanese locations, etc… All must be real for educational and filmmaking purpose. For that reason, the production was held in Japan. The project contains 8 locations and over 40 actors including three American protagonists who speak fluent Japanese in Japan. There would be Season Two, so stay tuned! To conclude NihonGO NOW! will be a celebration of an ancient culture and language with complete transparency. Viewing Japan though the eyes of the Japanese. The Web Series will be available free on YouTube soon in this year. Anyone interested can further check out the following trailer.
