Japanese Language and Literature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Japanese Language and Literature (JLL) is a journal published twice yearly (in April and November) by the Association of Teachers of Japanese (ATJ). Published continuously since the founding of the ATJ in 1963, JLL covers material on Japanese pedagogy , Japanese linguistics and Japanese literature. It also carries reviews of books germane to its main areas of interest. Past contributors include Donald Keene, Edward Seidensticker, Etō Jun and many other distinguished names.

The journal also provides extensive, annotated, bibliographical coverage of both doctoral (Ph.D.) dissertations and, more recently, M.A. theses. As Japanese Studies has grown in popularity as a field, these abstracts together with their tables of contents have come to occupy a considerable portion of the journal's contents, generally one hundred or more pages per issue. They cover research completed primarily at institutions of higher learning in North America, but there also are many entries accepted by universities in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries in East Asia and continental Europe.

Articles are fairly evenly balanced among the three main areas of interest, although of late (since 2001) pedagogy and linguistics-related contributions seem to have come to outweigh literary content. As an example, the October 2001 edition carries articles entitled Towards a Feminist Critical Pedagogy in a Beginning-Japanese-as-a-Foreign-Language Class, Aesthetics of Unconventionality: Fūryū in Ikkyū's poetry, and Heritage Language Students of Japanese in Traditional Foreign Language Classes: A Preliminary Empirical Study.

As well as reviews of scholarly articles, reviews are also included of the latest textbooks, grammars and vocabulary guides, which is obviously useful for those of us still struggling to master the Japanese language. Although useful for those engaged in research in Japanese literature, JLL will be of most use to those either actively engaged in teaching the language or those doing research in the field of linguistics or pedagogy. Subscriptions are available through the ATJ's website or by contacting the secretary directly (see link below).