Reading Japan

Teresa Castelvetere has a background in Japanese history and has taught Japanese in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. She currently works as a freelance translator and proofreader. Some of the titles that she has translated for Trans Pacific Press include Japan’s Ultra-Right by Naoto Higuchi, Japan’s Underclass by Hideo Aoki and Others in Japanese Agriculture by Kenichi Yasuoka.Lidia Tanaka is currently Honorary Associate in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University, where she taught in the Japanese program for more than twenty years. She is the author of Gender, Language and Culture: A Study of Japanese Television Interview Discourse (2004) and Japanese Questions (2015). Her research interests include language and gender, and language in communicative interactions such as radio programs, television interviews, parliamentary sittings and dyadic interactions. She is currently working on a collaborative project based on ethnographic interview data that looks at language changes in working-class women’s speech in the Kobe area from 1989 to 2019.

"This is a unique collection of Japanese texts in a variety of topics of Japanese culture and society for those who are at the intermediate to advanced level of Japanese language… and will be an excellent learning and teaching resource as a reader of Modern Japanese texts, in various yet important major topics of Japanese Studies area. Although the style of this book serves well for more disciplinary area study than language learning, I am sure that students will learn Japanese grammar, vocabulary and phrases by an exposure to the authentic academic texts in addition to deepening the learners’ knowledge of Japanese culture and society." Fumiko Narumi-Munro, Teaching Fellow in Japanese, The University of Edinburgh, UK"Reading Japan is a compilation of an excellent range of texts of various styles and topics for advanced-level learners of Japanese language. Combined with an academic essay on each topic, it provides an ideal starting point for students wishing to further their reading skills or endeavoring on their research journey." Yasuhisa Wantanabe, Lecturer in Japanese, Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne, Australia

• Chapter 1 日本史：朝家と武家 - Japanese history: the imperial family and warriors | Chapter 2 教育と近代日本の発展 - The development of education and modern Japan | Chapter 3 日本語いろいろ：和製語と方言について - Japanese language: waseigo and dialects | Chapter 4 ジェンダー について - Gender issues in Japan | Chapter 5 笑いとは - Humour in Japan | Chapter 6 日本人であることとエスニシティ - Japanese-ness and Ethnicity | Chapter 7 東アジアの地政学 - Geopolitics in East Asia