Learning Japanese, Once About Resumes, Is Now About Cool
ATHENS, Ga. -- When Yuki Sasaki began working in the Japanese-language program at the University of Georgia in 1995, most students were international business majors interested in studying things like polite Japanese expressions and the ins and outs of Japanese business-card exchange.
Nine years later, Ms. Sasaki says her students are a different sort. They ask for help in translating Japanese pop-song lyrics and talk excitedly about the Japanese cartoon character Card Captor Sakura. And they blurt out colloquial Japanese expressions, like baka! (stupid), that they have learned from comics.
"It's amazing how you can see the changes happening right before your eyes," Ms. Sasaki says. Japanese pop culture, she says, "is their passion."
The changing nature of the Japanese-language student reflects a big shift in Americans' perception of Japan. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's economy was booming, Japanese management terms like kaizen (continuous improvement) were all the rage, and the country seemed poised to dominate international commerce. Studying Japanese was considered a smart choice for ambitious, business-minded college students.
But then, Japan fell into a deep slump from which it has yet to fully emerge. The country, while still the world's second-largest economy, has lost its reputation as a land of corporate opportunity. Instead, over the past few years, Japan has gained cult status in a completely different area -- cool pop culture, through comics, street fashion and animated movies called anime, the highly stylized cartoons featuring idealized, doe-eyed characters.
Now, the typical Japanese-language student is a Japan-culture fanatic like 19-year-old Rachel Maurer, a UGA undergrad with maroon hair and skull earrings who also goes by the Japanese name Reiko. Ms. Maurer, who grew up in Daytona, Fla., studies the language to further explore the Japanese rock bands she's crazy about: Pierrot, Dir en grey and DuelJewel, for which she runs an English-language fan Web site. Ms. Maurer likes the Japanese "visual" bands, which feature male musicians with wild, colorful hairdos, heavy makeup and a mysterious, feminine air. She chose UGA for its Japanese program, although she isn't sure how she will use the language in the future.
"I just came here knowing that this is what I want to learn," she says.
These days, the serious business types aren't focusing on Japanese; they're taking Chinese instead. These are people like Patrick Henry, 21, a UGA undergrad from Norcross, Ga., who eventually hopes to get an MBA and work for "a corporate conglomerate." Mr. Henry, who has just completed a year of Mandarin Chinese classes, leaves for Taiwan at the end of August for a year of intensive language study. While he's hedging his bets by taking German and Japanese, too, he feels that China is the next big thing. "That's where the money's going to be," he says.
Gaining Popularity
According to the Modern Language Association, an organization of scholars promoting the study of languages and literature, both Japanese and Chinese are gaining popularity among U.S. students. In the fall of 2002, the number of students studying Japanese in U.S. institutions of higher education rose to 52,238, a jump of 21% over 1998, when the previous survey was conducted. There were 34,153 students studying Chinese, an increase of 20%.
At UGA, about half the 100 Japanese-language students surveyed cite Japanese pop culture -- including animation, comics, pop songs and video games -- as their top reason for studying the language, according to Natsuki Fukunaga, who teaches Japanese at the school. Impressed by her students' interest in Japanese pop culture, she wrote her master's thesis detailing the phenomenon. "I was excited to see these kids really picking up this authentic Japanese culture," she says.
Many of Ms. Fukunaga's students are members of UGAnime, a club for fans of anime. The club's 40 to 50 members meet twice a week to watch anime. Members firmly eschew dubbing -- preferring subtitles -- and the club has strict rules against talking or heckling during the showings. But members who think they have sufficient language ability may sing along to the opening and ending theme songs.
During the spring Mega Days of Anime festival, during which members watch anime every night for a week, club officers temporarily lifted the no-heckling rule. That gave 23-year-old Nathan LaForce, a fourth-year Japanese student at UGA from Evans, Ga., an opportunity to show off. Mr. LaForce, whose hobby is "fansubbing," an amateur service providing English subtitles for anime, groaned loudly about the poor quality of the subtitles.
Hooked at an Early Age
Like many college students today, Mr. LaForce got hooked on Japan in middle school, when he regularly got up at 4 a.m. to watch Japanese animation on the Sci Fi channel. Mr. LaForce says he likes anime because it includes the Eastern philosophical elements that aren't seen in typical American cartoons -- like demons interacting with humans.
In the West, "everything you see is the same old story. This is a completely different perspective, an Eastern perspective," says Mr. LaForce, who is majoring in Japanese, physics and astronomy. While he may eventually look for a job in Japan, for now, studying Japanese "is just for fun," he says.
Mr. LaForce is far more carefree about studying Japanese than students were a decade ago. "Japanese was the hot language to take if you wanted to do something with your life," says Trip Bakun, 32, who studied Japanese for five years starting in 1990 when he was majoring in international business at UGA. "It looked like the Japanese style of management and way of doing business was going to become the new standard."
Still, despite the long economic slump, Japan-related opportunities haven't completely dried up for the former business majors. Mr. Bakun himself landed a job four years ago in the California office of chemical company Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co. A former classmate works for a Toyota Motor Corp. plant in Princeton, Ind.
Today, Japanese-language teachers are scrambling to accommodate the new type of student. One sign of change: The Japan Foundation, a Japanese government-affiliated organization promoting cultural exchange, has recently been asked to conduct a seminar introducing language teachers to the latest anime and Japanese comics.
Ms. Sasaki, one of the UGA Japanese teachers, works hard to adapt to the changing interests of her students. After a recent trip to Japan, she came back armed with pop and folk music CDs to play in class. At home, she plays video games regularly, and she tries to use the occasional comic book in her lessons. Still, she says, there's a limit to how well she can keep up.
"No matter how hard I try, I can't beat my students," she says. "They know about all these things because they love them."
美国青少年迷恋学日语
当1995年Yuki Sasaki刚开始在乔治亚大学的日语培训项目任教时，她的大多数学生都是专攻国际商务。他们喜欢了解日语中的礼貌用语、日本人交换名片时的细节等等。
九年后的今天，Sasaki女士说她现在的学生跟从前大不相同了。他们请她帮忙翻译日语流行歌的歌词，津津乐道日本卡通片人物库洛魔法使(Card Captor Sakura)，还能脱口而出几句从漫画里学来的通俗日语，比如“baka！”（笨蛋）。
“眼前发生的变化真让人惊讶”，她说，日本通俗文化引起了他们的“极大热情”。
日语学生的内在变化正反映了美国人对日本的认识发生了巨大的转变。在80年末、90年代初，日本经济突飞猛进，一些日本管理名词，如kaizen（持续改善），曾风靡一时，日本也表现出将支配国际商务的架势。那时候，学日语被看做是那些雄心勃勃的、有商业头脑的大学生的明智选择。
然而没过多久，日本陷入经济低潮，直到现在还没能彻底摆脱。尽管日本仍然是世界第二经济大国，但已经失去了昔日企业商机之宝地的声誉。不过，最近几年，日本却在另一个完全不同的领域赢得了偶像地位--酷气十足的流行文化：漫画、街头时尚、称作anime的动画电影，还有高度风格化的卡通片里那些瞪著纯真大眼睛的理想化人物。
如今典型的日语学生是那些日本文化迷们，19岁的雷切尔?莫勒(Rachel Maurer)就是其中的一位。莫勒是乔治亚大学本科学生，栗色头发，挂著头骨形状的耳环，日文名叫Reiko。莫勒在佛罗里达州的Daytona长大，学日语是为了进一步了解她钟爱的日本摇滚乐队Pierrot、Dir en grey和DuelJewel。她在互联网上建了一个关于这些乐队的英文歌迷网站。莫勒喜欢日本所谓的“视觉系”乐队。这些乐队的男歌手都留有一头五彩斑斓的乱发，浓妆艳抹，带著一股女性十足的神秘气质。莫勒选择在乔治亚大学学日语，尽管她并不确定将来打算用它来做什么。
“我知道这是我想学的东西，于是就来了。”她说。
时下，正儿八经学商务外语的人已经把焦点从日语转移到了汉语。21岁的帕德里克?亨利(Patrick Henry)就是其中之一。亨利也是乔治亚大学学生，来自该州的Norcross，他最终希望能拿到MBA学位，到一个“企业集团”去工作。亨利刚刚完成一年的普通话学习，8月底要到台湾去再强化学习一年。为了保险起见，他还学了德语和日语，但他认为中国是即将崛起的经济大国，“以后钱就从那儿来。”他说。
人气直升
根据一个由倡导学习语言和文学的学者组成的机构：Modern Language Association的资料，目前日语和汉语日益受到美国学生的青睐，2002年秋季，美国高校学习日语的学生增加到52,238人，比1998年增长了21%，而学习汉语的学生有34,153人，增长了20%。
据乔治亚大学日语老师Natsuki Fukunaga称，乔治亚大学接受调查的100名日语学生中，有一半人提到学习这门语言的首要原因是喜爱日本流行文化--包括动画片、连环画、流行歌和视频游戏。学生对日本流行文化的浓厚兴趣给Natsuki Fukunaga留下很深的印象，于是她在硕士论文里详细描述了这个现象。“我很兴奋地看到这些孩子在了解真正的日本文化。”她说。
Fukunaga的很多学生是动画迷俱乐部UGAnime的成员。该俱乐部有40到50名成员，每周聚会两次，观赏动画片。成员们宁愿要字幕也坚决不要配音，而且俱乐部严格规定播放途中不许交谈和喋喋不休地问问题。但那些自认为日语水平到家的成员可以在开场和结束时跟唱主题歌。
在春季名为“Mega Days of Anime”的动画节上，成员连续一周每天晚上观看动画片，那时，禁止交谈的规定可以暂时取消。这给23岁的内森?拉福斯(Nathan LaForce)提供了一个极好的表现机会，他得以在观看时大声抱怨字幕翻译的质量太差。拉福斯是乔治亚大学四年级的日语学生，来自该州的Evans。他爱好“fansubbing”，即动画迷们自己为动画片提供英文字幕翻译。
少年至爱
就像很多如今的许多大学生一样，拉福斯早在中学时期就迷上了日本。那时他每天凌晨4点起床收看科幻频道的日本动画片。拉福斯说，喜欢日本动画是因为里面包含了许多在典型美国动画中看不到的东方哲学元素，例如怪兽和人类之间的互动。
在西方，“你看到的一切无非是老生常谈，而东方视角则是个完全不同的视角。”拉福斯说。拉福斯主修日语、物理和天文学。他说，虽然将来有可能会在日本找工作，但目前学日语“纯粹为了好玩”。
比起10年前学日语的学生，拉福斯显得更加轻松。“如果你这辈子想做点事情，日语是一个不错的选择。”32岁的特里普?巴肯(Trip Bakun)说。从1990年开始巴肯学了5年的日语，当时他在乔治亚大学学习国际商务。“那时，日式管理风格和商务模式似乎正成为新的标准。”
尽管日本经济经历了一段较长的低靡时期，但对于过去专攻商务的学生来说，与日本有关的商业机会并未完全枯竭。巴肯4年前就在日本化工企业Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co.驻加州办事处找到一个职位。他的一个同学在丰田汽车公司(Toyota Motor Corp.)位于印第安纳州普林斯顿的工厂工作。
如今，日语教师正忙于满足新型日语学生的需要，其中一个迹象是：日本政府下属负责促进文化交流的机构：Japan Foundation最近被邀请为日语教师开设一次关于日本最新动画片和连环画的讲座。
乔治亚大学日语教师Sasaki也在努力适应学生们不断变化的兴趣。她最近去了一趟日本，带回大量日本流行音乐和民间音乐CD，并在课堂上播放。她在家里也定期玩视频游戏，在上课时也尝试用用连环画册。她说，尽管如此，她还是无法完全跟上潮流。
“我再努力也赶不上学生，”她说，“他们对这些东西了如指掌，因为他们喜欢。”
