Sharon Domier's blog

I am a big fan of nonfiction picture books as a way to help Japanese language learners to take the next step after graded readers. Fiction picture books, folk tales, and books for the very young have vocabularies and grammar that native speaker children learn from their parents and grandparents, but nonnative speaking adults wouldn’t come across in their textbooks. Some folks are fine with it and figure it out, but others will be frustrated that they can’t understand something that a tiny tot can.

Nonfiction picture books are short – maybe 32 or 46 pages – and have plenty of illustrations to help with understanding the text.
I have a number of them in my READ Japanese collection, including biographies, history, social issues, etc.

Some, aimed at older Japanese kids are longer. The following series averages 80 pages. The reading age is just ??? but I would say that it would be really good for students in their 3rd or 4th year of Japanese – particularly students who are working on a project and want to read at least 1 book in Japanese.

At the moment I can’t remember if I have ordered these or not, so I am going to put the link in so I can come back to it.SDGs=Social Development Goals.
???????SDGs?????????????????????SDGs???10?????????????????????????????????2???????
This set of 10 books covers a range of topics from poverty to pollution. It explains the issues in a story and then provides more information. The publisher is Kodansha, 2020-

For a list of the titles and ISBNs see ehonnavie here

Sample pages and an article about the series is here at Jiji.com.

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Japan Writers’ Association ??????? is listed on several of the publisher home pages as handling rights for many of their authors.

On their page for Copyright Clearance there is a great deal of important information for you. To the right there is a list (choice of excel or html) of the authors they represent. When you open the list you will see if they have full or partial representation for each author. Below that are excel spreadsheet files for newly added authors, authors who have canceled their contracts, and authors they used to represent who are out of copyright from 2010 on. A careful look at these pages will save you a lot of time.

Once you have determined that the author you are interested in is represented by the JWACC, you need to check and see which request form ?????? (shinsei f?m) you should fill out. Most of the forms about about broadcasting, putting images or excerpts on the web, using paragraphs in exams, requests for reprints, games, etc. But no.17 is the one that you need. ???????????????? (kyodaku shinsei ni tsuite no s?dan f?m). On this form, you designate whether you are checking about an author that they have partial representation for or something else. This is the form that I think should be used to check and see if the rights are available to translate a particular book or story of an author they represent. If anyone knows for sure, I would be very grateful for confirmation.

Just a reminder that Japanese copyright rules are 70 years after the death of the author (and not 70s after publication of the work) so any of the stories by someone like Yoshiya Nobuko who published stories in the 1920s but lived until 1973 are protected by copyright. And, yes, ???? is represented by JWACC.

The JWACC has a pdf dated 2016 ???Q&A???? is covered under article 27 of the copyright law.

A translation is considered a derivative work (in Japanese ?????)?along with adaptation (like creating a manga based on a novel). ???? and ????? are different. Niji shiyo is a reuse (publishing it in an anthology for example) but without any changes. Nijiteki shiyo is an adaptation. Good and easy explanation <a href="http://jibunkyo.main.jp/index.php/guide3" here="" at the Nihon Jido bungakusha kyokai copyright guide.

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This is a huge topic and yet a relatively simple one. It wasn’t really a problem in the old paper-based world because if you translated something that you loved, it was a private affair. You might share it with your friends or turn it in as an assignment, but it wasn’t public or published. Now that so many people are posting things to the Internet and they are being made widely available, it is critical that people understand rights and permissions so that they don’t get into trouble.

I have to admit that it is taking me a long time to really understand the process – both theoretical and practical – since I am not a translator myself. But I have been on a quest this summer to get a better handle on it so that I can advise people more accurately about their options. And this has meant talking with published translators about their experiences and their advice. Almost everyone has at least one or more bad experiences that they don’t necessarily want to share, and I don’t blame them, but if we can sluice their experiences we can get the nuggets of gold out and that would be an excellent thing.

I started out by thinking that translators needed to contact the copyright holder for permission, and so I was always careful to show people colophons and how to read them. But as one translator pointed out to me, that is really more about legalities of royalties than permissions, and the publisher is usually the gateway to permissions.

So how do you track down the right department in a publishing company and how do you make contact? On a website, you need to look for either the foreign rights department or the rights department.

Here is an example:
Kodansha ???
Look for the about page – in Japanese ????
Then you will see a section called ??????????.
The contact information is divided up by the kinds of rights/license requests.
Foreign rights falls here:
?????????????????????????
????????
TEL: 03-5395-3576 / FAX:03-5395-7058

Notice that this is no form or email contact information provided for overseas users. The English link on Kodansha’s home page takes you to a brochure, but at least that provides some information. Kodansha USA – should be a good source, but at the moment (August 2020) its website only contains audio files for its Japanese language textbooks.

Iwanami Shoten ????
Iwanami makes it really easy. Click on the English page and right there is an email address for its Foreign Rights and Permissions Department. Thanks Iwanami!

Bungei Shunjusha ?????
At the bottom of the main page is a link for all kinds of inquiries:) Scroll down until you find the section on copyright and permissions ?????????????. Partway down you will see an email address for the Rights Business Division ?????????mail : rights-g@bunshun.co.jp. I heard from a friend, that it may take a few weeks to process requests because of the volume they receive, but they will respond.

Shinchosha ???
In the case of Shinchosha, the ???? page just gives the basic facts about the company. Instead you have to look at the very bottom of the page for the ?????? page. There is a list of headings for inquiries, but nothing about overseas.
????????????????????????? is the section you want. It says that almost all rights are handled by these two organizations.
??????? http://www.bungeika.or.jp/
???????????? https://www.jvca.gr.jp/
And for the ones not covered by these two, there is a form you can fill out to ask.

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This may be a game changer for a number of people who want to learn more Japanese through anime and film.

Scott Wilson, a UMass Amherst alum who majored in Japanese, reported on the new extension in an article in Sora News 24. He walked through the process of setting up the options and provided screen shots. Being able to read Japanese closed caption with romaji or furigana, option of dictionary lookups, and ability to turn on and off translation is amazing. Scott is right, it is almost too easy:) https://soranews24.com/2020/01/12/free-language-learning-with-netflix-extension-makes-studying-japanese-almost-too-easy

His article is really making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, garnering all kinds of excitement. Some people just want to watch Terrace House, while others are thinking about the Japanese films that they can watch/read. Keep in mind that there are errors. I was watching one where the text said ? and the reading provided for it was shu but the actor said “sake”. Since you can read, listen, and watch all at the same time, if something weird pops up you can pause the video and double-check. I can’t think of a better way for language learners to add in L2 reading during down time.

Once you download the free extension for Chrome (Language Learning with Netflix) you can also click the link to see recommended programs for your target language (in this case Japanese) and your country of residence (in this case United States). There are 82 listed for me, including a number of series/movies that I have watched in the past. A good mix between anime, series, and movies. Plenty to keep me busy and it is nice to have a quick list to look at rather than browsing all the possibilities (although I will do that as well).

The catalog currently includes 82 titles for Japanese drama/anime/movies that work well with LLN, but there are many more than that in Netflix. For the LLN extension to work correctly (for Japanese language learning), Japanese subtitles need to be an option in Netflix for that title. For example, I checked a Japanese anime A Silent Voice. It has the option of English or Japanese audio, and a number of different languages for subtitles but Japanese is not one of them. So, the first thing you need to check is the Netflix audio/subtitle options.

Giri/Haji is an example where the audio is English (original) but a number of the conversations are in Japanese. Set the subtitles to Japanese on the Netflix side. That will give you the Japanese text (with lookup info). But even if you turn on the Translation language and Display Human translation on the LLN side, it doesn’t work. This would be why this title doesn’t come up on the recommended Japanese list in the catalog. But, it does work for my purposes.

As I play with it, I am coming across things I think I should document so I can save time recreating my steps later. If it is a Netflix Japanese original film and the subtitle option is Japanese (cc) sometimes you will need to turn off the LLN option or nothing appears. That means that you won’t get furigana or the pop-up dictionary options. Other times it works – like Terrace House.

One of the tweaks that I made to my own setup for Japanese is that I chose hiragana rather than romaji for furigana and I turned off the English “human translation” so that I wasn’t tempted to cheat and read the English. Depending on the video, I can easily turn it back on.

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A mook is a morph of a magazine+book. Mooks get ISBN but they also sometimes get ISSN as well. It gives librarians the opportunity to add them to their collections as a magazine or do subject analysis on each one like a book.

For readers interested in science, a well known publisher/title is Newton. In addition to Newton magazines, it also publishes a kind of kind of mook, also called a bessatsu ??. These have ISBNs, generally around 170 pages and are on particular topics. Within this category is Newton Light Newton ???.

Newton???2.0 is the most recent version – less text, and more images intended to appeal to people who want to spend less time reading but still get the content. There is no furigana included in the text, so readers would need to be reading at a Japanese high school level to read comfortably.

According to Wikipedia in Japan there is a whole category of (???????) brand mook. Indeed when I did a search I came up with all kinds of them, particularly for fashion brands. These are not cheap but they could be used by someone doing research on a particular company. Not what I would necessarily buy for my collection or recommend to students, except when I have students working on a particular band, comic book or video game. These are often called “fan books” and can be a very useful source of information for a student wanting to do an undergraduate paper on the topic.

I have also added mook that were from food/cooking magazines, not so much for the reading content but who doesn’t love to see pretty pictures of ramen or Japanese pickles. And learning how to make them from the recipes is a bonus.

If you are looking for more literary mooks, Bungei Shunju, Taiy?, NHK all have them and I have used a number of them. Again, most come from a magazine and are issued as an extra editon or supplement. Probably the best known is ???? Bessatsu Taiy?, which has been published since 1973 as a deluxe version of the Taiyo issues. These really are fabulous for senior theses on a range of topics, from Chibi Maruko-chan to Hiroshige.

Another interesting variation I have seen is from Kadokawa. Kadokawa has lots of brand mook, but there are also tanka nenkan and haiku nenkan. Kwai magazine also publishes mook for special issues of the magazine ? (rendered kwai) like this one of interviews.

?????? Bessatsu Bungei Shunj? is itself a magazine, so it is a bit misleading. Instead the label is ????? bunshun mukku.These mook tend to come from Bunshun magazine rather than Bungei Shunju. Red herring altogether. Never mind.

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Shinsho ?? are an amazing resource for people who are looking to gain a generalist’s knowledge of a particular topic. The regular shinsho are written at a level that a high school graduate can read and understand. The prices of shinsho are entirely reasonable (currently 600-900 yen) and pocket-sized so they are light and convenient to carry around and read at opportune moments. They tend to be about 200 pages long, so while it is a significant commitment of time, it is not overwhelming.

I love shinsho and would highly recommend that grad students look for a shinsho or a ny?monsho ??? on their topic before they turn to scholarly writings. When I visited Japanese university libraries, most had collections of shinsho shelved by their labels (publishers and series) on open browsing shelves. I have always wanted to do the same, but instead I have been carefully choosing shinsho on the topics covered by our faculty and hope that they don’t get lost in the stacks.

Now though, there are junior shinsho ?????? that are aimed at middle school and high school students. These are really perfect for students who are working towards N2 or building up vocabulary and fluency for N1. I will be adding a number of these to my READ Japanese collection. I just need to do a little more work to figure out what level (in my collection, it would likely be level 6 or 7)

Last summer I visited a special exhibit on shinsho for kids held at the Chiyoda Library. The list of titles exhibited was long and substantial, and I felt like my interest in shinsho was validated.

Here are possibly the two best labels for junior/senior high school shinsho:

????????
Iwanami’s Junior shinsho was probably the first one to appear on the market, starting in 1979. There are now about a thousand volumes, so plenty to choose from to build a small collection of reading materials for upper level Japanese readers who aren’t quite ready for the regular research collection.

?????????
Purim? shinsho is a much much newer series, but I saw a lot of titles that I thought would be appealing to students (and myself). In particular, I see books in this series by Yoshimoto Banana and Ogawa Y?ko.

This article provides a good overview of why Japanese middle/high school students should try reading shinsho.

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Once I started on my quest for combining audio with text, I also started to explore Kindle to see if there was much there that would be useful to me or others trying to gain fluency in Japanese.

In a perfect world I would have access to the Kindle Japan store, but I don’t have the Japanese address to allow that. So I am limited to the American Kindle. I found some stuff that I enjoyed reading, and was interested to see how many of the simple books were written either as bilingual books or written in Japanese by non-Japanese. In either case the sentence patterns are simple and straight forward, which makes for easy reading.

I think my favorite is ????????It is very similar to ?????????????Very simple illustrations (comic-like) and one sentence per page. There is considerable repetition as well, so super easy for a beginning reader to follow. It seems to be a Line Stamp character. I found 2 volumes available through Kindle Unlimited and enjoyed them.

I also read ?????, which is a comic about a grandfather and grandmother. It is basically a 4-panel comic with a lot of old people humor. Because it is a comic, it has handwriting rather than type font, but still pretty easy to read.

If you are looking for a thoughtful essay, ?????? was about 40 pages. It is written in clear Japanese and would be good for someone who is reading about an N2 level. I used the lookup feature to checking the readings of kanji that I recognized but forgot how to read.

Using the search function is really hit or miss – mostly miss. But if you click on Categories and then Foreign Languages, you can drill down to Japanese. There is a lot of porn. But there is also a list of categories you can select from within the Japanese language. 8749 titles in the Childrens ebooks category, including Japanese translations of Harry Potter, Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland and other well known stories. You will also find porn here (someone has tagged photographic collections of girls as children’s ebooks) as well as all kinds of weird stuff. Be aware, books are clearly not identified the way I would like them.

Having said that, I found a lot of books I would enjoy reading. I have started adding them to my list (Kindle Unlimited allows up to 10 books at a time).

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