Visual & Oral Archive

The Visual and Oral Archive of Japanese Language Education in India (JLEI Archive) is an attempt to document the voices of the people involved in the field of Japanese Language Education in India. While conferences, workshops and its proceedings record the academic, administrative and quantitative aspects, this project places the spotlight on the person; on the lives, dreams and aspirations of people involved in this field. The idea of creating such an archive and the need for documenting the people involved in Japanese language education in India came from Tanaka Yusuke's Nihongo Kyōiku Hyakunenshi and the conversations I have had with Prashant Pardeshi of NINJAL over the past few years. 

​

As the idea of this project took off, the world was hit by the pandemic. On 21st March 2020, India went into a 21-day lockdown as a means to contain the spread of COVID-19. This forced a realignment of the priorities of this project. As one of the first steps, the lives of learners during the pandemic took top priority. In the 'Learners' section, images for instance of their learning environment provided by the interviewee are also available for the listeners to have a wholesome understanding of their journey during the pandemic.  

 

The JLEI archive is divided into two sections, Stories and (learning during the) Pandemic. The first section of this project, Stories, is an attempt to document the journey of Japanese language learning of the educators, learners, academics and industry professionals in India. The second section, Pandemic, documents the experiences of the learners and educators during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

​

According to the Survey on Japanese-Language Education Abroad (2020) conducted by Japan Foundation, there are approximately 40,000 learners and more than 1000 educators in India. Considering the number of learners on platforms such as DuoLingo, there could be thousands of others in India who must be learning on their own as well. Hence, while preparing the archive, the question of representation comes to the fore. Whose voices are heard, and more importantly, whose voices are not. The voices represented as part of the COVID pandemic is one such example. The question of representation will always remain a limitation of this project. However, I believe that it is this limitation that provides the will to embark on this continuous journey and a need to collaborate with people from various parts of the country.

​

If you would like to collaborate by providing your story to the archive, drop us a message in the Contact page.

​

Arun Shyam

Email: getarunshyam@gmail.com