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This study focused on idioms derived from traditional Korean and Japanese sports such as “Ssireum/Sumo, Archery, and Horse Riding,” and compared the characteristics of their meanings and ideas. The number of Japanese idioms that were derived from 'Sumo was four times superior to that in Korean. “Ssireum” carried a meaning as “endless effort” in idioms. However, most of the Korean idioms contained critical perspectives. Conversely, Japanese word “Sumo” did not have a figurative meaning. The idioms using Dohyo and sport rules or techniques had a subdivided meaning as “winning and losing”, and showed positive perspectives. “Archery” carried a meaning of “goal, fast, and target of criticism” in both languages. In Japanese, however, the positive expressions were divided according to the importance of the target point and the preparation stage of archery. The idioms originating from Horse riding meant “leadership, encouragement, and check” using reins and whips. In Korean, the criticism of “out of control behavior” was characterized. Meanwhile, in Japanese, the idioms derived from horse racing showed positive meanings.

This study aims to enhance learners’ participation and immersion using Padlet in online tourism Japanese classes provided in this COVID-19 era. After providing the class using Padlet, this researcher conducted a survey among the learners. The results are as follows. First, in the questionnaire on the use of Padlet, the strongest scores were given to “I participated eagerly in <Padlet> during the class.”, and “I could participate in the class actively with the use of <Padlet>”. Second, learners who had participated in Padlet activities positively also indicated high satisfaction scores with the use of Padlet. Third, regarding learners’ positive opinions about the use of Padlet, “improving concentration, checking the degree of learners’ participation, referring to peer learners’ contents, supporting to enhance self-directed learning ability, reviewing, having interaction based on teacher’s comments, and lessening the task burden” were found. Fourth, with the use of Padlet in tourism Japanese classes, it was possible to open the products of learners transparently and induce competition among them. Furthermore, it could be used as a tool to maintain balance in learning by referring to the results of fellow learners.

Based on practical example sentences included in the thesis, in-depth investigations and analysis are conducted about “hodo,” which has been used in honorific expressions of modern Japanese. Although several previous studies have examined the dictionary meaning or forms of “hodo”, they have not focused on usage patterns such as its time of appearance or morphological characteristics. This article primarily aimed to study and analyze the three aspects of “hodo” used in honorific expressions: ① the time of appearance, ② morphological characteristics, and ③ meaning and function of “hodo.” Related to these studies, practical example sentences are investigated and listed in the article. In summary, significant results are drawn in all three aspects in the article. First, the time of appearance is newly studied and found. Although “hodo” first appeared in 1906, the research found that it began to be used in 1986 as an expression as of today. Second, the morphological characteristics were investigated as follows: “hodo” can be classified into two cases in taking ① “nohodowo” and ② “nohodo.” The article describes that both cases of “hodo” take honorific forms as an action noun in front of “hodo”. The difference between the two cases is that in the former, most of the predicates were omitted, but in the latter, “onegaimoushiageru” was the most common. Additionally, a predicate in the latter case can be used without implying the meaning of requests. Third, the meanings and functions are found as follows: “hodo” has the meaning of “avoiding assertiveness and softening the expression” and has the function of a postposition.

The unprecedented situation of COVID-19 has resulted in widespread social transformation. In the Japanese language space, one can examine various modifications, such as the creation of new expressions centered on the media or social networking sites or the reinterpretation of existing vocabulary. This study aims to determine what specific expressions are used in this context for “corona senryu” and what connotations people associate with those expressions. In this study, the most frequent vocabularies were extracted by first analyzing 430 collected works to achieve the stated objective. Next, the image of each word was considered by observing the contents of the works, focusing on the works in which frequent words are used. First, expressions that have been widely recognized and utilized in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, including “COVID-19” and “COVID-19 pandemic”, as well as “san-mitsu” and “goto” were confirmed. Second, terminology closely associated with diseases and hygiene, such as “mask”, “virus”, “vaccine”, etc. were confirmed. Third, words that have long existed and have been routinely used, such as “grandchild”, “voice”, and “dream” were confirmed. Fourth, it was possible to confirm the vocabulary that has existed and been used in a specific scene, even though it is not at the level of everyday usage, focusing on information technology (IT) terms such as “remote” and “telework”. Regarding the image of the vocabulary, for instance in the case of “COVID-19”, both its aspect as a catastrophe and a case of being used as a positive image or personifying the coronavirus were confirmed. Additionally, we managed to confirm various cases that were difficult to grasp only with dictionary definitions such as “mask”, which previously carried a strong negative image such as “ill” or “suspicious person”, used as a positive image with positive words such as “beautiful” and “rejuvenated”.

In this article, I aim to propose an effective method for teaching indefinite nouns based on a survey of the learners’ unnatural uses of human-denoting indefinite nouns. Human-denoting indefinite nouns have hardly been described in previous language studies and grammar books, and the learners of Japanese occasionally do not even recognize their meaning. First, I surveyed the actual status of the learners’ use of indefinite nouns based on composition data to see how the teachers should teach indefinite nouns to the learners. The results indicate that the indefinite nouns do not frequently appear in the composition data, but I found several unnatural usage-patterns. Based on this result, I conducted a survey about the use of human-denoting indefinite nouns with 32 participants and found that several Korean learners of Japanese do not sufficiently recognize the correct use of indefinite nouns. Second, I explored how indefinite nouns are used in novels to propose an effective method for teaching indefinite nouns. The results show that the most frequently used type is daremo, followed by darenimo, daredemo, daremoga, dareyorimo, and darenidemo. Furthermore, each type of indefinite noun co-occurs with predicates featuring some specific morphological properties. Based on these results, I compared daredemo and daremoga in the positive-polarity contexts. I also revealed that the indefinite nouns involving a particle co-occur with certain types of predicates and uncovered meaning associated with the particle for each indefinite noun. These findings are reflected in my proposed teaching method. That is, I propose that the teachers should teach the following: the human-denoting indefinite nouns, daremo and darenimo, co-occur with negative predicates, whereas daredemo, daremoga, and darenidemo co-occur with positive predicates.

This study considered two authors’ translation strategies regarding formal aspects. The targeted translations are Futabatei’s Aibiki, which was a translation of Tugenev’s novel (The Tryst) authored by Russian writer Tugenev and Yeom Sang-seop’s Milhoe, which was a retranslation of Tugenev’s novel (The Tryst). In particular, the original of Yeom Sang-seop’s translation Milhoe was confirmed, and his translation attitude was examined by comparing its use of formal usage such as punctuation, Chinese character notations, and personality with the original text. The results showed that, based on the original of the retranslation by Futabatei, Yeom Sang-seop adopted a strategy of replacing the use of commas with spacing or using side dots for the names of plants that were not in the original. Furthermore, Yeom Sang-seop utilized the Chinese characters for a proper noun which is unfamiliar and the specific part which must be emphasized. Moreover, both writers were found to respond with nouns that match the character regarding the translation of the third person pronoun. This is because the use of third-person pronouns was not established in Japanese and Korean at the time at which they performed their translations. This review method is considered to differ from the study of simple sentences comparison through translated texts. It is necessary for the translation original to be clear for the translation of the other articles. According to the mentioned aspects, the application of comparison and review would be possible in this study.

In this paper, I would like to examine the composition of the figures of the shaman and the stranger in Konjaku-Monogatarishu.(Please mention the proper name of the specific work that you are examining over here.-memo from English editor) This will be done through a comparison with and a review of the source literature of the story of a stranger and its symmetrical relation to the figure of the shaman in Konjaku-Monogatarishu. In the case of Buddhist narratives, Vol.4-12, and Vol.7-16, the Stranger was a symbol of Buddhism and was represented by a symmetrical structure of a shaman (ritual religion)/stranger (Buddhism). In contrast, in secular folktales, Vol.10–33, the Stranger was a person who eradicated the ritual custom and was represented as a shaman who established a new royal law, creating a composition of the following opposition: the shaman (the ritual custom)/the stranger (the royal law). In this way, Konjaku-Monogatarishu provided an image of the stranger that was different from the source literature, establishing the stranger as an entity that breaks down ritual religions and customs and expands and builds the Buddhist and royal world. Further attention was paid to the final narrative, which depicts the construction of a royal law supported by a shamanistic woman, assuming that the shaman should be expelled. This contradiction in the text was the result of avoiding statement of the transformation of the national system by strangers, and it reveals one aspect of the multi-faceted world of Konjaku-Monogatarishu.

<Himeyuri no Tō>(1953) is a Takarazuka Revue written as a memorial for Himeyuri Gakutotai. Himeyuri Gakutotai were high school girls mobilized as auxiliary nurses and sacrificed during the Battle of Okinawa. The Himeyuri stories became astonishingly popular in postwar Japanese society, and were represented in various media, such as novels, plays, movies and dramas. Nevertheless, many of those works have been criticized, because of their perspectives on victimhood or sacrificial narratives combined with their use of the vulnerable girls’ images. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the aspects of the dual appropriation of the girls’ images, which maximized with the characteristic girlhood of Takarazuka in their representation of Himeyuri narrative. The secondary purpose is to reveal the fact that the Himeyuri narrative, represented by Takarazuka, ultimately turns out to be a symbol of militaristic girls' images through the reinforcement of the sacrificial narrative produced by the dual appropriation of girlhood. This article is therefore written to examine the vulnerability that is intrinsically embedded in those girls’ images, and to discuss the implications of postwar Japanese Himeyuri narratives from the viewpoint of contemporary memory politics.

The exchanges between Bashō(芭蕉) and Geiko(荊口) also included Geiko’s wife and three sons, Sikin(此筋) · Sensen(千川) and Buncho(文鳥). In these letters Bashō and Geiko shared their daily lives as well as Haikai. In one letter Bashō showed sympathy toward Geiko’s shock and sadness caused by Ranran’s (嵐蘭) death. Bashō also mentioned his own suffering in the letter, stating that for a while he has stopped communicating with the world due to the shock of his nephew, Dōin’s(桃印), death. With the knowledge of these details we can understand that Geiko was a person who shared Bashō's life and happiness. Another keyword of Bashō and Geiko’s exchanges is Haikai(俳諧). Bashō and Geiko interacted by using Haikai as a medium. Geiko was the center of ShōmonHaikai(蕉門俳諧) in the region of ōgaki(大垣) in the Haikai reform of Bashō. Bashō asked Geiko for help, telling Geiko about the troubles he had in the process of publishing Zokusarumino(『続猿蓑』), what was a text that became important to the Haikai reform. In view of the contents of this letter, it can be confirmed that, to Bashō, Geiko was not simply a literary person who exchanged letters through everyday life. Through this study, I hope to confirm that Geiko played an important role in Bashō's Haikai reform. The letters are significant as they confirm that Geiko was an important person who had deep interactions with Bashō, sharing in the joy of life.

This article aimed to reveal the attribute of crows as birds of good and bad luck, focusing on the image of crows shown in Japanese folk beliefs. In addition to literature research, a field survey was conducted on several areas. Korean people misunderstand that crows are considered birds of good luck in Japan. This is likely among the most representative cases of Korean people’s insufficient perception/knowledge of Japanese culture. Historically, crows have been perceived as birds of both good and bad luck in Japan. Including a crow with three feet called “Yatagaras'” shown in a Japanese myth, crows like a crow as an envoy of God shown in Kumano beliefs and a crow related to good/bad harvests are certainly birds of good luck bringing about miracles. Conversely, in various places in Japan, a folk belief considering crows as birds of bad luck connected to death or fire has been deeply and widely rooted. In other words, in Japan, crows have dual characters with positive and negative aspects. This article revealed that the negative perception of crows as birds of bad luck has been more widely transmitted than their positive perception.

The Yoshitsune vindictive spirit has an ambivalent image as a god with scary principles and a weak underdog as the main character of Hogan-biiki. The characteristics of the Yoshitsune vindictive spirit in the Middle Ages were examined regarding how it was established and transformed through historical records and literary works, as well as the possibility of being a god of command and the formation of the Hogan-biiki discourse on the weak Yoshitsune. Regarding the perception of the Yoshitsune vindictive spirit, it was considered that the change in the perception of the period of the ruler and the people toward Yoshitsune occurred in the social and political structure rather than the conditions of the character Yoshitsune itself. Accordingly, we examined the characteristics of the Yoshitsune vindictive spirit in historical books and literary works. Then, the consideration in Noh, in which Yoshitsune directly appears as a prime minister, will be taken as a future task.