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Paper short abstract:

This presentation reports on the development of intercultural understanding through an ongoing video-based virtual exchange between students at universities in Japan and China. Results suggest improvements in Chinese students’ attitudes, but a more ambivalent response from Japanese students.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will report on the potential development of intercultural communicative competence in an ongoing video-based virtual exchange between students at universities in Japan and China. The rationale for this exchange was the consideration that if students had a chance to actually engage with students from another country and learn something of the other culture, attitudes towards and understanding of that country might improve. In the case of Japan and China, there are deep, centuries-long cultural ties which in the present day, due to events occurring over the last 120 years or so, have become somewhat fractious. Many people in both nations harbour deeply ingrained, negative sentiments towards people of the other nation, and it was envisioned that a collaboration such as this may serve as a means of promoting greater interaction and understanding.

Technological developments over recent years have suggested various possibilities for providing learners with more chances to engage more deeply, not only with a foreign language (English), but also with various transversal and “21st century” skills, such as digital literacy, global citizenship, creative thinking, intercultural communicative competencies, etc.

In these exchanges, students produced videos on various topics, such as sustainable development (focussing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals), cuisine and cultural aspects of their countries and regions. Password-protected websites were created for the purpose of exchanging the videos between students, potentially offering them a rare opportunity to gain insights into the thoughts of students in another country. Feedback was subsequently provided via a rubric and then used to make improvements to the videos.

The outline of the project and results from pre- and post-project surveys and student reflective comments from a series of small-scale studies (each iteration of the project lasted for approximately 8-10 weeks) spanning several years will be presented. Results indicate that although the attitudes of Chinese students towards Japan have tended to improve over the course of a project, Japanese attitudes towards China are more ambivalent, often becoming more neutral.

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Paper short abstract:

Students introduce their cultures to peers by multimedia and deepen their understanding in intercultural collaborative learning. By using Metaverse, students from many countries around the world can participate in the class and feel a sense of unity while domestic students participate face-to-face.

Paper long abstract:

This course is offered as an “Intercultural collaborative learning” program in which international and domestic students work together. “Intercultural collaborative learning” involves students with different cultural and language backgrounds working together to deepen their mutual understanding, and create new values by understanding and reflecting on diverse ways of thinking.

In this class, students acquire the skills/techniques necessary to effectively introduce their own/other cultures using not only print “monomedia”, but also visual “multimedia” such as manga, anime, plays, and film. In this way, students deepen their knowledge and understanding of their own cultures and reconsider them from the perspective of their peers. Furthermore, students cultivate an ethical viewpoint that enables one to contribute in an increasingly globalized future.

The class uses a social platform “Metaverse” which is a 3D virtual space. Domestic students participate face-to-face in the classroom while also communicating with international students abroad via Metaverse. Students use a Virtual Reality (VR) camera to collaborate on making videos that explain Japanese cultures. This is one of the attractions for students, as they can directly experience advanced VR technology, including wearing head-mounted displays.

Another attraction is the ability to study together with students from diverse cultural backgrounds, transcending space. In particular, students who cannot travel to Japan have the benefit of being able to learn the Japanese language and culture without having to physically travel abroad. Students are able to encounter the diversity of society that they did not know before, and to view their own culture from an outside point of view.

In the most recent semester, there were 130 students from 20 countries, making it one of the largest intercultural collaborative learning programs at a national university in Japan. This included students from different campuses and faculties at Tohoku University, students from domestic consortium participant universities and international students who could not travel to Japan.

We have found that group work and discussions become livelier through the students’ own avatars. Moreover, while not all students attend in person, the class format brought a sense of togetherness, presence and immersion that cannot be achieved in standard online settings.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the transnational transitions of the representation of fatherhood, masculinity and family as elements in the formation of an adult in society in the Korean original and Japanese remake of the TV drama Two Weeks.

Paper long abstract:

In the past two decades public discussions as well as policies in Japan were concerned with the growing demographic change. Rise in marriage age and low birth rate raised concerns over the general population and the balance between the young and the elderly and the future of the nation. Japan is not alone in this concern as it is shared by its neighbour, South Korea. This shared interest was the basis of appeal of the Korean TV drama Two Weeks (MBC, 2013) to the Japanese television industry, an interest that led to a Japanese remake by the same name (Fuji Tv, 2019).

This paper applies transnational media flow theories to the exploration of the original and remake of Two Weeks. The drama, which follows a hero who discovers he is a father and goes on a journey to save his daughter’s life, presents a lens to explore representations and discourses around fatherhood, masculinity and family as elements in the formation of an adult in society (shakaijin). Moreover, those formations are used not only to explore the discourse within Japan but also to position it vis-à-vis its neighbour. Although the message of the original and the remake, the importance of fatherhood, is common to both versions, differences in representation of fatherhood highlight subtle variations of Japanese society within the Asian context.