The Japan Cultural Institute in Cologne
YOSHIOKA Chisato

Last year (2019), the Japan Cultural Institute in Cologne (hereinafter “Institute”) celebrated its 50th anniversary. For the last half century, the Institute has grown along with the people of the region as the office for the Japan Foundation in the German speaking world. At this milestone, I have become to sense a certain change taking place.

The area of responsibility for the Institute has always been the German speaking world, which includes Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, but in recent years, we are starting to receive requests from other nearby countries, including the Netherlands next door as well as the countries of Northern Europe (particularly Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway).

A map of Germany and neighboring countries

Source: https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=b01a1502-eeb38c99-b01ef84c-86bb862dd87c-1843b51bfd1df40b&q=1&e=8cfe71b4-c972-43f8-8f2a-3bea2062e6fa&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.d-maps.com%2Fcarte.php%3Fnum_car%3D2232

 

I can already imagine some of you saying, “Weren’t you already connected with these countries?” To be sure, it is not as though these countries had never requested us before. We already have loose but specific connections with each, which includes receiving inquiries from Japanese-language teachers in those countries and even particularly passionate teachers who take the trouble to travel to Germany to attend the training programs we offer.

Among the countries, we have in fact already been interacting with Finland in particular since 2012, visiting the country to meet with local teachers and to attend events on Japan and the Japanese language. I have also served as a lecturer at training programs and online study groups held by the Finnish Teachers Association of Japanese Language and Culture.

I also lectured at training in 2019 hosted by the Oranda Nihongo Kyoshikai (Dutch Association of Japanese Language Teachers), which was founded in 2017. The Association is actively involved in hosting events to improve the abilities of Japanese-language teachers by inviting external lecturers and in building a network of Japanese-language teachers in the Netherlands.

Accordingly, one of the missions of the Japanese-language program at the Institute is to support these teachers and teachers associations that are working to build more interest in Japanese-language education in each country and region. Moving forward, I hope to build mutually beneficial relationships not only with teachers in the German speaking world, but with those in the Netherlands and Northern Europe, with emphasis on opportunities to travel to those countries to meet with the teachers directly. But despite the fact that these countries are next door or can otherwise be reached by land, Europe is still a vast region. Given the sheer size of the area we must cover, I believe it will be important to carry out our operations even more efficiently and effectively in the future. Meanwhile, in addition to considering what we can do, we must also respond proactively to the needs of each country and region.

One powerful ally to help us cover this wide area is, as you know, ICT (Information and Communication Technology). A variety of ICT tools are coming into use now with the emergence of the Covid-19 Pandemic, but in fact this Institute has already been moving forward with the use of ICT for our Japanese-language programs in a variety of ways since 2018, accumulating knowledge and experience, such as participating in online training sessions, hosting hybrid training with online and face to face components, and operating an online Japanese-language course using the Japanese-language learning platform “JF Japanese e-learning Minato.”
(https://minato-jf.jp) in 2019.

Hybrid training

Moving forward, I hope to leverage these tools effectively to connect people, educational institutions, regions, and countries and build interest in Japanese language throughout the greater area. I also hope that the Institute continues to be an organization that is loved, needed, relied on, and an organization that continues to grow with our users for the next 50 years.

Thus the keywords for AY2020 for us at this wonderful workplace, the Institute, are “50th Anniversary” and the “Online Japanese-Language Course.”