University of Oriental Studies and Services and Tourism in Sakhalin State University
YAMASAKI Noriko

Sakhalin Oblast’s administrative center Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is located directly north of Hokkaido, and is a small city with a population of just under 200,000 people. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk carries out brisk trade with Japan, and there is active movement of people between the two: at the moment, four planes fly there each week from Narita and three from Sapporo, Hokkaido. A ferry also operates in the summer, traveling from Wakkanai to Korsakov in the south of Sakhalin Island, and there is a sense of the strength of the economic and human ties between the two countries here.

The first time The Japan Foundation (hereinafter “JF”) sent a Japanese-Language Specialist to Sakhalin State University, where I have been dispatched, was in 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union; until now, we have carried out various types of activities and offered different forms of support, but the JF will stop sending Japanese-Language Specialists here after this academic year.

About Sakhalin State University

Sakhalin State University is the only state university in Sakhalin Oblast, and the center of its Japanese-language education. I have heard that around 10 years ago the number of students enrolling here was 50+ (at that time, courses lasted for five years), but the influence of the falling birthrate and the curriculum changing to create a four-year course means that now there are no more than 50 students across all the years. Japanese-language education is offered through the Oriental Studies Course in the Institute of History and Oriental Studies and the Pedagogics Course, but in the past three years only the Oriental Studies Course has accepted applications. However, the five-year Pedagogics Course will be reopened from the next academic year, and so we expect that graduates will become active in the world of Japanese-language education in the Far Eastern Region from 2022 onwards.

Many of the Japanese-related events on Sakhalin center around this University: in April each year there is an Olympiad (a contest in which students answer questions on Japan; this year the theme was “Japanese ecology”) for students in shkola (primary and lower secondary educational institutions) and a teacher seminar for teachers of shkola, the Japanese Speech Contest in Sakhalin takes place in May (organized by the Sakhalin Oblast government and the Hokkaido Office), and the JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) is held in December. We also run a poetry recitation contest for students in shkola, and provide an exhibition venue for Sakhalin’s calligraphy (Shodo) contest.

Japanese-Language Education in Sakhalin and the Far Eastern Region

Currently, the only Japanese-language educational institutions that we can confirm are located in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: there are two higher education schools, including the university to which I have been dispatched, five shkola, a Japan Center, and a youth center. There is also a course (not an institution) unique to Sakhalin, which is for remaining Japanese residents and is run by the Consulate-General. Apparently, classes were taught by volunteers in the past, but last year the course was reopened by the Consulate-General and Japanese teachers were made responsible for it. This has been passed on to me this academic year—it is undecided who will inherit it for the next academic year.

As noted above, there aren't many Japanese-language educational institutions on Sakhalin, but the number of Japanese-language teachers is increasing. The majority of these are young teachers, and we run a teaching staff seminar for teacher training once every year. Teachers must raise the quality of their Japanese-language teaching to improve the proficiency of their learners; to be frank, I would like to gather these teachers more frequently for study meetings or training, but the teachers are also very busy, so this idea hasn’t come to anything. However, we have formed a tight network between teachers, centered on the head of the Department in this University. In our efforts to expand the circle of this network to other regions, we ran a Japanese speech contest for children in the Far Eastern Region and a teachers’ network meeting in Vladivostok in April. There are extremely enthusiastic shkola teachers in Vladivostok who actively hold training and other events in Moscow, but it seems that the connections between shkola are weak. Because of this, I hoped to take this opportunity to form a network with teachers in the Far Eastern Region and jointly hold meetings and shkola events.

Future Prospects

The changing state of Japanese-language education does not necessarily correspond to education standards in Russia, and I hear that shkola teachers in particular are suffering as a result. To resolve this, volunteer teachers are coming together from different parts of Russia and making progress in developing a syllabus and teaching materials based on Russian education standards. If they can make this a reality in the future, then it will become easier to run events as well as classes—we have also begun to see some positive signs in the environment surrounding Japanese-language education in Russia.

In Sakhalin, this year, formerly passive young teachers started to give their own presentations in the teacher seminar mentioned above. I hope that from now on, these seminars become a place in which teachers can raise and resolve their own problems and doubts as they absorb new knowledge.

In terms of improving learners’ motivation, information relating to Japan, in which they are interested, can be easily gathered—it might be necessary for teachers to show what people can do with the Japanese language, or what they might gain by becoming able to use Japanese. Fortunately, public institutions, Japanese companies, and Japanese people staying in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk have been incredibly cooperative with our Japanese-language projects and offered all kinds of support, so some learners have proactively participated in events and strengthened their exchanges.

Finally, I expect that Japanese-language education in Sakhalin will develop further, and sincerely wish that it will produce talents who will act as bridges between Japan and Russia.