Ryukyuan languages are endangered, the result of domination, notably by the Japanese mainland and the United States. In our colloquium, we foreground the theoretical issues and illustrate the current language reclamation and revitalization efforts in Ryukyuan islands.  Maher overviews the historical development of research on multilingualism in Japan and discusses a new paradigm embracing 21^st linguistic and cultural diversity.  Ishihara critically reviews the current language policy in Okinawa prefecture and advocates a shift towards explicit action plans for reclamation and revitalization based upon more profound reasons.  Hammine reviews the concept, “language reclamation”, which is to claim the right to speak a language and establish policy goals in response to community perspectives.  Yokoyama & Yamada report on their community-based projects in Okinoerabu Island with two towns: from policy level to micro language learning praxis.  Ohara reports on three collective projects generated by members of the younger generation in Okinawa Island, and how they have expanded the use of the language into at least six distinct domains.  Fujita-Round reports on implementing the collaborative, niche language program in a local school steered by a teacher and a researcher.  The colloquium adds to recent language reclamation studies from Ryukyus and provides an Asian perspective. (200 words)

Paper 1

Multilingualism in Japan: past and present

John C. Maher (International Christian University)

Aya is a deaf woman, a resident of Fukuoka in the transborder living sphere of northern Kyushu. She signs in standard JSL (Japanese Sign Language) and Kyushu dialectal Sign. Aya reads and writes Japanese. She learned English at school. Her teenage son, Jun, is a Japanese speaker but speaks Hakata dialect at school.  He is native JSL (CODA). Jun also learns English in school. He has become fluent in KSL (Korean Sign Language). Jun thinks signing in KSL is cool. He can also understand some TSL (Taiwanese Sign Language). JSL, KSL, and TSL are one language family (due to the history of Japanese colonization in the 20^th century). Jun has visited Korea with his sister Naoko, also a CODA. They were puzzled and dismayed when once in Tokyo, witnessing an anti-Korean demonstration in Shin-Okubo. Fukuoka has a visual and auditory landscape of multilingual signs and public announcements.  There are several long-term and newer ‘speech communities’ in the city. The lines of Fukuoka and Japan’s cultural and translinguistic flows across the ancient Asian-Pacific and Eurasia are well-known. Japan has a history of Japanese dialects, pidgins and creoles, historic languages such as Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, Chinese and Chinatowns, Korean and Koreatowns. There are recent migrant language communities such as Vietnamese, Portuguese, Nepali, Filipino, Bengali and Urdu. Multilingualism involves cultural and intellectual life, politics, education, history, and personal identity. Each person is situated in a multidimensional linguistic space. The space is due to family or migration history or the language/dialect of their city and town, or ethnicity, lifestyle, or education. At the level of politics, civic life, and education, Japan has not yet established a robust social framework to replace the now discredited monocultural and monolingual ideology of the past to a new paradigm based upon 21^st century linguistic and cultural diversity. (300 words)

Paper 2

Okinawa Prefecture’s plans to promote community language spread: a critical review

Masahide Ishihara (University of the Ryukyus)

All five Ryukyuan languages spoken in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan are endangered. Okinawa Prefectural Office is well aware of the situation, and the office has made two plans to spread the endangered languages and three action plans to implement the plans since 2013, four years after the Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger listed the Ryukyuan languages as endangered. The intention of these plans is to halt the decline of local languages and to reverse language shift. However, the number of speakers is patently decreasing despite the efforts of the prefecture. The fact that the decline of Ryukyuan languages has accelerated suggests that a more effective plan is needed. In order to devise a new plan, the above-mentioned schemes need to be critically reviewed. For example, they state that if the languages are gone, the Ryukyuan cultures on which they are based will also be gone. In other words, the languages need to be protected to protect the culture and cultural identity of the people of the Ryukyus. However, the prefectural plans fail to mention other reasons for keeping the languages; for example, “language rights.” Moreover, they do not mention how to promote intergenerational transition of the languages at home, how to encourage so called “passive speakers” to speak their “would-be” first/second languages, or how to use media to promote learning of the languages. It is now well recognized that speaking a local language, different from the “national language,” may lead to the well-being of the speakers. It is also known that when a person feels free to speak their minoritized language, this may lead to a decolonization of mind. These aspects of language reclamation are not mentioned in the Prefectural Office plans. In sum, the prefecture may need to formulate language plans that contain deeper and more elegant reasons. (299 words)

Paper 3

From silence to reclamation: new speakers of Indigenous languages in the Ryukyus

Madoka Hammine (Meio University)

Language revitalization is commonly understood as comprising activities that give new life and vigor to a language that is decreasing in use or has ceased to be. Language reclamation goes beyond language revitalization. For Indigenous language community members, language reclamation claims the right to speak a language and to establish language policy goals in response to community needs and perspectives. Language reclamation appropriates Indigenous languages and cultures, bringing the languages forward to new uses and new users. As Indigenous languages in the southern part of Japan, new speakers of Ryukyuan languages are emerging in different parts of the Ryukyu islands (and among its diaspora) where a multi-layered colonial history and militarism persist in everyday life. Language reclamation in the Ryukyus may, therefore, be understood as a type of decolonization because it takes communities, their histories and needs as a “starting point.” The process of reclamation is entangled with questions of language ownership. Hence, language reclamation obliges us to ask: Who speaks Ryukyuan? Which varieties of Ryukyuan? To whom do they speak Ryukyuan, when and why? How do they experience language reclamation? Who is language reclamation for? I have conducted longitudinal, ethnographic research of new speakers of Ryukyuan languages.  Reflecting on this analysis, my presentation calls for more engagement of individuals’ multifaced experience of reclaiming Ryukyuan as their ancestral languages. By introducing Yuntaku as a Ryukyuan methodology used in our Master-Apprentice Initiatives in Ishigaki, I hope to shed light on the complex trajectories of the language life of individuals. I wish to give voice to the challenges or “pain” they experience, voices that are often are “silenced.” From this may emerge new narratives of healing and hope in language reclamation. Language reclamation work is challenging because it often obliges us to confront the still-present consequences of a multi-layered colonial heritage. (300 words)

Paper 4

Community of Practice in Okinoerabu Island: dynamic preservation in the community

Akiko Yokoyama (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics) and Masahiro Yamada (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics)

The authors started their fieldwork of Okinoerabu-Ryukyuan, a Japonic endangered language spoken in Okinoerabu island, in 2010. The purpose was systematic documentation involving grammar, vocabulary, and texts, working with a few “native speaker consultants”. We realized that community members’ actual wishes were not only a “static preservation” of their language but a desire to keep their language alive in the community by intergenerational language transmission, in a sense, “dynamic preservation”. Therefore, we started working on both documentation and revitalization around 2015. We collaborated with many willing community members and continued to launch many grassroots activities, such as creating picture books or workshops at schools and community centers. Based on these small bottom-up projects, the island’s local governments (Wadomari town and China town) and our institution (NINJAL) signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) in 2019 on collaboration for language revitalization. Since the MoU, town-level projects have started: a regular class on language documentation and revitalization at a community center, a committee for language revitalization, and an island-wide survey about the community members’ attitudes toward their language. However, it is salient for MoU to support individual-initiated bottom-up activities in a top-down manner. For example, the two towns make our grassroots activities more visible to the residents, and we can now approach a wider audience, among whom we would meet future collaborators. In other words, community-oriented projects can be launched one after another with a growing number of collaborators. We believe that policies like the MoU are ineffectual without tangible community-based practice. It is crucial to consider both the substantial grassroots efforts and top-down policy support that aims for sustainable language revitalization. (269 words)

Paper 5

Community of practice in Okinawa Island: three collective projects generated by members of the younger generation

Yumiko Ohara (University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo)

In the past few decades, we have had a few successful cases of revitalizing endangered languages, and it is clear now that two factors are of crucial importance: young adults with high levels of fluency and the expansion of the domain of usage. Attending to these two points, the focus of this presentation is placed on the endeavor to revitalize Uchinaaguchi by community organizations on Okinawa Island, namely Yomitan village, Okinawa Hands-on NPO, and the Umui project. Since the 1970’s, Yomitan village has been at the forefront of community-led efforts of language preservation by recording its folklore, resulting in the documentation of over 5,000 stories recounted in a local variety of Uchinaaguchi by over 700 community members from all parts of the village. They have been creating language learning materials based on these collected stories. Okinawa Hands-on NPO consists of young adults working to transmit the Okinawan language and culture to the next generation through the use of Uchinaaguchi in picture-story shows, theatrical performances, and a radio program disseminating traditional knowledge of Okinawa. The Umui project is a project established by a few young adults with two main objectives: to acquire Uchinaaguchi to a high level and to work to revitalize it. One of the most striking characteristics of the Umui project is that the members use the language as the main language of communication whenever they communicate in person, via email, zoom, etc., and they have also worked with Yomitan Board of Education to teach the language. These three organizations together have expanded the use of the language into at least six distinct domains: performing arts, media, social media, education, personal, as well as the local government. This presentation concludes by discussing the implications of their activities and their social characteristics especially from the point of view of decolonization. (300 words)

Paper 6

Community of practice in Miyako Island: collaborative niche language program at school

Sachiyo Fujita-Round (Yokohama City University)

The Miyakoan language is listed as endangered with other Ryukyuan languages, with the degree of “definitely endangered” in the UNESCO atlas. Miyakoan is no longer transmitted in the home, and no policy proposal exists to reintegrate Ryukyuan languages into the school system. In this presentation, based on action research at a public junior high school in Miyako Island, I will report on implementing an education praxis: One Day One Word Miyakoan, the collaborative niche language program by a Japanese language teacher and a researcher.   During Covid 19, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan released a recommended guideline for all public schools to conduct ‘silent lunch (Mokushoku)’ for the academic year 2019.  Pupils were supposed to face the blackboard, keep social distance from their peers, and eat lunch quietly. During lunchtime at this school, the pupils in charge of lunch-hour broadcasting read a short script written by a nutritionist to introduce the menu.  So, all the pupils listened to this broadcast while having a ‘silent lunch’.  Persuading the headteacher, we added a short script introducing one word in Miyakoan relevant to the menu after the usual lunch-hour broadcasting.  As a result, 190 lunchtime broadcasts were conducted in 2022.   Some Miyakoan words were perceived as cool and became popular among pupils in school.  In the third semester, the recorded reading by Miyakoan speakers in the community was broadcast in collaboration with the community. Success in raising pupils' awareness, yet the issues continuing this program after the MEXT discharging the recommendation remains uncertain. This presentation will discuss how to rework the everyday language praxis of Miyakoan to suit post-modernity in the context of the dominant Japanese language and education policy, which is directly connected with nation-building and overt colonization in the early history of modernity in Japan. (300 words)