| 1 | Greetings from the Director - General |
| 2 | What NINJAL aspires to |
| 3 | KAGEYAMA Taro |
| 4 | The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) is now in the sixth and final year of the period of the Second Medium-Term that began with its conversion to an inter-university research institute under the umbrella of the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU). |
| 5 | NIHU provides a new framework for comprehensive humanities research in areas such as history, culture, folklore, literature, and human interaction with the natural environment. |
| 6 | NINJAL's role is to promote humanities research focused on language. |
| 7 | Thinking back on this transition period, from its start in October of 2009 through the current year's emphasis on disseminating our discoveries, our concerted efforts have resulted in steady progress toward becoming a full-fledged research organization. |
| 8 | These six years have witnessed a wealth of publications aimed at general audiences as well as those intended for specialists, and also the creation of a variety of corpora and databases that can be accessed on our website. |
| 9 | In addition, public lectures and forums, seminars conducted outside the capital region, and events for schoolchildren have allowed us to communicate our accomplishments to the general public in a wide variety of different ways. |
| 10 | The abundance of research - related content now available online via our website is particularly noteworthy. |
| 11 | A major overhaul is now underway to make the site even more user - friendly by the end of this year. |
| 12 | Two fundamental aspects of our research activities over the last six years have been public service and international collaboration. |
| 13 | When we ponder our subject matter, namely, the nature of the Japanese language, the importance of these two key notions is apparent. |
| 14 | Since Japanese is the national language of Japan, it is critical for us to study how it is used in Japanese society and to make certain that our findings give back to the country that supports our work. |
| 15 | For this reason, research on Japanese dialects and on other languages spoken in Japan (especially those that are endangered) is absolutely essential. |
| 16 | The 2009 UNESCO report on endangered languages explicitly noted the languages and dialects in Japan that are most threatened, and NINJAL researchers are carrying out intensive surveys of the varieties native to the Ryukyu Islands and Hachijo-jima. |
| 17 | These scholars are also cooperating with local governments to preserve and revitalize these disappearing varieties. |
| 18 | NINJAL researchers are also working on Ainu, another of the languages cited in the UNESCO report. |
| 19 | If the word “society” is interpreted broadly, it can be referred not only to Japanese society as a whole but also more specifically to the scholarly community. |
| 20 | NINJAL is working to put both new and existing Japanese language resources into electronic form and making them available to outside researchers. |
| 21 | The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese is a representative example, but corpora of Heian period literary works and of early modern texts have also been built. |
| 22 | All of these corpora allow precision searching, and inviting interfaces have been developed to make them as convenient as possible. |
| 23 | Research on teaching Japanese to speakers of other languages is another link between the general public and the scholarly community. |
| 24 | In the past, the focus was on foreigners from different cultures living in Japan, but NINJAL research today encompasses work on the communicative capabilities of learners of Japanese studying all over the world. |
| 25 | An academic cooperation agreement with the Beijing Center for Japanese Studies is one example of the expanded scope of this research. |
| 26 | NINJAL's international collaboration efforts have also established a network for promoting institutional cooperation, and partners include Oxford University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Academia Sinica. |
| 27 | In addition, NINJAL actively encourages researchers to work with publishers outside of Japan. |
| 28 | One result of this push is an agreement with De Gruyter Mouton in Germany to publish an 12 - volume series of handbooks, written in English, that cover all aspects of Japanese language and linguistics. |
| 29 | The first three volumes appeared early in 2015, and the remaining volumes will appear in 2016 and beyond. |
| 30 | This series is an unprecedented undertaking; there is no comparably comprehensive treatment of any other language. |
| 31 | It will introduce the Japanese language and the scholarly work that has been done on it to the wider world. |
| 32 | Language is humankind's most precious possession. |
| 33 | It is more than just a tool for communication; it is part of our biological make-up, part of what makes us human. |
| 34 | Strengthening Japanese language research will ultimately enrich Japanese society and Japanese culture. |
| 35 | We ask for your continued support in our endeavor to ensure that the Japanese language has a bright future. |
| 36 | Taro Kageyama Director - General of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics |