Japanese sign language opens new world of communication, friendship

[Miss-Delectable]

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=992

TOKYO — I learned JSL on a train with much more enthusiasm than I ever did studying Japanese in college. This is because my teacher was a remarkable 9-year-old deaf boy named Jun.

We met on an empty commuter train in Osaka one lazy hot summer afternoon 20 years ago. This kid at the end of the car kept looking at me, started making faces and strange sounds, swung from the hand straps, climbed onto the luggage rack and bumped his head for maximum dramatic effect. Then he jumped down and ran screaming out of the train when it got to the next station.

The only other passengers in the car were a mother and her son about Jun's age. As Jun ran out the mother turned to her son sitting beside her with wide eyes and said, "See what a bad boy he is. Be a good boy." The son sat there frozen for the rest of the ride.

I thought the screaming kid was strange at first, but I could sense he was acting. I also noticed the hearing aids in each ear with the wires running inside his shirt.

Much later, I asked Jun about it. He said, "You looked like one of the foreigners in the comic book I was reading, so I decided to act out the scenes for you." I didn't know what to make of being compared to a comic book character, but a Japanese friend said I should take it as an honor: "Japanese kids look up to foreigners."

I think Jun had an active imagination without a way to express it. Frustrated with my own limited Japanese at the time, I wondered if Jun's thoughts were, like mine, bottled up in his head with nowhere to go. What would it be like to talk with him?

When I next saw Jun, the train was crowded and he just stood there quietly giving me the eye. I wanted to say hello but didn't know how and didn?t have the nerve.

How to start learning sign language

The next time, I decided to do something — anything — and just as he was getting off I made a face at him. It was enough. Jun waved, got out of the train and stood on the platform. As the train moved away he ran alongside it, yelling and waving. I immediately knew I wanted to learn Japanese signs but had no idea where to start.

I ran to a bookstore and found some JSL books with illustrations of individual words but no explanation of how to string them together. Fortunately, a Japanese friend put me in touch with a sign interpreter. She suggested that I visit a sign language circle, a local club of sorts where hearing and deaf people gather once a week to discuss sign language and other deaf-related social issues.

Sign language circles play an important role in bringing together local hearing and deaf people. Circles also teach basic signs and grammar. Most important of all, you meet deaf people and use what you learn.

The next time I saw Jun on the train I knew enough signs to ask him his name and sign mine. It was a great way to learn: Once a week I studied at the sign language circle, then I got to practice for ten precious minutes on the train with Jun.

Soon, 10 minutes wasn't enough, so one day I took a deep breath and stepped off with him at his station. Jun looked incredulous. "What are you doing?" he signed. I said I wanted to talk some more and we walked to the ticket gate. Generally my limited vocabulary was exhausted even before we got off the train, so we'd play games, tearing about on the platform and later around his neighborhood.

My signs got better because I had no choice. No 9-year-old deaf kid will wait patiently watching stuttering signs. Jun wanted to talk now and he wanted to talk a lot: what happened in school, what he caught when his grandpa took him fishing, what comic book he was reading — on and on while my eyes glazed over just trying to keep up with his signs.

Japanese Sign Language is related to spoken Japanese, but, just as American Sign Language (ASL) is different from spoken English (and also from British Sign Language), JSL has its own grammar and history.

 

[Miss-Delectable]

cont

Fluency in Japanese not necessary

You need some basic Japanese to be able to understand the text books, but you certainly don?t need to be fluent. In fact, being fluent might even be a hindrance. When Japanese hearing people tackle JSL for the first time they expect it to follow spoken grammar, which it doesn't. A certain amount of unfamiliarity with spoken Japanese will keep you open-minded.

My spoken Japanese was shaky when I started learning JSL, but that didn't stop me, and after a while I found that I could express myself better in JSL, and that JSL even helped improve my spoken Japanese. For instance, when I went out with deaf friends, as the only hearing person in the group I had to interpret. There is no learning experience like being in a restaurant with 20 pairs of eyes trained on you as you interpret orders to the waiter. With no place to hide, you swallow any humiliating shortcomings and do the best you can.

JSL started in the Meiji Era with the establishment of the first school for the deaf and blind in Kyoto in 1878. JSL evolved into a native language with few foreign influences and took its visual cues from Japanese culture. The sign for "eat," for example, imitates eating rice with chopsticks. The kana finger alphabet evolved later at the Osaka City School for the Deaf, incorporating a few signs from the American finger alphabet.

Education for the deaf was not compulsory before WWII, and only the rich could afford it. Even so, a number of deaf graduates became teachers and pioneers in building deaf Japanese culture.

Around this time, JSL became the basis for sign languages in Korea and Taiwan, which were Japanese colonies. Even today, if you know JSL you can converse with Korean and Taiwanese deaf people even if you can?t speak Korean or Chinese.

In the first decades of the 20th century, sign language was the preferred method for teaching at deaf schools in Japan, unlike in Europe, which considered both sign language and deaf teachers "inferior" to the oral method. By the early 1930s, however, the oral method took over completely. Sign language was dropped, then banned outright; deaf teachers found themselves ostracized then purged.

As Japan marched to war, the situation for Japan's deaf community became very grim. One man, a Hiroshima blast survivor, told me how people would turn a cold shoulder when he used sign language. "It got so bad that we only signed when there were no hearing people around."

Schools became sign-friendly after war

After the war the situation improved. Education became compulsory and decentralized, and schools with a long history of sign language, like Jun's school in Osaka, became sign-friendly again.

Others stuck stubbornly with the oral method. A profoundly deaf man from Kagoshima told me the teachers would tie his hands behind his back if they caught him signing at school. Eventually the pendulum swung back away from strict oralism, and today deaf schools use signs and oral training together as they did long ago.

As Jun and I became friends, I realized that his signs were different from the ones I had learned in books and at the sign language circle. They were more similar to the signs I saw deaf people use when hearing people weren't around.

Japanese deaf are very patient, going to extraordinary lengths to make sure hearing people understand and take part in conversations. They are visually alert and know instantly when you don't understand, in which case they back up and try something more simple.

But when I saw Japanese deaf together, the slowed-down pace and speech-like grammar went out the window, and their voices became silent. The signs became fuller and more three-dimensional, indicating place, time and action neatly compacting long spoken sentences into just a few signs. Those times were like riding a submarine from the surface to a depth not many hearing people experience — it was like discovering the secret place where all human communication was born.

When Jun was at home he used his voice, but he didn't with me; he didn't even mouth the words. I was on the same level as his deaf school friends, and I considered that an honor.

If you do try learning JSL, don't fall into the trap of thinking the conversation always has to flow one way. Deaf people have lots to tell you, but also lots of questions. They'll want to know about you and your world, and that is an important contribution you can give them. One well-known aspect of deafness is that deaf people often have trouble reading well.

Reading ability is closely linked to speech patterns learned from an early age and many of my deaf friends, especially those born deaf, are never very comfortable with the written word. The best way for them to get new ideas and information is from the signing community. That is why after-hours conversations at the local caf頧o on far longer than the circle itself.

A good place to experience Japanese deaf culture is Izakaya Fusao in Okubo. Fusao Yoshioka, the owner, is deaf and so is a good deal of the clientele. Going there on any crowded Friday night is a little like discovering a secret, parallel society. And even if you don't know JSL, a creative and thoughtful way of expressing yourself is always appreciated.

"Having my own izakaya was always a dream," Yoshioka said, "but I wasn't sure if I could really do it. We just celebrated our fifth anniversary. There were a few other drinking places that opened when I did, but they are all gone."

Yoshioka says his business has survived because everyone is welcome. "I want my place to be for everybody. If it was just for deaf people or hearing people I wouldn't have lasted this long. Anybody can come here and have a good time."

There is some hearing staff to help everything go smoothly, and naturally they also know JSL. I asked the obasan behind the counter if she belonged to a sign language circle. "I'm a member of the Shinjuku circle but I don't go all that much. Not many deaf people attend. If you really want to learn sign language you?re better off coming here."

Jun and I went on to have countless adventures both on and off the train. We hiked the mountains and hung out with street performers in Shizuoka. When I was broke, I hitch-hiked to Osaka to join Jun's summer camp. He even invited me to his high school graduation.

I see him when he comes to Tokyo, and deaf friends near and far always keep in touch much more than hearing friends do. It's a little like being in a special club — once you enter your membership never expires.

Deep down, deaf people are much more aware of how precious and fragile human communication really is. You will never regret learning how to celebrate it. More than anything else, learning sign language will teach you how.

 

[tegumi]

Wow, this is a really neat story. When I was in Japan, I watched a JSL program on TV, it was a program that taught JSL to the general public. I picked up a couple signs, but only remember them because the signs are the same as ASL, but the meanings are COMPLETELY different.

For example, ASL "where" = JSL "what"

Really confusing for me...