One of the goals of the English 2A class is to foster intercultural and cross-language competency. To achieve this, we have a weekly class activity where we read a chapter of the story “Sanshiro” by the Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki, using both Japanese and English. This novel was originally published in 1909, so the language is very old-fashioned. For example, the first paragraph includes the phrase: “hada wo nuida” (肌を抜いだ). Some students thought this meant something quite gruesome, such as skin (“hada”) being pulled off (“nugu”, usually written 脱ぐ). It actually refers to a person taking off their underclothes (“hadagi” 肌着), a contraction not found in contemporary Japanese. However, in the English translation this is much more simple: “he stripped to his waist” or he “loosened his kimono top”. Students remarked upon this difference, realizing that sometimes an English translation can be easier to read than archaic Japanese. Each week, students take turns in groups to summarize the chapter and choose a discussion topic. The novel itself is a “coming of age story” about a young man who moves to Tokyo from Kumamoto to study at university, and students have been using it as a medium to think about their own experiences as first-year students in a university that for many of them is also far away from home. The discussions have often reflected this: “What do you to take a break from academic stress?” and “Which of the following worlds do you most like to spend time in: the homely world, the academic world, or the modern world?”, for example. Today we read chapter 6, and discussed how we could express emotions through metaphors about the weather and nature.
