ScholarWorks@경상국립대학교

초록

Learning a foreign language is not only memorizing words and grammar rules, but also understanding other cultures, including historical contexts, geographical information, and religious beliefs and practices, as many scholars suggest that language and culture need to be educated together. The importance of cultural awareness also applies to Japanese classes in Korean high schools. In this paper, I analyze 14 Japanese textbooks to understand how Japanese culture is described and taught at the high school level. In particular, I closely examine the description of Japanese religions in the textbooks and religious traditions such as ‘matsuri’, ‘annual events’, ‘Ema (votive picture)’, and ‘Omikuji (a paper fortune)’. In this way, I suggest that the explanation of Japanese religions described in high school textbooks is often missing or incorrect. For example, when the textbooks introduce Matsuri, Hatsumōde (the first visit of the year to a shrine or a temple), Ema, and Omikuji, they lack proper explanation of Shinto and Shinto shrines, which are essential to understand why these are practiced. The major problem of cultural education through high school textbooks is that there is no sufficient discussion on what is called “culture” and what is included in the educational content. Therefore, there is a strong need to discuss this issue fully in making Japanese textbooks, re-evaluating standards for secondary teacher appointment tests, and reconsidering the curricula of Japanese education departments in universities to teach Japanese to high school students with better cultural awareness.

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