日本の写真

日本の写真について何か知りませんか？１９６０年代に若い写真家はとても面白い写真の雑誌を始めました。雑誌の写真は高コントラストだし、よくちょっとピンぼけだし、主流の写真家や写真批評家はアバンギャルドと言いました。

About Communication

Communication ties into the podcast project in a couple different ways (effective communication within our group is necessary to produce a good project, for example) - but as far as communication skills we're learning and developing, I guess there are two major ones.

Since this is a project which conveys information both through Japanese text and speech, our ability to express ourselves in the Japanese language is being tested and developed.  That makes sense given that this is a project for Japanese class.

In a slightly more abstract sense, we're also communicating via the language of film: the shots we use, what we choose to include and exclude in the frame, how we put everything together, etc.  All of these things allow us to communicate with the viewer without spoken or written language, but in a way that still conveys important concepts.  For example, a Dutch angle is a type of visual pattern which is immediately recognizable/understandable by pretty much anyone - even those who aren't familiar with it in an academic or critical sense can still understand how it conveys uneasiness or instability.  Even the smallest things can totally change the feeling of a shot, even things that we may not notice ourselves or be able to control, so this will be tough to control.

So in other words the two major types of communication we're utilizing in this project - the two ones by which we're communicating concepts to the viewer - are both languages we're unfamiliar with using in day-to-day life.  Both the language in which we'll actually speak over the film, and the visual methods by which we communicate with the film itself, are ways to communicate which we'll necessarily have to develop if we want to make a good product.

好きな物

もちろん私はいろいろな物が好きです：本、音楽、フォトグラフィなど。でも私の好きな物の中で音楽が一番好きです。私は毎週コンサートへ行く。
ジャズが私の一番好きなジャンルです。いろいろなとてもいいジャズクラブはブルックリンにあります。土曜日に宿題をして、勉強してから、私はコンサートへ行きます。先週私はJACKと言うのジャズクラブで上手なトランペット奏者を見ました。名前はピーター・エヴァンスでした。
私はジャズがすごいエナジーがありますと思う、いつもバンドのみなは一緒に頑張らなければなりません。そのすごいエナジーから私は好きです。
P.S. 私はまだ上手じゃないけど、サクソフォンがちょっと吹くことできます。今月の２４日私はコンサートがあります！Goodbye Blue Mondayと言うのクラブにあります。サクソフォンを吹きます。

ふゆ休み

私の冬休みはとても楽しかったです。私の家族へ帰りました！私の家はニューオーリンズにあります。ニューヨークからちょっと遠いですから、飛行機で帰りました。
実は、ニューオーリンズであまり何もしませんでした。寝て、休んで、友達と遊んでいます。でも良かったです。私は休みが好き。

Katakana Literary Work (Final)

[Link]

Since I made an advertisement for a stereo component, I used katakana mainly to push a "cutting edge" or "modern" image.  Since being up-to-date is important in electronics/appliances/etc, anything that will make the reader believe that you are modern is probably helpful, even if it has only a very minimal effect.  It was easy to include katakana in this advertisement because so many music-related words exist in Japanese as loan words, even when there's an equivalent native Japanese word.  Sound effects are also music-related and are written in katakana - though I wasn't really sure how to write a musical sound since the only examples of written sound effects I can think of are the ones we went over in class, so I just guessed.
Since my advertisement is a couple sentences rather than standout words or phrases, I was cautious about using katakana to write words which are normally written in hiragana or kanji even though some of the advertisements people used as examples did this as an eye-catching measure.  I thought it might look strange in the middle of a sentence or a paragraph, and would be more distracting than eye-catching.  Instead I decided to use loan words over their native equivalents (ミュージック instead of 音楽 for instance) because I thought it might look more natural.  I'm not sure if the other route would have been better, though!

Katakana Literary Work (Draft)

[Link]

Since I created an advertisement for a piece of stereo equipment, I used katakana because it may help to enhance a "cutting edge" or "modern" image.  Being up-to-date is always a big selling point for appliances and things like that, I think.  There are also a lot of music-related words which seem to be commonly written in katakana, so using these words was less of an intentional choice and more of a natural thing.

Katakana Analysis (Final)

Example 1: "Cool Factor"?
When "Tokyo Three Hawks Motor Club" is credited in this movie, their name is written in katakana (except "Tokyo" of course).  I think there are non-loan words in Japanese for everything in the name of the organization, so it must be a deliberate choice to use katakana/loan words and have a "western-sounding" name.  Since it's a motorsports club, it may be modeling itself after American motorcycle organizations and trying to call that connection to mind with its name.  A motivation this specific (naming something in an attempt to emulate or call to mind a Western archetype) wasn't really mentioned in the very brief overviews of katakana use we read in class, but it ties in to the idea that katakana can seem edgy and modern, something which was probably particularly true back when the club was founded in the post-war years.
I looked it up online and I think this club was still around in 2006 at least, even though the movie came out a long time ago.  Here is their website, which says the club was founded in 1957.  Here's what they say in their explanation of the team name:

Tokyo Three Hawks－英語だと、まぁなんとなくなチーム名ですが、日本語に訳してみてください。地名です。(爆)

Example 2: Personal Choice
The name of the singer is written in katakana in the title of this album.  As in the example we discussed in class, it's likely that this is just designed to make her name stand out or look interesting.  She is related to another singer who writes her name in the same way, カルメン・マキ, via a connection to notable avant-garde figure Shuji Terayama.  I think it's just a coincidence though, not that he was exclusively seeking to promote singers who spelled their name マキ.  浅川マキ's career began as a singer in American military bases during the late 1950s or early 1960s, so this foreign connection may also partially contribute to her motivation for using katakana.
I asked some Japanese people online about why a musician might choose to write their name in katakana.  But nobody really agreed. Somebody's response:

Katakana names look catchy and not stiff.
>Is there some sort of image that's cultivated by writing your name in katakana?
I think you would be right. Katakana names look cool for the young.

This would fit with some of the textbook explanations of katakana, and would explain why singers sometimes choose to write their names in katakana to seem hip or distinguish themselves from the norm.  But other people got mad at the guy who said that and called him an idiot, so I don't know if he's right or not.  Someonse else said "I think Kana name gives foreign atmosphere," which the textbooks we read also agree with.  There wasn't really a single conclusion that people came to.  It does seem like there's at least some sense of katakana being used as a personal choice to seem interesting, at least.