A year into my second term as CJS Director, it seems a good time to look at where we are now, and where we are heading. Happily, our National Resource Center for East Asia designation has been renewed for four years, as have our FLAS Fellowships. The intense competition for this funding has encouraged us to look for greater cooperation among our three East Asia area centers (China, Japan, and Korea), and also among the other Title VI international Centers (NRC Pacific Islands, NRC Southeast Asia, the National Foreign Language Resource Center [NFLRC], and the Center for International Business Education and Research). Faculty and students from various departments and disciplines across campus will be developing and benefiting from our individual and joint projects, and the process of putting together an NRC/FLAS application that demonstrated meaningful cooperation among these various units was an exciting challenge.

Of particular note are the innovative language-learning projects we are working on with NFLRC. Among them is a project that, when completed, will put us in the forefront of distance education for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and another that will develop high-level assessment tools to measure student learning, and the overall effectiveness of our language programs. These represent a dynamic cooperation between the area centers in SPAS and the language acquisition and pedagogy expertise of the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature. Our NRC funds will also sponsor projects on Islam and East Asia, Aging in East Asia, and Technology Transfer in East Asia.

Our Okinawan Studies initiative has also met with success. First, with the help of scholars from the UH and the University of the Ryukyus, we were able to complete and publish the Okinawan-English Wordbook (UH Press, 2006), working from the extensive manuscript of the late Dr. Mitsugu Sakihara. The same team will continue to work on the manuscript over the next several years with an eye towards publishing the definitive Okinawan-English dictionary. CJS maintains its support of scholars and students working on Okinawa-related topics, and our proposal for a Center for Okinawan Studies survived the legislative budget process and will open in 2008. (There are too many people to thank for this, but at the very least I want to acknowledge our CJS Associate Director, Dr. Gay Satsuma, for whom this has been a major cause over the past several years.)

Through our Sen Soshitsu International Way of Tea Center, we have funded a number of undergraduates and professional school students to travel and study in Japan, and we anticipate continuing this in some form in the future. Urasenke and our Tea Center will expand activities in the fall of 2007 by sponsoring the 4th East Asia Tea Culture Symposium and Panel Discussion to honor the UH Centennial.

Finally, through our Japan Studies Endowment, we continue to support faculty and student research and travel. This funding, which targets the humanities and social sciences, is more important than ever since grants like the NRC are becoming narrower in focus. We must not forget what brought us to the point we are today, and the Japan Studies Endowment helps us distribute our resources equitably. A look at our CJS Seminars over the past three years shows the wide range of Japan-related scholarship supported by the Center.

Robert N. Huey
Director
August, 2007