Transcending Self and Other Through Akogare (Desire): The English Language and the Internationalization of Higher Education in Japan

Abstract

In this rather slim book Chisato Nonaka discusses the relationship between English learning (as a second language) and internationalisation of education as a political choice by the Japanese government. She introduces the concept of “akogare”, which is genuinely Japanese as an idea and a word, so that she may build an operational framework by which she would describe and analyse such emic and etic perspectives, as sociocultural and sociolinguistic relations between individual learners and the state policies on higher education. She then goes on to suggest the future possibilities of Japanese internationalisation as more than a mere description, and translates the term akogare to desire.