Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > JAPAMESE GOVERNMENT POLICIES IN EDUCATION,SCIENCE AND CULTURE 1990 > PART Chapter7 5 (1)

PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture

The national language constitutes the very basis of national culture. If the nation is to further develop and improve its society and to create and inherit its culture, the Government is required to formulate and implement appropriate national language policies relevant to the changing times. For this reason, the Agency has been formulating and implementing national language policies on the basis of the careful and impartial deliberations by the National Language Council, which is composed of members who have respectable knowledge of and expertise in the national language. The Council is now examining the way of writing Japanese words of foreign origin. In March 1990 it published a draft report on the "Way of Writing Japanese Words of Foreign Origin."

The Agency every year publishes a booklet in a series of "Usage of the Japanese Language" and another booklet in a series of "Towards the Beautiful and Rich Usage of the Japanese Language." The National Language Research Institute has been conducting various scientific studies related to the Japanese language, as well as studies regarding the content and methods of the teaching of Japanese as a second language. The Institute also provides in-service training for teachers of Japanese as a second language.