AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter 1:1(March 1998)

The Global Shikoku Internet Project

by Steve McCarty

The "Global Shikoku Internet Project" is a local multilingual electronic text initiative from the island of Shikoku in Japan. Through the republication of research papers and parts of books about Shikoku on the Web in English, Japanese, French and other languages, people worldwide can learn about a region of Japan while local people learn how to express their culture to non-Japanese.

Island of Pilgrims and Exiles

As a result of researching and brainstorming with local people as to how Shikoku differs from other regions of Japan, the following picture emerges. Shikoku is one of the less developed regions of Japan, south of the main island of Honshu across the Seto Inland Sea, with four prefectures and a total population of about four million. Kochi Prefecture faces the Pacific Ocean, while the other three prefectures are close to the main island via Inland Sea islets. Thus each is scheduled to have its own bridge route to Honshu: Ehime to Hiroshima in the future, Tokushima to Hyogo in spring 1998, and Kagawa to Okayama since 1988, via the Seto Great Bridge, the world's largest train-highway bridge, which cost 13 lives and the equivalent of US $10 billion.
Even the so-called countryside of Japan is quite urbanized, but Shikoku somewhat merits the slogan "Blue-Green Country," with its low rainfall and pine-forested mountains. There is a tenuous balance, while it lasts, of tradition and modernity, nature and technology. Kagawa Prefecture is called "Japan in miniature," so in a sense the 'real Japan' can be found on Shikoku, where foreigners are still rare and foreign languages seldom heard.
Nationwide phenomena such as daily buying and selling, other-oriented consideration and peer group conformity, provinciality alongside admiration for exotic Western things, and so forth, are also found here. But how does Shikoku differ historically and currently from the rest of Japan?
Shikoku has a richer ancient history than Tokyo and northern Japan, because it was along the route of Chinese civilization passing through the Inland Sea to reach the ancient capitals around present-day Nara. There is also the Pilgrimage of Shikoku, based on the path of Japan's greatest Buddhist Saint, Kukai, who was from what is now Kagawa Prefecture. He was born in the Nara Period and came of age at the beginning of the Heian Period, to which he contributed much after his stay in the Chinese capital of Ch'ang-an. But "Shikoku the Remote" was also a place to send exiles like the deposed Emperor Sutoku, a key figure at the end of the Heian Period of refined nobility, before it fell to the Age of Shoguns.
Now today people who come to Shikoku willingly for the quiet, nature, agriculture, fishing, sunny weather, unique foods, and sightseeing places such as Ritsurin Park--one of the world's greatest masterpieces of landscape architecture--are like the pilgrims of old. But those who come here unwillingly, such as the many who are transferred by their companies to branch offices in Shikoku, are not unlike the exiles of old. Thus I characterize Shikoku as "island of Pilgrims and Exiles."
Finally, here is my translation of the haiku poem that greets visitors to Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, by Shiki, harking back to the halcyon days of the pre-modern Edo Period:
Come spring as of old
When such revenues of rice
Braced this castle town!

Phases of the Global Shikoku Project

In an earlier phase not particularly about Shikoku, over 40 articles were made available on the Web through English and Japanese-annotated versions of the "Bilingualism and Japanology Intersection."

The present phase just started in February 1998. Along with the digitization of bilingual research on Shikoku, community volunteers are sought to retype parts of guidebooks to Shikoku Island and Kagawa Prefecture, e-mail their work to the project coordinator, who will then write the HTML and upload the data to the Web server of Kagawa Junior College (KJC). This will also constitute project work for Practical English classes at KJC and possibly other schools. As an author of the above-mentioned works, this writer was able to secure the permission of co-authors and both publishers to go ahead with the project. As time permits, schools, boards of education and other organizations all over Shikoku will need to be informed about the project.

In a future phase, representative works in Japanese and other languages by other authors, perhaps with photos and illustrations, could also follow from these initial efforts. There is also a standing offer that any files can be taken down from the Kagawa JC server and given over to relevant agencies or publications.

Current Progress of the Project

Discussions have commenced with the Takamatsu City and Kagawa Prefectural international associations. Takamatsu, the capital city of Kagawa Prefecture, has shown interest in republishing the sections on their city. However, it remains to be seen how much formality is worth the time it would take, or whether the City would go beyond informal links to the Kagawa JC Website or not.
The Shikoku Newspaper Company has given formal permission to cite the Kagawa guidebook, but with strict conditions that are open to interpretation when applied to the new medium. The concept of ownership of information is still based on the print medium, whereas it matters little from what server voluntaristic educational information emanates. My college got involved, however, stamping its chop on the copyright release application form as the institution that would republish part of the guidebook through its server. Seemingly small points like these carry the potential to generate damaging bureaucratic snarls. Formal recognition tends to require political pressure, and to apply for a grant, time would be needed to plan exactly how it would be spent. In the past I did receive recognition from a prefectural teachers' organization, but was turned down by two prefectural boards of education for purely voluntaristic projects in collaboration with local teachers.
It would be helpful to have local information translated into as many languages as possible. The Shikoku guidebook publisher has an unpublished French translation of the English-Japanese guidebook, and an employee has verbally agreed to hand it over for Web publication. There has not been time to send e-mail messages to mailing lists about the project, but one message to a Dutch Webmaster in New Zealand met with interest, so I mailed him a complimentary copy. I would like to do this for anyone who is willing to consider translating passages of the Shikoku guidebook and uploading them to a Web server.
There have been some nibbles of interest from several of my intermediate and advanced English conversation practitioners at the Prefectural foreign language training center. Access to e-mail or the Internet in general is the stumbling block for most.
On short notice I was invited by Takamatsu City to make an unpaid appeal in Japanese to a gathering of volunteers on February 22nd. My discussion of how the Internet works and so forth was said to have been all so fast, probably because of the technical unfamiliarity of the content. It was nice, however, meeting some of the lonely internationalists in the region.
An interview with me appeared in the Shikoku Newspaper, which is dominant only in Kagawa Prefecture, on February 24th. It was not the usual two-dimensional 'foreign observers meet town mayor' type of PR photo op, but rather humane, reflecting the seriousness of my challenging gaze at the camera. Yet there were subtle omissions such as the article saying I awaited volunteers but providing no contact info. That day the principal of my third grade son's school praised the article to my son, and his teacher asked my son for my e-mail address. His e-mail message the following day, saying to call on him for what little he could do, was quite sincere.
This is where the project stands as of 27 February 1998, Japan time.

Future Aims of the Project
As the Internet itself is new and only vaguely understood by the general public in Shikoku, the project indirectly aims to introduce the Internet and show local people how their aspirations can be amplified by computers as a means of communication. Therefore approachable content has been utilized, and with a bilingual approach.

Progress of the project will be reported at the Japanese-English Website of the Global Shikoku Internet Project. For those without access to Japanese language software, the Chinese characters can nevertheless be viewed as GIF images via the following CGI shortcut. Just click here, and then click on "Go!" at the Shodouka Launch Pad.

This project as an experiment in hastening or creating the future will also be discussed in a keynote address at an entirely online conference in April 1998.

Volunteer translators for parts of the Shikoku guidebook are sought who could upload versions in Chinese, Korean and other languages onto servers of their own choice. Please click to contact Steve with any comments, suggestions, or offers of help.

URL http://asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu/v1n1/dbs/globalshikoku.html

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