Ikema Ryuichi stands in the museum his mother built on Yonaguni, a coral-reef-fringed tropical island and south-western outpost of Japan. Large clay vessels, intricate baskets and lavish flower-print ...

A vast Transeurasian language family that contains the Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and Tungusic languages has had its origins traced back 9000 years, to early farming communities in what is ...

A handheld device that enables a user to chat in another language – without having to learn any words or phrases for themselves – has been developed by Japanese electronics firm NEC. The system is ...

An online “talking dictionary” first launched in 2009 is attempting to preserve and pass on the Ainu language spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of Japan's northeastern island of Hokkaido and ...

An upcoming trip to Japan recently motivated us to buff up our rusty Japanese. Though it wasn't our native language, we were far more fluent in it when we lived in Japan years ago. We decided to test ...

The scholarly narrative of spoken Chinese studies in Tokugawa Japan is dominated by Ogyū Sorai, who founded a translation society in 1711 and urged Japanese intellectuals to learn contemporary spoken ...