Fūdo in Foreign Language Learning in Japan and Finland: An Autoethnographic Study of a PhD Journey

Abstract

While the Japanese education system and policy have been studied extensively, Japanese philosophy and thoughts have rarely served as a theoretical and methodological resource in the field of comparative and international education. Resonating with a current scholarly attempt to explore the possibilities and limitations of using Japan as an epistemic resource, I have experimented with drawing upon Japanese philosophical thinking, namely Watsuji Tetsurō’s (1889-1960) comparative phenomenological study, to analyse the current foreign language education reforms in Japan. In this paper, I tell the story of my thought experiment in which I explore autoethnographically how my epistemic mindset has changed during my PhD journey through a slow dialogue with Watsuji’s study on milieu, relationality and ontological inquiry into human beings. Aiming to multiply the epistemological resources for educational research, I analyse reflexively on the way in which I was destabilised by Japanese philosophy in (un)learning educational practices in Japanese contexts. In so doing, I explore how ‘foreign’ educational comparativists might be able to move beyond the storyteller role in foreign contexts or the expert role in home contexts and, accordingly, contribute to promoting a pluralistic knowledge production.