 Hello and welcome to the MA Japanese Studies webinar. I'd be very happy to take questions at the end. I'm Dr Griselda Skirsch. I'm the program convener for the MA Japanese Studies and as such it's a pleasure to host this webinar. To go straight to the next slide. I think the MA Japanese Studies at SAAS is absolutely amazing. SAAS as such is one of the biggest centres for the study of Japan in the world. If we go across departments we probably have the most academics working in one way or another with Japan and although we may be split up over different departments we come together to work on this MA in Japanese Studies which therefore is a really wide and broad area studies programme about Japan and will offer you a wide array of subjects and disciplines. We aim to give you as much depth and as well as a lot of breadth of knowledge about Japan so that you don't just walk away knowing bits and pieces here and there but to be as comprehensive as possible in order to walk away and work potentially with Japan or on Japan in the end. Normally an MA Japanese Studies would be one year full-time. You can choose to do the MA Japanese Studies part-time. This would then go over two or three years so we would adjust the time you spend with us accordingly meaning that you take less teaching time per term or per year and spread it over those years of time. This particularly if you want to do the MA Japanese Studies as a sort of next while working so that it allows you to have your career as well as a degree at the same time. Across the MA Japanese Studies is based in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and across this department we work on all sorts of East Asia languages so China, Korea and Tibet are part of that department and in order to also show that Japan is not an isolated case in East Asia but indeed has links to these surrounding regions you will have to take a 15 credit meaning one term core module called Connections and Intersections in East Asia which will be team-toured from across the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures but essentially aims to give you ideas about how East Asia these days interacts because the region is incredibly important. The other core component you need to take is a dissertation which is 16 credits worth it's 10,000 words long and you would be expected to complete this dissertation after the end of the teaching time so from April or so onwards. In order to fulfill our aim to give you as much breadth and depth of knowledge you would have to take a minimum of three disciplines they would be advertised on the web page as such so we cover for instance media, history, economics, management etc and under these various disciplines you can each choose for instance at least one half module one 15 credit module but in order to also maintain this aim of having enough breadth we would ask you to not take more than 60 credits in any one of those disciplines. One of those modules that you then choose is a module you have to write your dissertation on so you would be asked to pick one of those modules as what we your major so if you apply and you get your offer at some point after the application process you will be contacted in order to choose one of those majors and then the academic in charge of the module would either take you on and that means they become your supervisor and help you with the writing of the dissertation. So we also offer the option to take the MA Japanese studies with an intensive language component and you can combine it with intensive Japanese or intensive Korean that would mean the automatically Japanese studies becomes a two-year MA program because you would have to combine the study of Japanese or Korean for that matter with the study of the discipline and therefore do this over two years they would be too intense to just do it one year. So it's of an exciting MA we try to work hard and to make your time with us as pleasant as possible and these are a couple of current modules that you can look forward to so Japanese Modernity 1 and 2 is a history module where you can look at how Japan as a modern state, modern country came into being and what its current historical trajectory or the research on the historical trajectory as well. Identity and social relations in Japanese is a linguistics module which would look at how language reflects Japanese identity and social relations because Japanese at such has a very gendered and hierarchical language and how this for instance changed. Sensoring Japan is my own module I researched Japanese television this is my research basically it's a social cultural history of Japanese television in which we look at how Japanese television became big and in Japan also we tend to think of Japan like anime and jiggly and kurosawa Akina. As a matter of fact the predominant media in Japan is actually television not necessarily film film has been parroted upon by television so that's what we look at. Japanese traditional drama gives an overview of as the title says nor bunlaku kabuki kyogen and give you an intensive historical background and also significant plays. Management in Japan is directed towards people who want to see how the management structure works and Japanese transnational cinemas the name said would give you a historical overview from kurosawa to Asia Extreme which was if you don't know it a horror film series promoted in the West here in order to show Japan as this extreme horror country but also did you jiggly which kind of provided the counterpoint. I'm now very happy to take your questions any questions you may have if you could type them in I'd be very I'll answer them. Julia thank you for the for the question. Julia was asking the MA can be combined with an intensive language for the MA whether the MA such includes any language and Julia was wondering where the MA graduands go typically go wrong too. As for the first question the intensive the MA such can includes language you can take any language offered in the Department of East Asia languages and cultures but the difference between this kind of language study as and the intensive language study would be that it would only be one unit so one year one unit of language whereas the intensive language MA offers you four units over two years so there is a lot more intensive training and progression is assured you would have to go to Japan for the intensive language MA which you don't do for the one year MA so it would just be depending on your level either an improvement of your level on your just about to post beginners level. As to the question where MA graduates typically go on to it depends because the MA Japanese studies has a wide array of students a lot of students do the MA part-time and have a career so it's for their personal benefit within jobs some of these already work with Japan and then want to continue working with Japan by adding on the MA in Japanese studies others come and want to do the PhD in some Japan related topics of would-stay in academia obviously the people having the career will stay in that career and this can be very worried we've had people working in the NHS to bankers and lawyers and they stayed in their career I've heard of other students who were part of the MA who worked then subsequently in creative industries or banks so it's a wide array of students because also the MA is such it's so wide that it's hard to get like a clear picture of where everybody in the end ends up but as I said it's got a wide career option. Finally Julia was also wondering when the course begins and that would be end of September with the welcome week with the actual teaching beginning either like the first full week you know or the first week in October so very late the in September very early in October the term dates are published on the SOWAS webpage. The Erika is wondering about whether history from the EDU is that history from the EDU to modern times is covered with a previous history here and other periods are covered and unfortunately not currently at the moment they feature in the culture modules the pre-modern culture modules that we offer but we don't have a history model per se that deals with pre-modern history. Ryan thank you for the question Ryan was wondering how along the the intent did you mean the intensive language MA can take when done part-time? We normally would say four years because sort of you do the language first and the discipline second for the simple reason there are quality assurance guidances that I don't want to bore you with but that does allow for no other split than doing it four years. When Ryan follows up on this if someone takes both the intensive language and the MA and the MA Japanese studies which one comes first we would recommend that you do the language first for the simple reason is as it helps you with choosing a discipline when you have a certain knowledge of Japanese which would not or because we tend to target the people who don't have that much Japanese yet so it's recommended that you do the languages first as it would also help you with the dissertation writing when you can access Japanese sources which perhaps otherwise you would not be able to access so it's a recommendation but there is no clear absolutely this you have to do it that way it's just that we think it's more sensible if you get the language first on the discipline second. Ryan has one more question in terms of level where I would say the line between beginner and above is as Ryan is studying towards the JLPT N4 in July I'm afraid that that is a bit hard to answer first of all could I suggest that you get in touch with my colleague Dr Barbara Pizzicconi who actually convenes the intensive language MA because she would be able to answer that question much more appropriately than I do however irrespective of your JLPT level we do when you enter so as at any level even as undergraduates unless you have absolutely no knowledge of Japanese that will ask you to take a placement test so that we can put you in the right level for your language acquisition module and that goes for the intensive language MA in the same way as for even if you just choose to take the one module of language in the normal MA Japanese studies so that we are sure that the level of Japanese we aim to teach you is just right so if you have Japanese it'd be good to indicate that so that you can be invited to take this language test and therefore see whether you can be put in the beginners or even in the intermediate pathway. Erica has another question regarding the dual degree program that we offer with the Sophia University in Japan to ask me how it works and whether it's possible to decide later. The dual degree program is sort of an add-on to the MA Japanese studies with us you can decide that at any point before the application deadline that Sophia has for you so you doesn't have to be indicated at the point of entry to us because the idea how this works is that you do your MA Japanese studies with us and then Sophia will accept the credit that you take with the that you get from us and then integrate the credit that you have into their degree but you have to still write our dissertation as well as theirs so that in the end you end up with two MAs one from Sophia and one from so as. So Sophia has you would have to apply to us and then you have to separately apply to Sophia so it's not an automatic pathway it's at their discretion just as much as the discretion if someone from Sophia came and wanted to do the MA both universities have the right to approve or not to approve so it's not an automated thing it's just an option an add-on so and we therefore only ever point students towards Sophia and then sort of pass them on so that they can deal with Sophia themselves that the actual work of these sort of the credit transfer is at the side of Sophia and their acceptance of your grades that you have received so far the point of application and Sophia I'm sorry to just add on to that Sophia normally has roughly an a Marge each application deadline so by Marge you would have to make the decision whether you really want to go to Sophia or not. Erica wants it clarification as to what what I'm talking about the March of this application year or the March during the MA program and I meant the March during the MA program with us because it's a credit transfer mechanism so you need to approve credit from us in order to go there unless you wanted to start from Sophia in which case you would apply to Sophia whenever you wanted to but could then only go to so as in October or September October. All right if no one has any more questions I look forward to seeing some of you at least face-to-face on Saturday and have a lovely day thank you so much for joining