Enseñanza y aprendizaje del español en las universidades japonesas

Since the Japanese people’s first encounter with the Spanish language in the 16th century, the teaching and learning of Spanish has been evolving in response to the needs of each era. Despite numerous historical challenges, interest in the Spanish language and everything related to it has increased over the years. This article examines the situations of differing historical periods to better understand the objectives for which Spanish has been studied, as well as the numerous types of teachers, students, and commonly used methodologies. To do this, various academic articles and books offering testimonies from people who lived through those periods are examined. The corpus developed by this article’s author, which includes textbooks published since the early 20th century, will also be analyzed in this article. The initial contact with the Spanish language in the 16th century was through missionary work. After a stagnation in language studies due to a period of isolationism, the need to pursue Spanish as a language resumed in the 20th century for the purposes of foreign trade and migration. The idea of learning a foreign language to enrich general culture also became important in the 20th century. The change in the type of students greatly influenced learning objectives and methodologies. We are now in a transitional period with the emergence of new technologies. However, it is important to know our history in order to reflect on the direction which Spanish teaching and learning should take in the future.