Japan Centre Activities

Alum Rebekah Clements writes on how her time at the Japan Centre and beyond.

Rebekah Clements

I came to the Japan Centre in 1999 after deferring my Bachelor of Asian Studies/ Bachelor of Laws for one year in order to work for a company in Japan. When I returned the ANU and took their language placement test, the Japan Centre put me in 3rd year Japanese language classes, which, although a nice ego boost, was pretty panic-inducing at first. After much encouragement by the Centre staff, and much frantic cramming of kanji by me, the advanced placement turned out to be a great thing. Apart from being challenged to aim higher than I might otherwise have done, at the ANU you have to take a full three years (or, depending on your degree, four years) of Japanese classes even if you are placed in third year from the start, and the Centre were happy to provide advanced students with tailor-made readings classes if they outgrew the levels usually on offer. This means very small class sizes, with personalized attention and students having a big say in what texts they study. You also get to meet some great people this way – I’m still in contact with many of my old classmates and teachers.

ANU also has the Distinguished Scholars Program which aims to provide talented students with greater administrative flexibility in their degrees. Through this program I was able to bend the rules a bit and take a wide range of subjects in my non-language major. Also, this program, combined with the Japan Centre’s willingness to provide small readings classes, meant I could take several individualized, one-on-one Japanese readings classes with world-class scholars in which I was the only student. Those are opportunities for which I’ll always be grateful.

In third year, the Japan Centre arranged for me to spend one year on exchange at Waseda University in Tokyo, with a mind-bogglingly generous scholarship thanks to the Heiwa-Nakajima Foundation. The year in Japan was a great opportunity to improve my Japanese, meet people from all over the world, and study Japanese literature at a first-class Japanese university. I almost didn’t want to come home!

After returning to the ANU, I completed my degree, doing honours in Asian Studies, writing my thesis on elements of Buddhist End Times philosophy in classical Japanese literature. During the honours year, and throughout my whole degree, the Japan Centre staff particularly my supervisor Dr Peter Hendriks, were wonderfully supportive. I really recommend honours to anyone considering, even just a little bit, going on to further study. Again the Distinguished Scholars Program came in handy and I received permission to complete the one remaining unit of my law degree at the same time as doing honours in Asian Studies, something which would not have been possible under normal circumstances.

After graduating, the excellent language training at the Japan Centre enabled me to go on to complete an M.A in classical Japanese literature at Waseda University in Tokyo, sponsored by a Japanese Government Scholarship (Monbukagakusho). I completed the M.A in March of 2008 (my advice: grab the chance to wear hakama to your Japanese university graduation ceremony! I wish I had), and in October will begin a PhD in East Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge sponsored by a Fulton Australia Scholarship courtesy of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. While I was studying in Japan, and then when I was applying for PhD positions, the Japan Centre teachers and former teachers were wonderfully supportive, providing advice and many letters of recommendation, without which gaining a PhD position and sponsorship would have been very difficult. Of course, pretty much everything I’ve done scholastically since graduating from the Japan Centre would have been impossible without the grounding I received there. Taihen osewa ni narimashita!

Rebekah Clements
Bachelor of Asian Studies (Japanese) (Hons first class)/Bachelor of Laws.
University Medal in Asian Studies 2004.