Recognition of Japanese Handwritten Characters with Machine Learning Techniques
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The Study of Old Documents of Hokkaido and Kuril Ainu
NINJAL International Symposium 2018 Approaches to Endangered Languages in Japan and Northeast Asia, August 6-8 The study of old documents of Hokkaido and Kuril Ainu: Promise and Challenges Tomomi Sato (Hokkaido U) & Anna Bugaeva (TUS/NINJAL) [email protected] [email protected]) Introduction: Ainu • AINU (isolate, North Japan, moribund) • Is the only non-Japonic lang. of Japan. • Major dialect groups : Hokkaido (moribund), Sakhalin (extinct since 1993), Kuril (extinct since the end of XIX). • Was also spoken in Tōhoku till mid XVIII. • Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Southwestern (well documented) Northeastern (less documented) • Is not used in daily conversation since the 1950s. • Ethnical Ainu: 100,000. 2 Fig. 2 Major language families in Northeast Asia (excluding Sinitic) Amuric Mongolic Tungusic Ainuic Koreanic Japonic • Ainu shares only few features with Northeast Asian languages. • Ainu is typologically “more like a morphologically reduced version of a North American language.” (Johanna Nichols p.c.). • This is due to the strongly head-marking character of Ainu (Bugaeva, to appear). Why is it important to study Ainu? • Ainu culture is widely regarded as a direct descendant of the Jōmon culture which was spread in the Japanese archipelago in the Prehistoric time from about 14,000 BC. • Ainu is the only surviving Jōmon language; there had been other Jōmon lgs too: about 300 lgs (Janhunen 2002), cf. 10 lgs (Whitman, p.c.) . • Ainu is likely to be much more typical of what languages were like in Northeast Asia several millennia ago than the picture we would get from Chinese, Japanese or Korean. • Focusing on Ainu can help us understand a period of northeast Asian history when political, cultural and linguistic units were very different to what they have been since the rise of the great historically-attested states of East Asia. -
Uhm Phd 9506222 R.Pdf
INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UM! films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent UJWD the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adverselyaffect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-band comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. U·M·I University Microfilms tnternauonat A Bell & Howell tntorrnatron Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. M148106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800:521·0600 Order Number 9506222 The linguistic and psycholinguistic nature of kanji: Do kanji represent and trigger only meanings? Matsunaga, Sachiko, Ph.D. University of Hawaii, 1994 Copyright @1994 by Matsunaga, Sachiko. -
Establishing Okinawan Heritage Language Education
Establishing Okinawan heritage language education ESTABLISHING OKINAWAN HERITAGE LANGUAGE EDUCATION Patrick HEINRICH (University of Duisburg-Essen) ABSTRACT In spite of Okinawan language endangerment, heritage language educa- tion for Okinawan has still to be established as a planned and purposeful endeavour. The present paper discusses the prerequisites and objectives of Okinawan Heritage Language (OHL) education.1 It examines language attitudes towards Okinawan, discusses possibilities and constraints un- derlying its curriculum design, and suggests research which is necessary for successfully establishing OHL education. The following results are presented. Language attitudes reveal broad support for establishing Ok- inawan heritage language education. A curriculum for OHL must consid- er the constraints arising from the present language situation, as well as language attitudes towards Okinawan. Research necessary for the estab- lishment of OHL can largely draw from existing approaches to foreign language education. The paper argues that establishment of OHL educa- tion should start with research and the creation of emancipative ideas on what Okinawan ought to be in the future – in particular which societal functions it ought to fulfil. A curriculum for OHL could be established by following the user profiles and levels of linguistic proficiency of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. 1 This paper specifically treats the language of Okinawa Island only. Other languages of the Ryukyuan language family such as the languages of Amami, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni are not considered here. The present paper draws on research conducted in 2005 in Okinawa. Research was supported by a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship which is gratefully acknowledged here. -
NOT WRITING AS a KEY FACTOR in LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT: the CASE of the RYUKYU ISLANDS Patrick Heinrich Dokkyo University, Tokyo
NOT WRITING AS A KEY FACTOR IN LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT: THE CASE OF THE RYUKYU ISLANDS Patrick Heinrich Dokkyo University, Tokyo Abstract: Language shift differs from case to case. Yet, specifi c types of language shift can be identifi ed. Language shift in the Ryukyu Islands is caused by the socioeconomic changes resulting from the transition from the dynastic realms of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the Tokugawa Shogunate to the modern Meiji state. We call the scenario of shift after the transition from a dynastic realm to a modern state ‘type III’ language shift here. In type III, one language adopts specifi c new functions, which undermine the utility of other local or ethnic languages. The dominance of one language over others hinges, amongst other things, on the extent to which a written tradition existed or not. In the Ryukyu Kingdom, Chinese and Japanese were employed as the main languages of writing. The lack of a writing tradition paved the way for the Ryukyuan languages to be declared dialects of the written language, that is, of Japanese. Such assessment of Ryukyuan language status was fi rst put forth by mainland bureaucrats and later rationalized by Japanese national linguistics. Such a proceeding is an example of what Heinz Kloss calls near-dialectization. In order to undo the effects thereof, language activists are turning to writing in order to lay claim to their view that the endangered Ryukyuan Abstand languages be recognized as languages. Key words: Ryukyuan languages, language shift theory, writing, language adaptation, language revitalization INTRODUCTION The Ryukyuan languages have rarely been written in their history. -
The Japanese Writing Systems, Script Reforms and the Eradication of the Kanji Writing System: Native Speakers’ Views Lovisa Österman
The Japanese writing systems, script reforms and the eradication of the Kanji writing system: native speakers’ views Lovisa Österman Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature Bachelor’s Thesis Japanese B.A. Course (JAPK11 Spring term 2018) Supervisor: Shinichiro Ishihara Abstract This study aims to deduce what Japanese native speakers think of the Japanese writing systems, and in particular what native speakers’ opinions are concerning Kanji, the logographic writing system which consists of Chinese characters. The Japanese written language has something that most languages do not; namely a total of three writing systems. First, there is the Kana writing system, which consists of the two syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana. The two syllabaries essentially figure the same way, but are used for different purposes. Secondly, there is the Rōmaji writing system, which is Japanese written using latin letters. And finally, there is the Kanji writing system. Learning this is often at first an exhausting task, because not only must one learn the two phonematic writing systems (Hiragana and Katakana), but to be able to properly read and write in Japanese, one should also learn how to read and write a great amount of logographic signs; namely the Kanji. For example, to be able to read and understand books or newspaper without using any aiding tools such as dictionaries, one would need to have learned the 2136 Jōyō Kanji (regular-use Chinese characters). With the twentieth century’s progress in technology, comparing with twenty years ago, in this day and age one could probably theoretically get by alright without knowing how to write Kanji by hand, seeing as we are writing less and less by hand and more by technological devices. -
Kuronet: Pre-Modern Japanese Kuzushiji Character Recognition with Deep Learning
KuroNet: Pre-Modern Japanese Kuzushiji Character Recognition with Deep Learning Tarin Clanuwat* Alex Lamb* Asanobu Kitamoto Center for Open Data in the Humanities MILA Center for Open Data in the Humanities National Institute of Informatics Universite´ de Montreal´ National Institute of Informatics Tokyo, Japan Montreal, Canada Tokyo, Japan [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Kuzushiji, a cursive writing style, had been used in documents is even larger when one considers non-book his- Japan for over a thousand years starting from the 8th century. torical records, such as personal diaries. Despite ongoing Over 3 millions books on a diverse array of topics, such as efforts to create digital copies of these documents, most of the literature, science, mathematics and even cooking are preserved. However, following a change to the Japanese writing system knowledge, history, and culture contained within these texts in 1900, Kuzushiji has not been included in regular school remain inaccessible to the general public. One book can take curricula. Therefore, most Japanese natives nowadays cannot years to transcribe into modern Japanese characters. Even for read books written or printed just 150 years ago. Museums and researchers who are educated in reading Kuzushiji, the need libraries have invested a great deal of effort into creating digital to look up information (such as rare words) while transcribing copies of these historical documents as a safeguard against fires, earthquakes and tsunamis. The result has been datasets with as well as variations in writing styles can make the process hundreds of millions of photographs of historical documents of reading texts time consuming. -
Arxiv:1812.01718V1 [Cs.CV] 3 Dec 2018
Deep Learning for Classical Japanese Literature Tarin Clanuwat∗ Mikel Bober-Irizar Center for Open Data in the Humanities Royal Grammar School, Guildford Asanobu Kitamoto Alex Lamb Center for Open Data in the Humanities MILA, Université de Montréal Kazuaki Yamamoto David Ha National Institute of Japanese Literature Google Brain Abstract Much of machine learning research focuses on producing models which perform well on benchmark tasks, in turn improving our understanding of the challenges associated with those tasks. From the perspective of ML researchers, the content of the task itself is largely irrelevant, and thus there have increasingly been calls for benchmark tasks to more heavily focus on problems which are of social or cultural relevance. In this work, we introduce Kuzushiji-MNIST, a dataset which focuses on Kuzushiji (cursive Japanese), as well as two larger, more challenging datasets, Kuzushiji-49 and Kuzushiji-Kanji. Through these datasets, we wish to engage the machine learning community into the world of classical Japanese literature. 1 Introduction Recorded historical documents give us a peek into the past. We are able to glimpse the world before our time; and see its culture, norms, and values to reflect on our own. Japan has very unique historical pathway. Historically, Japan and its culture was relatively isolated from the West, until the Meiji restoration in 1868 where Japanese leaders reformed its education system to modernize its culture. This caused drastic changes in the Japanese language, writing and printing systems. Due to the modernization of Japanese language in this era, cursive Kuzushiji (くずしc) script is no longer taught in the official school curriculum. -
Foreignisation Part II: Writing the Outside out Sean Mahoney
Article Foreignisation Part II: Writing the Outside Out Sean Mahoney ・Thefore1gnercomeslnwhenthe consciousnessof mydiffe「once arises and he disappears when we all acknowledge Ou「Selves as foreigners,unamenableto bondsand communities. _ a s,pi Abstract: Authorities In Japan well_known for meticulous reCO「ding Of detail and strict adherence to registration procedures haVe.oVe「 the yea「S;been dubbed xenophobic by observers. Such comments resound pa「tiCula「ly Intensely of course in discussions of Japan's plethora Of Policies fo「 dealing with jnternatjonal issues. The requi「ed P「OCeSS of WO「king through the labyrjnth of rules and regulations fo「 Conducting business, engaging In new employment,or even finding living accommodations has daunted and indeed prevented many from both onto「ing and Staying in this country Despite constant governmental proposals and p「Og「ammeS designed to enhance “internationalisation,” the pace Of 「eat Change iS somehow kept in the range of extremely slow to non-existent,With the results of various initiatives almost invariably proving SuPe「fiCia1 in society at large. I offer that at least one habit of foreignisation',that Which involves - 57 -- 1 行政社会論集 第12巻 第1号 the written demarcation of “native'' and ''foreign'' words in modern Japanese, is at least partly responsible for reinforcing xenophobic patterns of communication and conduct. While scholars in early Japan surely regarded the Chinese works they translated as “foreign,''concrete guidelines through which usage of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries prescribe -
Paantu: Visiting Deities, Ritual, and Heritage in Shimajiri, Miyako Island, Japan
PAANTU: VISITING DEITIES, RITUAL, AND HERITAGE IN SHIMAJIRI, MIYAKO ISLAND, JAPAN Katharine R. M. Schramm Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology Indiana University December 2016 1 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee ________________________ Michael Dylan Foster, PhD Chair ________________________ Jason Baird Jackson, PhD ________________________ Henry Glassie, PhD ________________________ Michiko Suzuki, PhD May 23, 2016 ii Copyright © 2016 Katharine R. M. Schramm iii For all my teachers iv Acknowledgments When you study islands you find that no island is just an island, after all. In likewise fashion, the process of doing this research has reaffirmed my confidence that no person is an island either. We’re all more like aquapelagic assemblages… in short, this research would not have been possible without institutional, departmental, familial, and personal support. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the following people and institutions for helping this work come to fruition. My research was made possible by a grant from the Japan Foundation, which accommodated changes in my research schedule and provided generous support for myself and my family in the field. I also thank Professor Akamine Masanobu at the University of the Ryukyus who made my institutional connection to Okinawa possible and provided me with valuable guidance, library access, and my first taste of local ritual life. Each member of my committee has given me crucial guidance and support at different phases of my graduate career, and I am grateful for their insights, mentorship, and encouragement. -
The Politics of Difference and Authenticity in the Practice of Okinawan Dance and Music in Osaka, Japan
The Politics of Difference and Authenticity in the Practice of Okinawan Dance and Music in Osaka, Japan by Sumi Cho A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Jennifer E. Robertson, Chair Professor Kelly Askew Professor Gillian Feeley-Harnik Professor Markus Nornes © Sumi Cho All rights reserved 2014 For My Family ii Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to thank my advisor and dissertation chair, Professor Jennifer Robertson for her guidance, patience, and feedback throughout my long years as a PhD student. Her firm but caring guidance led me through hard times, and made this project see its completion. Her knowledge, professionalism, devotion, and insights have always been inspirations for me, which I hope I can emulate in my own work and teaching in the future. I also would like to thank Professors Gillian Feeley-Harnik and Kelly Askew for their academic and personal support for many years; they understood my challenges in creating a balance between family and work, and shared many insights from their firsthand experiences. I also thank Gillian for her constant and detailed writing advice through several semesters in her ethnolab workshop. I also am grateful to Professor Abé Markus Nornes for insightful comments and warm encouragement during my writing process. I appreciate teaching from professors Bruce Mannheim, the late Fernando Coronil, Damani Partridge, Gayle Rubin, Miriam Ticktin, Tom Trautmann, and Russell Bernard during my coursework period, which helped my research project to take shape in various ways. -
Section 18.1, Han
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The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture Edited by Yoshio Sugimoto Index More Information
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88047-3 — The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture Edited by Yoshio Sugimoto Index More Information Index 1955 system 116, 168 anti-Americanism 347 anti-authoritarianism 167 Abe, Kazushige 204–6 anti-globalisation protests 342–3 Abe, Shinzo¯ 59, 167, 172, 176, 347 anti-Japanese sentiment abortion 79–80, 87 in China 346–7 ‘Act for the Promotion of Ainu Culture & in South Korea 345, 347 Dissemination of Knowledge Regarding Aoyama, Nanae 203 Ainu Traditions’ 72 art-tested civility 170 aged care 77, 79, 89, 136–7, 228–9 Asada, Zennosuke 186 ageing population 123, 140 Asian identity 175–6, 214 participation in sporting activities 227–8 asobi (play) 218 aidagara (betweeness) 49 Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) 243 Ainu language 71–2 audio-visual companies, export strategies Ainu people 362 banning of traditional practices 71 definition of 72 Balint, Michael 51 discrimination against 23 Benedict, Ruth 41 homeland 71 birthrate 81–5, 87, 140, 333–4 as hunters and meat eaters 304 Bon festival 221 overview 183 brain drain 144 Akitsuki, Risu 245 ‘bubble economy’ 118 All Romance Incident 189 Buddha (manga) 246 amae 41–2, 50–1 Buddhism 57, 59, 136 Amami dialects 63 background 149 Amami Islands 63 disassociation from Shinto under Meiji Amebic (novel) 209 152–6 The Anatomy of Dependence 40 effects of disassociation 153, 155–6 ancestor veneration 160–1 moral codes embodied in practice anime 15, 236 157 anime industry problems in the study of 151–2 criticisms of 237–8 as a rational philosophy 154 cultural erasure