<p>A Professional Design for manjasuta.ac.uk </p><p>The context of this project to establish an online centre for Japanese Studies in Manchester is that we currently have neither a physical centre - a location within the University or School, nor a clear centre of communications and contact online, where we can communicate about our activities and establish the identity of our programs and research strengths. </p><p>Global online presence </p><p>The major centers of language-based area studies of Japan in the UK are in SOAS (University of London), Oxford University, and Leeds/Sheffield Universities. The only other major centre for Japanese Studies in the North of England is in the WREAC institute shared between Sheffield and Leeds Universities. Leeds/Sheffield have the following website dedicated to presenting and communicating to the wider academic community and public all of their EAS activities, of which Japanese Studies is the larger part. Its columns and events pages are frequently updated and the website presents an attractive and coherent image for their Japan program. It is easily discovered and navigated by the wider public, undergraduate and graduate applicants, and collaborators and funders. http://www.wreac.org/japanportal</p><p>While Japanese Studies in Manchester is no sense driven by a need to compete with Sheffield/Leeds, (though there is a grain of real competition between us - especially for graduate applicants and funding), this example does illustrate the sort of online identity and flexible and easily updated website, which we in Japanese Studies in Manchester think is necessary to developing our identity and presence regionally and globally. </p><p>Japanese language</p><p>We think it is appropriate that the headline and subheadings of this online centre appear in Japanese and English, and that short pieces of information and research articles can be uploaded in Japanese script. The university template websites are managed within the T4 content management system that will not support non-European characters. University template websites can be built with 'Dreamweaver' outside of the T4 content management system, and through this can support a limited use of non-European script. The Confucius Institute has such a site incorporating Chinese script. However, the effect of squeezing non-European characters into horizontal lines and a fixed template designed for linear alphabetic European languages written in correspondingly small print sizes, results in a shrunken, awkward and unprofessional effect. There is little flexibility in the layout to allow Chinese and Japanese characters to be written in a range of larger fonts or in vertical orientations, for greater legibility and more efficient communication. We in Japanese Studies would like to have a professional-looking and easy to use bilingual website in which the Japanese script appears and functions smoothly and seamlessly with the rest of the website content, as befits a contemporary and globalized world and university. The academic team would also like to be able to directly access and update the site - which in any case would probably be necessary given the incorporation of Japanese language elements. A stylistically compatible and professional non-template website hosted within the university will allow us to meet this objective. </p><p>A Sense of Connection for Students</p><p>While most other area-based language departments in the SLLC are clustered into certain corridors, and other longer-established disciplines have dedicated shelving zones within the library where students tend to meet and work alongside each other, there is no structural centre, in either a corridor or area of the library, for Japanese Studies staff or students. The Centre for Chinese Studies though also new has one physical centre in the form of the Confucius Center office and an online centre in the Confucius Centre website, and some degree of office clustering along the Third Floor West corridor. The library currently has no plan to create an area of shelves dedicated to Japanese Studies since they have limited space and Japanese Studies has not been established long enough to have priority in the cataloging system. </p><p>In my experience and that of my colleagues Japanese Studies students have a tendency to feel isolated and disoriented. Frequently they appear to miss basic communications about events for them, such as a Christmas Party hosted in the School last December. This event was a fantastic success but it seemed that most students learned about it at the last moment, through Facebook and text messages, despite official email invitations sent out days earlier. In practice Facebook has served the function of giving students a sense of identity and belonging to the undergraduate program and to the university, as well as spreading news about practical matters such as time- table changes and so on. But this social networking site is out of staff control or influence and not something that academic staff can imprint with our view of the long-term academic goal and direction of Japanese Studies. We feel that perhaps Facebook has become overly central to the lives of Japanese Studies students because of the lack of central geographical location for the 'department' and because of the lack of a relevant and informative academic online centre. </p><p>One of the objectives of manjasuta is to provide a space for students to learn about upcoming events and past events within the SLLC, but also more widely in Manchester and the Japanese Studies field in Europe. Manjasuta will also have a click on 'Wordpress' blog, accessed from the home page top bar, where students and academic faculty can communicate rapidly. This will have practical and wider-reaching benefits in terms of creating a centralized channel of communication drawing together students across the years and programs. On academic 'Research Profiles' on the 'about us' pages of the planned manjasuta site students will also be able to read more detail about the research being carried out by the academic staff and to browse short published articles by their teachers, both of which may generate more of a sense of familiarity and co-identification. Year Abroad</p><p>We have noticed that Facebook is especially important to the students in their year abroad. Given the currently unfavorable exchange rates, the year abroad in Japan is a serious financial challenge for most undergraduate students. They are not easily able to afford daily expenses and even less to move around Japan to meet each other. Facebook has become their most direct means of keeping in contact with classmates posted to different universities and cities across Japan. The need for an online centre to get rapidly updated news of events through the professional face of an official online centre has never been less so than through the difficult period since the Great Eastern Earthquake and tsunami on the 11th March. The tsunami triggered hard weeks of virtual comforting and reassuring of worried students and parents, occupying the time and energies of academic and support staff linked to the year abroad program - a process which continues up to the present. Those academic and administrative staff involved in dealing with our 23 Japanese Studies majors in their year abroad and a further 7 Life Sciences majors in Japan at the time that the tsunami and its after effects gradually unfolded, have suggested that posting some of the official responses to the event and official guidance for students, on an easily updatable bilingual Japanese Studies online centre would have been a significant aid. A coherent and responsive quasi bilingual online centre would also have helped to provide Japanese partner institutions, and parents, and students with a reassuring sense of connection and caring in a difficult time in which it was not possible for the University to directly intervene, nor to offer concrete direction for action to year-abroad students, due to potential ensuing legal consequences.</p><p>Aubrey Skulley in IT has suggested that a dedicated 'manjasuta' Facebook page may provide a suitable gateway to connect with the various existing student-run sites (each year has its own circle on Facebook). While I do plan to do this, and to have a click link into 'manjasuta' on Facebook from the top bar of the manjasuta website, to connect Facebook circles with the official Japanese Studies page, Facebook is not an appropriate formal face for Japanese Studies in the University of Manchester per se. We can not expect potential undergraduate and postgraduate applicants, exchange students, funding bodies,* other universities, institutional partners abroad, and parents, to see and understand our goals and activities by searching for us on an informal social networking site. </p><p>Research Identity</p><p>In the University of Manchester we have a new Japanese Studies program, currently in its fourth year and about to graduate its first cohort of students. It is nevertheless already well subscribed with about 50 students per year group going on to the second year. We have been fortunate in being able to require increasingly high grades from applicants, and still maintain high and rising </p><p>** Currently two of our posts are funded by the Welcome Trust and Sawakawa Foundation respectively, and each of these institutions maintain interested connections with the 'department.' application numbers. All of the small group of four teaching and research and one additional research-only staff are known in their fields as experts. In several cases we have a strong international following for our lectures and publications. However, despite the relatively innovative research-led teaching we provide and the strong research profile we ought to collectively present, it is difficult to distinguish or develop a nuanced understanding of Japanese Studies in Manchester through the limited and static information offered on the SLLC website. Research staff would like to be able to post information about upcoming lectures and events involving themselves, and recent and publicly accessible publications online, to a website accessible to the wider public and students alike. Another of the objectives of the 'manjasuta' site is to present a coherent image for the contemporary style of Japanese Studies taught in Manchester and in connection with this to communicate to funding bodies and graduate students and applicants especially, a careful presentation of our research focuses on women, cultural production, contemporary society and education.</p><p>Events and Knowledge Transfer </p><p>There has been no direct faculty access to uploading of new information on to the SLLC website pages over the past few years. Amendments are carried out by a select number of support staff and generally take weeks or months to process. We would like to be able to post news about immediately upcoming and short-term events and media appearances by our faculty - preferably in two languages. For example, I (Sharon Kinsella) appeared in an NHK documentary shot in New York and broadcast on Japanese state television in November 2010; Professor Ian Reader had a 15 minute interview on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 27th March; and one of our recent visiting speakers, Professor Tom Gill, had a 25 minute comic monologue on Radio 4, a few days after his talk in the School on 2nd March 2011. All of these ongoing media interactions are of interest to the public, current and alumni students, the broader Japanese-related community in the University, and new applicants and partner institutions. We in Japanese Studies plan to have 'news and events' pages on 'manjasuta' whereby rapidly updated information about these public and media appearances can be disseminated, and where past events and appearances can be reviewed too. At present there is little means of communicating or archiving a record of these activities so that in essence we carry them out largely as individual researchers with little specific connection or feedback to the University or the School. </p><p>In the future we would like to hold workshops and other events that can be considered a form of knowledge transfer, such as a possible film festival based on the annual Frankfurt Nippon Connection film festival, or a forthcoming conference based around commemorating the end of the Meiji period of history (2012). 'manjasuta' will provide an essential starting point for launching public, collaborative, and jointly hosted events. </p><p>Online it is difficult for potential applicants from Japan or elsewhere, or our overseas partners (of which there are a great many as we maintain close links with a long list of Japanese universities to whom we send our year abroad students) to learn a great deal about the identity and style of Japanese Studies at Manchester, nor about its activities and events. Yet between 2009 and the present we have had a stream of visiting speakers and also hosted some film screenings and previews. We have been extremely fortunate in being able to attract both interesting speakers from the region, and major international speakers (despite having no means to fund their visits), through the personal connections of the academic team. However, we have found it difficult to promote or publicize these events effectively, and turnout has often been smaller than what might reasonably be expected. </p><p>Staff and Future Maintenance </p><p>University IT staff will build the website provided that a site-map, relevant photographic materials, and a professional design brief and logo can be provided to them. While the site planned is static and most of its pages will not need continual updating or maintenance, it will have several news and events pages, which will require a regular fortnightly or weekly updates in normal circumstances. Aubrey Scully in IT informs me that direct maintenance of the site and the updating of its events pages by academic faculty will be relatively fast, using the software technology 'Contribute' which can be used to update sites based on 'Dreamweaver' technology from either Macintosh or PC computers. In event of the need for emergency communication or a public statement of the School's response, such as that generated by the 11th March 2011 tsunami in Sendai, the 'manjasuta' front page and events pages can be accessed immediately to upload information. This is a facility and access we do not currently have with the SLLC website pages. Neither are we able to upload in Japanese language, since the content management system (T4) of the University template pages, does not support non-European languages. As the website representative for Japanese Studies I will be the person, for the time being, who centralizes and collates information to post up online. IT staff do not envisage uploading updated files to be a particularly time-consuming or technically difficult task.</p><p>Costs</p><p>I have made enquiries about the cost of a professional design to create an appropriate professional logo and look and feel for the site. Mark Brown, whom I came across as the designer of the HCRI website - another non- template site developed and hosted within the University, - has looked at the 'manjasuta' site map and connected materials, and given a quote for £1400 for a design which university IT staff can use to proceed with site-building. This includes £1000 for the website design and £400 for the 'manjasuta' logo design. It is my view that Mark Brown would be a wise choice: his quotes are economical, and importantly HCRI in the Humanities reports having had a good experience of working with his studio, and the university IT staff have also recommended his design work as compatible and easy to work from. The quote from Mark Brown studios is attached here.</p><p>Materials Japanese Studies faculty have already met several times to pool ideas and contribute appropriate high resolution photographic images for the various sections of the 'manjasuta' website. Suitable high-resolution photographs of our own, which do not involve difficult copyright issues and which we do not otherwise intend to use in publications, have been selected ready for the design process. Rough ideas for the 'manjasuta' logo have also been created and discussed within the Japanese Studies team, and are now ready for developing by a professional designer. </p>