Japanese Sign Language

Japanese Sign Language (日本手話) is the dominant sign language in Japan.

There is little knowledge of sign language and the deaf community prior to the Edo period. In 1862, the Edo government dispatched envoys to various European schools for the deaf. However, the first school for the deaf wasn't established until 1878 in Kyōto, and it wasn't until 1948 that deaf children were required to attend formal education.

NS uses mouthing (saying a word with or without making a sound) to disambiguate various signs. Fingerspelling (see NS syllabary) was introduced from America in the early part of the twentieth century but is used less than in the USA. Finger writing (tracing Japanese characters in the air) is sometimes used. There is a system associating the Kanji with particular signs, which is used for places and personal names.

Besides NS there are also Pidgin Signed Japanese and Manually Signed Japanese. Both of these are signed forms of the Japanese language. The first is used between non-native signers, and the latter is sometimes used in schools for the deaf. However, up to 2002, most Japanese schools for the deaf emphasized oral education, i.e. teaching through lip-reading, and even now, at least officially, NS is not taught. It is only a decade since the official school ban on the use of NS was lifted.

Like Japanese (and ASL), NS uses a topic-comment pattern of sentence structure. This similarity may allow for easier mixing of Japanese, signed Japanese and NS than is possible between English and ASL.

The sign languages of Korea and Taiwan share some signs with Japanese sign language, perhaps due to cultural transfer during the period of Japanese occupation.

Interest in sign language among the hearing population of Japan has been increasing, with numerous books now published targeting the hearing population, a weekly TV programme teaching NS and increasing availability of night school classes for the hearing to learn NS. There have been several TV dramas including Hoshi no Kinka (1995) in which signing has been a significant part of the plot, and sign language dramas are now a minor genre on Japanese TV.

The highly acclaimed 2006 Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed multiple Academy Award-nominated film Babel also featured Japanese sign language as a significant element of the plot. Rinko Kikuchi received a Best Supporting Actress Nomination for her role of signing in this film.

Use in films and television

 * Hoshi no Kinka (星の金貨) (1995)
 * Kimi no te ga sasayaite iru (君の手がささやいている) (1997-2001)
 * Orange Days (オレンジデイズ) (2004)
 * Tell Me That You Love Me (愛していると言ってくれ) (1995)
 * Babel (2006)