Preface Ⅱ

Joseph Tomei

It gives me great pleasure to present this collection of papers, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of the sister school relationship between Shenzhen University and Kumamoto Gakuen University. I believe it stands as a testament to the strong relationship between our two universities and KGU is fortunate to have a partner like Shenzhen.

In addition to acknowledging the support of Shenzhen, without which this volume would not exist, there are several other people and groups that I need to thank.

First of all, I’d like to thank the faculty and staff from Chonnam University, another sister school to KGU, for participating together with us in this conference. Linguists sometimes talk of the Sinosphere, the area that was influenced by Chinese culture and language, and as a native speaker of English, it is good to watch people from the three countries of Japan, China and Korea interact and be reminded that the world does not revolve around English, especially in light of recent political events.

I’d also like to thank the Institute of Economics and Business for their support. Institute of Economics and Business is the older sibling of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and their help and support for this conference is greatly appreciated.

We had planned to have this conference in March of 2017, but Kumamoto was struck by the Kumamoto Earthquake

I also have to add a note of thanks to the research office as well as IWAMOTO san, as well as the former head of the Institute of Foreign Affairs, Judy YONEOKA. The conference and these papers would not have been possible without their advice and assistance.

So please enjoy these papers as we look forward to another 30 years of cooperation and collaboration.

Joseph Tomei, Professor at Kumamoto Gakuen University

Head of the Institute of Foreign Affairs, Kumamoto Gakuen University

Kumamoto, Japan

March1, 2017