Kyudai Students win Prizes in the First World Debating Championship in Japanese

On February 28 - March 2, 2019, several students from Kyushu University participated in the World Japanese Debate Championship 2019, held in National Chiao Tung Unversity, Taiwan and won many prizes. The tournament is designed as an international exchange program in which Japanese students and international students learning Japanese language make up mixed teams to work together to debate the given resolution that “Japan should abolish death penalty” (2019 topic) in Japanese as their common language.

The tournament was realized, in part, on the basis of the research and education efforts including the International Japanese Debate Camps, co-hosted by a KIKAN Education open course and the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University. Three faculty members of the university, INOUE Narahiko (Professor, Faculty of Languages and Cultures), HASUMI Jiro (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law) and KUBO Kenji (Research Fellow, Faculty of Languages and Cultures and Adjunct Lecturer, KIKAN Education), contributed to make this international project happen.

The event included an academic exchange as Mr. Kubo was invited to the tournament as the main judge, and he offered a judge training course for local educators in Taiwan. The championship was reported by many mass media in and outside Taiwan, in most of which Mr Kubo’s comments appeared.

The following are Kyushu University students who won prizes in this tournament:

◆The 2nd Place Team and the Best Cross-Examination Award
ZHANG Xiao Ying (D2, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Global Society)
◆Friendship Awards
MITSUTAKE Toru (B2, 21st Century Program)
HIDA Masayuki (B3, School of Design)
MATSUMOTO Takato (B2, 21st Century Program)

The detail of the tournament is here:
https://istdebate.wixsite.com/ijdebate (in Japanese)
Media reports include:
https://www.j-cast.com/2019/03/03351733.html?p=all (in Japanese)
https://udn.com/news/story/7324/3675112(in Chinese)