We never see Shizune use sign language

[Kutagh]

One of the essays from the first one's bibliography goes into how Japanese culture would affect the use of video phones:

Harumi’s reaction was shock at the idea that interpreters she did not know would be able to see into her house. She explained that in Japan the distinction between private space and public space is very strongly felt and expressed doubt that Video Relay Services could ever come to Japan as she thought Deaf people would never be willing to allow strangers to see into the sacred private space of their homes. So despite the many similarities we identified in Deaf/hearing interactions in our two countries, the power exerted by specific cultural values still illuminated the defining differences between us.

It wouldn't be appropriate to accept these as gospel, seeing as how they were just the first things I could Google, but Deaf Culture being a more recent development in Japan might be relevant to what we are discussing here. Would Shizune have not gotten a cochlear implant because of the nature of her deafness? Or would have she not gotten one because of just not having access to/knowing about such a thing at a young age? Would it have been embarrassing for Jigoro to look into? I mean, Jigoro's in the generation that might view something as practical as a video phone as invasive.

So many questions, swimming around my head.

That really depends on when Shizune became Deaf. If she had been given the choice once she was old enough to decide and never used hearing aids, I wouldn't be surprised if she declined them. But I'd rather think that either Jigoro was ignorant and focused too much on easy solutions (Jigoro never learned Sign Language, not even for his daughter) or it was due to the nature of Shizune's deafness.
Besides, the Cochlear Implant doesn't even use video or so, it is basically a microphone attached to a processor, that sends signals to your implant which then stimulates the hearing nerve directly. I don't see what can be so embarrassing or invasive for Jigoro about a CI (especially since you can hide it in your hair, people can't see my CI due to my long hair).

Also, for Deaf communities: I know that there is a sign café (basically a pub for the Deaf) in the city near me (and several in the city I'm going to do my Sign Language course at). But Yamaku is in a relatively remote area, so if there would be something similar to a sign café it'd be in the city that Hisao occasionally goes to (where he got that music box and those dolls and where he played pool). So it'd be harder for Shizune to regularly go to it.

@metalangel: Correct, CIs aren't a panacea. But as I explained earlier, it should work on a significant portion of the Deaf, if implanted at very young age. The longer you wait without having ever heard, the lower the chances of it being effective gets due to degradation of the hearing nerve.

[Kutagh]

While we're at this topic anyway: http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2 ... pe=article

[metalangel]

Meanwhile there's hearing parents with hearing babies who teach them sign/gestures so they can communicate before the baby is able to communicate with speech. Instead of crying and the parents offering the bottle/hug/new diaper, the baby is able to communicate a desire specifically for food/drink/sleep/affection/more/toys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign_language

In the article you linked I'm concerned by the extremely late diagnosis.

[Pseudogenesis]

Meanwhile there's hearing parents with hearing babies who teach them sign/gestures so they can communicate before the baby is able to communicate with speech. Instead of crying and the parents offering the bottle/hug/new diaper, the baby is able to communicate a desire specifically for food/drink/sleep/affection/more/toys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign_language

In the article you linked I'm concerned by the extremely late diagnosis.

IIRC they generally teach Signed English though, as opposed to ASL. Shame, otherwise there could be a bunch of babies who grow up knowing ASL. :p

[metalangel]

IIRC they generally teach Signed English though, as opposed to ASL. Shame, otherwise there could be a bunch of babies who grow up knowing ASL. :p

One of the links cited (this one) specifically says ASL. Given the idea is that your baby is just going to be making a single sign for 'cookie' I'm not sure if grammar and syntax will come into it. No reason why you couldn't continue into ASL as they get older.

[WorldlyWiseman]

Finger dexterity might be an issue for babies and toddlers, but my younger cousins were taking classes for basic ASL pre-kindergarten.

Video phones and CIs aren't exactly the same thing, I brought it up because there might be some practice or social custom that Jigoro would use to reject something practical like that. It might also be the case that since there may not have been a highly visible deaf culture in Japan he may simply have not known and never bothered to find out about implants. More likely that it just didn't work for her situation. I figured that it was the inner-ear bones not having formed properly since wikipedia lists that as an at-birth cause, but we really don't know what's happening inside her ears.

I have wondered what kind of information the parents of deaf children are given by the hospital. I'm assuming that it's something that gets figured out fairly quickly. Wouldn't the Hakamichi family doctor have pointed them in the direction of other deaf families to make sure they had someone to turn to? Would Jigoro have accepted this help?

[Oddball]

I have wondered what kind of information the parents of deaf children are given by the hospital. I'm assuming that it's something that gets figured out fairly quickly. Wouldn't the Hakamichi family doctor have pointed them in the direction of other deaf families to make sure they had someone to turn to? Would Jigoro have accepted this help?

Maybe Shizune's mother was handling all of that, and she died, or divorced him or, had a mental breakdown or something.

Surely she couldn't have been as hard headed as Jigoro.

[DrNonookee]

Jigoro doesn't seem like the type of person to even *care* about hearing aids or video phones. Using either would be like learning sign language - stopgap solutions that work around the issue. They completely ignore the *real* problem - Shizune's refusal to behave like a normal, speaking person - and would encourage her to rely on devices rather than fixing the actual problem (i.e. her own behavior).

Jigoro's an ass.

But whether I'd send him off to a Deaf school or a regular school, that would be a serious dilemma for me.

Deaf school, duh. Regardless of how bad it is, if he's even somewhat hearing impaired, it's best to send him somewhere where the staff will understand his problem and have the resources and focus to help him learn to live with it - whether that means sign language, training to use what hearing he *does* have, or ideally, both. Sending him to regular school is a bad idea - public schools generally don't have the funds or the training to provide proper resources for students with special needs, and he likely won't be able to reach his full potential. Plus, a school for the deaf would be much more understanding of both the nature of his disability and how best to deal with it - regular school faculty will either not know how to work with him or be too busy dealing with the rest of the normal kids to *care*. Poor teachers can barely keep up as it is.

[metalangel]

Finger dexterity might be an issue for babies and toddlers, but my younger cousins were taking classes for basic ASL pre-kindergarten.

Did you read the links? They estimate a baby will be able to sign back *something* at about a year old. Again, this isn't full on proper ASL so much as adapting the crucial signs to let it express a few simple but crucial concepts to the parent, and vice versa.

Video phones and CIs aren't exactly the same thing, I brought it up because there might be some practice or social custom that Jigoro would use to reject something practical like that.

The intention behind the phone is to allow video calls with an interpreter, isn't it?

Jigoro doesn't seem like the type of person to even *care* about hearing aids or video phones. Using either would be like learning sign language - stopgap solutions that work around the issue. They completely ignore the *real* problem - Shizune's refusal to behave like a normal, speaking person - and would encourage her to rely on devices rather than fixing the actual problem (i.e. her own behavior).

Jigoro's an ass.

The fact that he's aggressive and arrogant seems to have caused the community to build such an exaggerated mystique around him that they now believe it's true.

Yes, he's an ass, but the impression given is that he also tried everything he could think of. Hearing aids must therefore have not been viable, the video phone thing we don't know about in the context of the story, speech therapy/lipreading... who knows? He was thrust into a very unexpected and confusing situation and, after trying everything he could think of he was faced with both no success and a daughter who had learned to be as stubborn as he was.

I'm trying to picture life at home with the Hakamichis pre-Yamaku and it must have been a very awkward and disjointed one...

[Kutagh]

Finger dexterity might be an issue for babies and toddlers, but my younger cousins were taking classes for basic ASL pre-kindergarten.

Video phones and CIs aren't exactly the same thing, I brought it up because there might be some practice or social custom that Jigoro would use to reject something practical like that. It might also be the case that since there may not have been a highly visible deaf culture in Japan he may simply have not known and never bothered to find out about implants. More likely that it just didn't work for her situation. I figured that it was the inner-ear bones not having formed properly since wikipedia lists that as an at-birth cause, but we really don't know what's happening inside her ears.

I have wondered what kind of information the parents of deaf children are given by the hospital. I'm assuming that it's something that gets figured out fairly quickly. Wouldn't the Hakamichi family doctor have pointed them in the direction of other deaf families to make sure they had someone to turn to? Would Jigoro have accepted this help?

If it was the inner-ear bones, a CI would've worked if implanted early on (before hearing nerve degraded too much). So I tend to go more towards the ignorance situation (a truly Deaf community doesn't like the CI as they feel it destroys the Deaf identity).
And deafness can be found early. But in my case they found out not so early that I was hearing impaired and it took even a while longer to figure out how severe it was. One of the reasons I didn't go to a Deaf school, they didn't know that I was deaf and not just slightly hearing impaired till I was on school already. But they tend to implant the CI at infant stage nowadays.

@DrNoNookee:
The issue is that there are no universities or such for the Deaf here. So it is like all until high school that you can enjoy at a Deaf school but then you have this massive gap when going to a regular university.
I know that a Deaf school would be emotionally early on better for my kid, I've experienced the issues. The thing is that if I was given the choice to redo all those years at a Deaf school instead, I would've denied the choice because I truly believe that going to a regular school and dealing with the challenges truly helped me more than a Deaf school would've helped me. And as for funds, there are government funds that can help (I know from experience) for additional assistance, for interpreters and so on. It is indeed mainly the teachers and the peers that are the main issues.

[WorldlyWiseman]

Finger dexterity might be an issue for babies and toddlers, but my younger cousins were taking classes for basic ASL pre-kindergarten.

Did you read the links? They estimate a baby will be able to sign back *something* at about a year old. Again, this isn't full on proper ASL so much as adapting the crucial signs to let it express a few simple but crucial concepts to the parent, and vice versa.

I did, although rather quickly. We're basically at the same conclusion, I was just presenting what I could from my own experiences. That said, I wonder at what point should a child using BSL segue into learning full ASL?

The intention behind the phone is to allow video calls with an interpreter, isn't it?

Well, yes. We don't really don't know if the household has one or if Jigoro would accept such a thing if he knows about it.

Jigoro doesn't seem like the type of person to even *care* about hearing aids or video phones. Using either would be like learning sign language - stopgap solutions that work around the issue. They completely ignore the *real* problem - Shizune's refusal to behave like a normal, speaking person - and would encourage her to rely on devices rather than fixing the actual problem (i.e. her own behavior).

Jigoro's an ass.

I personally took his behavior as him not wanting to be very involved in solving the 'problem'. If an implant had been possible/if he had known about them, he might have gotten one for her on the basis that it solves the issue in as few moves as possible.

The fact that he's aggressive and arrogant seems to have caused the community to build such an exaggerated mystique around him that they now believe it's true.

Yes, he's an ass, but the impression given is that he also tried everything he could think of. Hearing aids must therefore have not been viable, the video phone thing we don't know about in the context of the story, speech therapy/lipreading... who knows? He was thrust into a very unexpected and confusing situation and, after trying everything he could think of he was faced with both no success and a daughter who had learned to be as stubborn as he was.

I'm trying to picture life at home with the Hakamichis pre-Yamaku and it must have been a very awkward and disjointed one...

I classified Jigoro as a jerk when I realized that everything he'd tried involved no personal involvement on his part. This was a very knee-jerk reaction on my part, I'll admit. Thinking about it, he really does seem baffled at his relationship with his daughter. He may feel genuine love, and its expression is just hobbled by his own nature.

[metalangel]

I did, although rather quickly. We're basically at the same conclusion, I was just presenting what I could from my own experiences. That said, I wonder at what point should a child using BSL segue into learning full ASL?

Say Babysign or something so I don't think you mean British Sign Language

I suppose you should start as soon as the child is ready and able to, as with spoken language.

I classified Jigoro as a jerk when I realized that everything he'd tried involved no personal involvement on his part. This was a very knee-jerk reaction on my part, I'll admit. Thinking about it, he really does seem baffled at his relationship with his daughter. He may feel genuine love, and its expression is just hobbled by his own nature.

We don't know the exact details of what was tried in the past or how involved he was, but it does seem to be that his expression of love is indeed hobbled by his own nature (as seen when he comes to see you later and asks you to look after Shizune while he's away). This was a situation he just didn't know how to deal with and unfortunately it required behaviour that was very foreign to him. He was too proud to realize or accept that he needed to change.

[Melkboy]

*

[inquisitivenegro]

After playing Shizune I started getting quite a bit into ASL.Well,anyway Shizune seems to be saying ''Boy'' not ''Father'' but that might be a badly timed screenshot.

Have you seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes?
The chimpanzee speaks ASL; I recognised him signing "who is my father"

[Megumeru]

First thing you'll animate?

By all means, go ahead. Would love to see it.


Also considering settings wise, wouldn't she be using JSL instead of ASL? I've been wondering for awhile, but Hisao's using ASL in ACT 2 as opposed to JSL is he not?