Japanese Sign Language

Abstract

Japanese Sign Language (JSL or Nihon Shuwa) is an indigenous language of deaf people in Japan. It has regional dialects, generational and stylistic varieties. The lexico-grammatical structure of JSL shares similarities—and some mutual intelligibility—with the sign languages of Taiwan and Korea. JSL developed when deaf people started to form communities following the establishment of deaf schools in Japan in the 1880s. However, the use of sign language was not approved in deaf schools until the 1980s. In 2016, 31,000 persons out of 341,000 persons with hearing disabilities in Japan used signed language for daily communication. There are numerous non-deaf users of JSL as a first language, such as children of deaf adults (CODA). With the increase in the number of people undergoing cochlear implantation, the number of students in deaf schools is decreasing along with the number of native JSL signers.