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Application and Translation Studies of the Culture Induction Method in University Japanese Language Teaching: A Case Study of “Solo Dining” Sci-Fi Narratives



Author(s)

LI Ye, Hudaynazarova Rozygul

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DOI:10.17265/2161-623X/2026.01.008

University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

Language serves as the carrier of culture, while culture constitutes the soul of language; translation acts as the “quantum leap engine” for their migration across time and space. In contemporary university Japanese classrooms, the mere instruction of vocabulary and grammar no longer suffices to meet the demands of developing cross-cultural communicative competence, nor can it address the iterative identity narratives within a “post-human” context. Utilizing the “Culture Induction Method” as a theoretical framework, this paper introduces a near-future science fiction perspective, focusing on the technological evolution of the Japanese “Solo Dining” (Hitorimeshi) phenomenon within the “Single-Person Pod Society” of 2040: ranging from collapsible “Taste Projection Sushi” to “Memory Restaurants” helmed by AI servers. This research embeds “translation” into every pedagogical stage: pre-class Japanese-to-Chinese translation of the latest data from the White Paper on Dietary Education; in-class bidirectional C-J/J-C oral and written translation drills of sci-fi dialogue; and post-class “post-editing” sessions where students’ original micro-fiction is output as bilingual texts. This approach achieves a four-dimensional coupling of “Language-Culture-Technology-Translation.” The results indicate that sci-fi narratives not only significantly enhance learning motivation but also enable students to externalize differences in “technological ethics” during the translation process, leading to the simultaneous growth of linguistic skills, humanistic literacy, and translational proficiency. 

Japanese science fiction literature, non-Anthropocentrism, Sayuri Ueda, ecocriticism

LI Ye, Hudaynazarova Rozygul. (2026). Application and Translation Studies of the Culture Induction Method in University Japanese Language Teaching: A Case Study of “Solo Dining” Sci-Fi Narratives. US-China Education Review A, January 2026, Vol. 16, No. 1, 54-59.