May 6, 2026
Japanese professor inspires creative learning
In Spring 2026, JCCC hosted the Second Annual Japanese Shorts Festival. The event was brought to life by Japanese professor Yosei Sugawara, who has taught at JCCC for four years and has been teaching Japanese for over 30 years.
“Out of all the places I've taught, I've most enjoyed teaching at community colleges,” he said. “I enjoy the diversity of students—their ages, ethnicities, life experiences, and motivations. The students at JCCC are wonderful people. It's a great school.”
Learning a language the creative way
Learning Japanese can be an exciting challenge to native English speakers. According to Sugawara, it’s a very different experience from learning a romance language.
“To be literate in Japanese, you have to learn three new ‘alphabets’ and a number of kanji,” he said. “It takes courage, determination, and a lot of interest in Japan for a student to put in that kind of work. I respect and admire that.”
Sugawara emphasizes that, while grammar and vocabulary skills are important factors in learning a language, successful communication also includes nonverbal components. This philosophy sparked an idea he began to cultivate before arriving at JCCC.
Several years ago, he put together a language contest for students. Rather than determining who was “best” at syntax and semantics, Sugawara wanted it to be an event that encouraged students to have fun with the language.
When COVID-19 took the contest online, Sugawara had his students submit their speeches on video, encouraging them to add whatever visuals and audio they wanted.
“What that did was completely erase stress and stage fright,” he said. “The student presentations just blossomed.”
When Sugawara came to JCCC, he decided to take this contest to the next level.
“I encouraged the students to work in teams, and asked them to exercise their creativity by writing, acting, editing, and adding their own music and visuals,” he said. “This way they can see that communication is more than conjugating verbs, memorizing vocabulary, and taking quizzes.”
What resulted was the First Annual Japanese Shorts Festival.
Setting the stage
The First Annual Japanese Shorts Festival, held in Spring 2025, was a rousing success! Fourteen teams, with students from JCCC, the Kansas City Art Institute, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University, took on the exciting challenge.
Creativity shone, with entries including a historically factual samurai assassination, an unsuccessful cloning experiment, and an original love song.
Participants gained confidence in their communication skills, and many were excited to return for the next event.
Japanese Shorts Festival, take two!
With virtually no limits on topics, 14 original Japanese-language shorts were submitted for judgment in Spring 2026, representing the work of 39 students from JCCC, the University of Kansas, the Kansas City Art Institute, Wichita State University, and Missouri State University.
Topics of the shorts included a wizard with a time-stopping hat, a lonely student in a haunted house, a witch with her new familiar, a channel-skipping TV, a pony-tailed pigeon, a how-to on making cookies, a basketball playing puppy, a spoiled shopping addict, a princess whose wish is answered in an unexpected way, a rakugo performance about Starbucks, a Japanese fairytale, the origin story of the Daruma, and the search for a little, lost (really lost) flower.
And the winner of the Second Annual Japanese Shorts Festival is…
Eight teams were awarded at the ceremony, with prizes for Best Short, Technical Excellence, Exceptional Anime Script, Exceptional Live Action Script, Best Acting, Best Voice Acting, Originality in Anime, and Originality in Live Action.
2026’s Exceptional Live Action Script Award went to JCCC’s own team, Studio Yousei, for their short about magical glasses that show you more about people than you might like. Ari Herrera, one of the team members, has been studying Japanese for two years at JCCC. This was her second year entering the Japanese Shorts Festival.
“In both years, I got closer to friends I would’ve never met had it not been for the classes I took and the short film we made together,” she said.
Ari is now an award-winning filmmaker twice over and treasures her JSF experience.
“I’ll never forget my time in the Japanese Shorts Festival,” she said. “Although we won an award both years in a row, I would’ve been happy even if we hadn’t, because of how much fun we had and how much we learned.”
Your story starts here
Eager to join next year’s festival? If you’re going to be a Japanese language student in the Spring 2027 semester at any secondary or post-secondary school in Kansas or Missouri, start forming a production team!
Entry forms for the Third Annual Japanese Shorts Festival will be posted on the Festival website January 25, 2027.