Kinship and the kinship terms have attracted keen and sustained interests in anthropology. The kinship terms are also important in the teaching of Japanese. Although kinship terminology probably exists in the world's languages, it may be encoded differently in each society, reflecting on various kinship systems. The learner needs to assimilate linguistic features of kinship terms of the target language, bearing in mind the differences in their own language. This paper aims to analyse six textbooks for beginners in terms of kinship terminology and to pinpoint the problems underlying the teaching of kinship terms at the beginning level.

There are several features of kinship terms in Japanese. Japanese distinguishes between terms of their own kin and those of others' kin; the Japanese use a term 'haha' when speaking about their own mother and a term 'okaasan' when speaking about others' mother. A further feature is that the kinship terms can work as terms for address and as personal pronouns. The hierarchy based on age is an important factor which determines the use of kinship terms for self and for address in the Japanese family. Finally, Japanese kinship terminology entails a function as "a fictive use", in which the terminology does not accurately reflect the relationship between speaker and addressee. It is necessary to analyse how these linguistic features are introduced in the textbooks.

I wish to explore the teaching of kinship terms through examining six textbooks; Introduction to Modern Japanese, Nihongo shoho, Seikatsu nihongo, Bunka shokyuu nihongo, Shin-Nihongo no kiso, and Japanese for College Students. Since these textbooks target different types of learner such as university students and technical trainees, it should be useful to pinpoint the different approaches to the kinship terms. The textbooks are analysed in terms of the following issues; 1 which kinship terms are introduced; 2 how they are introduced; 3 which functions of the terms are taught; 4 what kind of practices and tasks are provided in order to internalise the forms and functions of kinship terms.

These analyses lead to the conclusion that six textbooks downplay the teaching of kinship terms since they provide the learner with a limited number of functions and terms. The textbooks mainly present kinship terms for reference rather than terms for self and for address. Moreover, the practices and tasks are designed to help the learner to produce specific sentence structures accurately, and the kinship terms are employed just as cues in drills and question-and answer practices.

These oversights of kinship terms may be connected with the syllabus type of textbooks. The four textbooks are based on the structural syllabus. This means that they highlight the significance of linguistic structures and neglect the teaching of items of vocabulary, even though they are often employed in everyday situations.

In conclusion, it may be understandable that the textbooks for beginners give priority to sentence structures, but they should provide the learner with the kinship terms in a more purposeful way. From my point of view, it is a practical approach to teach the kinship terms with the polite expressions since the terms contain a concept of 'in-group' and 'out-group', one of the crucial variables which influence the polite use of Japanese. Furthermore, it is necessary to present the distinctive functions of the kinship terms in a variety of context so that the learner can comprehend them.