Kiichiro Yamaguchi, the most prominent educator of Japanese language, devised Yamaguchi's Direct Method. It is characterized by the emphasis on the affective and social sides of foreign language teaching, on the significance of life in it, on communication and acquisition, on the harmony of language development and personal development and on the interface between learning and acquisition. The purpose of the present article is to discuss the basic ideas of his direct method from the standpoint of foreign language education in the 80s.
The article consists of 6 sections. The first one gives the purpose of the article. The second focuses on Yamaguchi's view of language. He discusses semantics by dividing meaning and sense. The third deals with the significance of life in FL teaching. This is the essence of the idea "acquisition". It is clear that he basically supported the interface hypothesis, though he didn t know the technical terminology in those days. The fifth summarizes his whole idea of his direct method. Its main topic is his view of language education: language teaching and lauguage learning. His view of communication presents us new insights of language education today. The last one is the concluding remarks.