The Japanese Language and The Making of Tradition

The Japanese Language and the Making of Tradition
Author(s): S. Robert Ramsey

Source: Japanese Language and Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Apr., 2004), pp. 81-110
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Japanese
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The Japanese Language and the
Making of Tradition
S. Robert Ramsey
This year, 2004, the Kokugo Gakkai, the 'Society for the Study of the
National Language', is being renamed the Nihongo Gakkai, the 'Society
for the Study of Japanese'. To outsiders, the name change may appear to
be little more than a trivial cosmetic detail, but within Japan, it indicates
something of greater significance. For decades, the name Kokugo, or
'National Language', had remained sacrosanct, and the society dedicated
to its study had fiercely resisted change. But on February 23, 2003, when
a formal vote was taken among the 2,500 members of the Kokugo Gakkai,
776 of the more than 1,150 members casting votes-some 67%-approved
the new name.' That vote may mean a watershed line has been crossed.
The Kokugo Gakkai, long a bastion of conservative sentiment about
Japan and the Japanese language, now had a membership apparently in
favor of a more open, international approach to their field of study. Time
will tell whether this more liberal attitude results in other, more substantial
changes.
Since the end of the Pacific War, the Kokugo Gakkai has served as the
single most important society in Japan for the scientific study of the
Japanese language, and although it has always had a few foreign members,
from its beginning it has been an almost exclusively Japanese organization.
Its principles and its goals have functioned independently of linguistics
practiced outside the country, its research methods and findings largely
unknown or opaque to outsiders. As a name, Kokugo Gakkai proclaimed
openly the proprietary feelings that Japanese linguistic scholars held about
their language. Kokugo was, and is, what they studied; Nihongo, on the
other hand, was something foreigners could study. It was a difference
they found important.
Beyond the confines of the Kokugo Gakkai-soon, the Nihongo Gakkai
-these two common words for the Japanese language are still kept apart
of course. Kokugo remains the subject taught in Japanese schools to
Japanese schoolchildren. Nihongo is what is taught to foreigners. If a
non-Japanese were to refer to his Japanese language classes as Kokugo,
Japanese listeners would find the usage nonsensical and humorous. In
Japanese Language and Literature 38 (2004) 81-110
82 Japanese Language and Literature
other words, Nihongo (or Nippongo) is the more general name for the
language. It has a cosmopolitan feel about it that stresses Japan's place in
the world's family of nations. Kokugo, on the other hand, is an in-group
usage. Its literal meaning may be 'national language', but its usage is
something more like 'our language, our mother tongue'. There is certainly
more than a shade of nationalism in the word Kokugo, but some of the
other, more innocuous nuances of the word are lost when it is translated
as 'National Language'.
What is interesting about these two words, Kokugo and Nihongo, is
that they are both surprisingly new. They began to be widely used scarcely
more than a hundred years ago, about the time that Western powers
began to put intense pressure on Japan to open its doors. Apparently, the
Japanese felt no need for concise ways to talk about their language, at
least in general terms, before coming into close contact with the outside
world. Most references to the language found in writings before the end
of the Edo period were descriptive phrases rather than names. In the tex-
tual record of Japanese from traditional times, we find only expressions
like "Japan's language" (Nihon no kotoba) or "Japan's speech" (Nihon
no kuchi).2
One of these two modern words, Nihongo, became a part of Japanese
vocabulary around 1854.' On the night of March 27th of that year, a
young nationalist named Yoshida Shain, along with a friend named Kaneko
Jisuke, attempted to stow away aboard Commodore Perry's flagship, the
USS Powhatan, then lying at anchor just off the coast of Japan. The act
was a clear violation of Japan's policy of national exclusion, and both
young samurai were taken off the ship and thrown into prison.
Writing his recollections of the incident from prison, Yoshida described
what had happened to him on board Perry's ship:
Although I asked for a brush and tried to make signs with my hands, I couldn't
communicate at all. It was extremely frustrating. In time someone [named]
Williams who knew Japanese [that is, Nihongo, or perhaps Nippongo4] showed
5
up ...
This journal entry is one of the earliest recorded uses of the word Nihongo.
It marked the beginning of what was soon to become the most common
way of referring to the Japanese language.
One particularly remarkable aspect of this remarkable record is the cir-
cumstance in which the word was used. When he wrote down the new
word Nihongo, Yoshida was doing so in reference to the use of the lan-
guage by a foreigner. It was an interesting coincidence. Or was it coinci-
S. Robert Ramsey 83
dence? We could certainly imagine that Yoshida, a Japanese nationalist

if there ever was one,6 had conceived of and deliberately used the word
as an out-group term. In any event, Nihongo became, from its very begin-
ning, the outward-looking face of Japanese.
Use of the word spread quickly. As the Japanese entered the Meiji per-
iod, it became the popular term to use when writing on the new, modem
world. Most frequent of all was the use of the word in works on foreign
travel or on the study of things connected to foreigners and foreign lan-
guages. As it had with Yoshida, direct contact with foreigners seems nat-
urally to have brought the word to mind:
This person previously had come to the Russian consulate in Hakodate and
was there more than seven years, and his [ability] to communicate in Japanese
[Nihongo] was quite excellent. (Mori Arinori, Koro kikd, 1866)7
But progressive intellectuals did not confine their use of the word to for-
eign contexts. A reference to Nihongo was oftentimes a sine qua non in
the advocacy for the "cultural enlightenment" associated with moderniza-
tion. Fukuzawa Yukichi, for example, made a special point of using the
word when writing on scholarship and education. Advocates of romani-
zation such as Yatabe Ryokichi and Tanakadate Aikitsu referred to Japanese
as Nihongo in their discussions of problems with the writing system.
Some scholars trained in Western linguistics, such as Otsuki Fumihiko,
wrote on the grammar and vocabulary ofNihongo.8
But what about that other, more private word for the language, Kokugo?
Where did it come from, and how did it take on its present meaning?
Today, as we have seen, Kokugo is a completely in-group word.
Here is how one distinguished Japanese gentleman, Kamei Takashi,
has described the nuances the word evokes:
For the Japanese there is a feeling of intimacy in the word Kokugo. It, even
more than Nihongo, has put down roots in our soul. The difference is especially
great when the latter is written [or pronounced] not as Nihongo but as Nippongo;
Nippongo has a standoffish or distant feel about it. There is a calmness resembling
a kind of elegant, quiet simplicity [sabi] in the word Kokugo.9
Kamei's description is eloquent testimony to the cultural significance

that Kokugo has had for the Japanese people. But the feel of tradition, re-
assuring though it may be, misleads the people most intimately touched
by it. Kokugo may have been close to the soul (or kokoro) of Kamei's
generation of Japanese, but at least in its modem, in-group meaning, it is
no more ancient than Nihongo. In fact, in many ways, it is newer.
On the surface, Kokugo does not even appear to be Japanese. The read-
ings of the characters used to write the word, koku 'nation' and go 'lan-
guage', are both borrowed from Chinese. ("It feels strange to write the
word in hiragana," Kamei says.) What appears to be the same word can
be found in classical Chinese literature; it was used at least as early as
the eighth century to designate the languages of some non-Chinese states.'0
But unlike today, it was never used then to refer to the official language
of the state-just the opposite: what it meant, in traditional times in East
Asia, was something like 'the local vernacular'."
In those days the Japanese used the word the same way the Chinese
did. Since Classical Chinese was the official written language of Japan as
well as China, Japanese writers sometimes referred to their own colloquial
language as a 'local vernacular'. In a Japanese preface (dated 1714) to a
Chinese commentary on the Lotus Sutra, the Japanese author notes that
in preparing the blocks for printing, "the 'local vernacular' [kokugo]'2
has been added at the side."'3 It is certainly not the modern Japanese
word that we see here: the usage was unmistakably Chinese. It would
still be a long time before kokugo would have the mystical, in-group
meaning it does today.
For one thing, in Tokugawa-period Japan, the word took a detour in
another direction. In a 1773 work on Dutch medicine, the physician
Sugita Genpaku used it in an interesting way:
Because this thing called 'Latin' is the origin of the languages of those various
countries, things like the basic terms in medical books are all written in
'Latin', and, immediately following that, there is a translation into kokugo
[i.e., Dutch].'4
The usage at first seems curious. In his writings Genpaku usually called
Dutch 'Dutch' (Orandago), but here he chose to call it kokugo. Why? It
seems clear that Genpaku thought of Dutch as a 'local vernacular' because
it had a status analagous to that of Japanese. Japanese was classed as a
kokugo because Classical Chinese was the official, standard (written)
language. For Dutch, on the other hand, the contrast was with Latin. In
other words, Dutch was to Latin in Europe as Japanese was to Classical
Chinese in East Asia. For that reason, Dutch could be called a kokugo,
and Genpaku consistently called it that in contexts connected with Latin.'"
It was an interesting analogy. For Japanese scholars like Genpaku, it
seems that Latin-centered Europe was regarded as an alternative civiliza-
tion, comparable to China-centered East Asia. It was a new but growing
way of looking at the world.
The word kokugo spread to other contexts. Here, several decades later,
S. Robert Ramsey 85
in 1815, an older Genpaku reminisces about the beginning of his fascina-

tion with Western learning:
Thus, because of an eccentric nature, I became a disciple of Mr. Aoki and

studied Dutch horizontal writing and twelve nation's languages [kokugo] [written
with] it."6
By the late Edo period kokugo had come to be widely used this way
that is, in the sense of the representative language of some country.
Sometimes the word referred to Japanese, sometimes to the language of a
European country. Which was meant was not always clear, and so some-
times a prefix was added: go- or ga- 'our [country's language]' if Japanese
was meant; and ki- 'respected', kare no 'their', or the like if some other
language was meant. In 1866 Mori Arinori had just returned from a
secret trip abroad from Satsuma when he wrote the following:
I have heard that the national language of Russia [Rokoku no kokugo] is, in
Europe, the most difficult to learn.
Of course, by this time the general meaning of the word was no longer
the dominant one. A narrower sense focusing on Japan as the nation in
question had clearly emerged, as can be seen in an 1856 lexical work by
Murakami Hidetoshi:
This book is compiled for the purpose of examining Western language using
[our] nation's language [kokugo].
But both meanings remained in common use surprisingly late, well into
the Meiji period and to the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, in the
1886 edition of Hepburn's Japanese-English dictionary, the entry for the
word kokugo is: "The language of a country; national language." Even
today, this by now archaic usage is the first definition given in most
Japanese dictionaries.
As we shall see shortly, an important contribution to the exclusively
Japanese meaning of the word came from the nationalistic scholar Ueda
Kazutoshi. But in 1894, even he was still influenced by the more general
meaning. The task of shaping the word was not yet complete. In his book
Kokugo to kokka to (National language and nation), which was published
in that year, Ueda sometimes used the word to refer to Japanese and
sometimes not- as we see in this example: "Because of Luther, he [i.e.,
an early European language reformer] at first wanted to make a kokugo
independent of Latin.. ." Moreover, in one of his most famous assertions
about language, Ueda still wrote in a way that most Japanese today
would find curious:
[I]f we take the Japanese national language [Nihon kokugo] as an example

... ,we should speak of Japanese [Nihongo] as the spiritual blood of the Japa-
nese people.
For Japanese today, the phrase Nihon kokugo seems quite nonsensical. It
is like saying "Japan's Japanese language.""7
The present, exclusively Japanese meaning of Kokugo was still devel-
oping, and it needed considerable, official help. It was an idea that grew
out of the national drive toward linguistic unification.
A Fragmented Japan
In the early nineteenth century, before the country began to modernize,
Japan was partitioned into various separate domains governed by daimy6,
military lords sworn to serve as vassals of the sh6gun. These great domains
resembled in some ways separate countries, except that each and every
one of them was tightly and closely monitored and controlled by the cen-
tral authority of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo. Nevertheless, each of
them taxed, policed, and carefully controlled the social structure of its
own citizenry, and its boundaries were sealed against unrestricted com-
merce and travel. Simply to visit an area outside the territory to which
one belonged could often be as difficult as it is today for North Koreans
to travel abroad.
The principal travelers were the daimyo, who were required under the
sankin k6tai system to reside in alternate years in Edo under the watchful
eye of the sh6gun. For most other people, travel was permitted only
under extraordinary circumstances. An application had to be submitted to
the proper authorities stating the purpose of travel, the duration of the
stay, who would be contacted, and other such details. If justification was
considered sufficient, passport papers were issued, and these were checked
at every station along the travel route. In some politically sensitive situations
an official escort was also necessary. The emperor and members of his
family, who maintained a delicate position vis-a-vis the sh6gun, were
normally confined to the environs of the imperial residence in Kyoto.
Peasants did not normally travel at all.
These political boundaries cut off communication between the people
living in one daimy6's domain from the people living in neighboring
areas. Although the language spoken within each of the domains remained
S. Robert Ramsey 87
fairly cohesive, the linguistic differences between it and other domains

began to grow. From the time that Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun
around 1600 until the Tokugawa shogunate collapsed in the middle of
the nineteenth century, each of these political divisions drifted in a different
linguistic direction. Domain boundaries became linguistic boundaries.
These boundaries remain the principal boundaries separating the various
Japanese dialects today. Yet, a century and a half of modem education
and communication have done much to attenuate what were once far
greater linguistic differences. In the early nineteenth century, the differ-
ences separating Japanese "dialects" more closely resembled the linguistic
differences separating Chinese "dialects." Japanese born in one area were
unable to understand the speech of other domains.
A graphic illustration of how linguistically fragmented Japan was can
be found in the travel diary of Furukawa Kosokan, a government inspector
sent to the northern Japanese territories in Thhoku and Hokkaid6 in
1783.18 According to Furukawa, he had trouble communicating every
place he went. At Tajima in Aizu, Furukawa wrote:
Half of what is said by either side cannot be interpreted by the other. In inn
after inn, all one can do is laugh a lot; whatever one does, things are difficult.
If you ask the people at the inn to give you chazuke, they'll bring out yuzuke.
In each and every inn you have to go into the kitchen and take care of matters
yourself.
When Furukawa got to the territory of the Nanbu Clan in modem Morioka,
he made these observations:
What is said, by both men and women, is gibberish; if it's ten that's meant,
you can't make out whether they're saying two or three.
We shogunate inspectors are each granted from the landowner not only a
guide, but also two or three fellows familiar with everything in the area
around the castle town. These people accompany us at all times. In the area of
Nanbu, where it's especially difficult to communicate, we were given two
such fellows from the castle town of Morioka to translate. In this place, the
fact that the translations themselves could not be interpreted caused everybody
to laugh.
Furukawa himself was born in what is now Okayama Prefecture.

This situation continued as long as the Tokugawa shogunate maintained
its restrictions. As long as people stayed put, few except peripatetic
inspectors were inconvenienced by an inability to communicate. But when
the shogun's control finally collapsed, and civil war and political turmoil
brought armies and factions from different areas into contact, the linguistic
fragmentation became immediately apparent. Accounts of that period

contain stories of confusion, incomprehension, misunderstanding, and
chaos. Here is a well-known (though probably apocryphal) anecdote often
repeated in the historiographic literature to illustrate the kind of frustration
that arose:
In 1868, in the turmoil of the Boshin civil war, troops from Yamaguchi and
Kagoshima in the southwest were dispatched in an expeditionary force to
Tohoku. When these soldiers reached their destination and tried to talk to the
people of the area, they discovered that communication was impossible. Not
one among them knew how to speak the local language. The situation became
desperate. The army needed to be supplied, directions needed to worked out,
and for both purposes the units needed local help. Finally after many things
had been tried, one especially well educated soldier tried reciting lines from
the repertory of Noh drama, from which he knew expressions such as: "We
are in need of rice, can you be of service?"; "Would you show us the way?";
and the like. As it happened, there was a man in the area who had studied Noh
drama, and he was able to act as an intermediary for the soldiers."
Bringing the Parts Together

Once order had been reestablished following the Meiji Restoration of
1868, the new intellectual leaders turned their attention toward the chal-
lenges of building the new state. One obvious need was for unification.
The stratified and regionalized society that was Japan at the time could
not function as a unified nation. Not only were there geographical divisions;
class divisions ran deep as well. All of these divisions served as barriers
against the building of a modem state.
In the early Meiji period, the Japanese looked toward the West for
models upon which to create a new society. Among other things, it
seemed obvious to them that linguistic unity was a sine qua non for
building the infrastructure of a modem industrial and military society. To
work together people had to be able to talk to each other. The citizens of
England, France, Germany, Russia, and America could all do that, the
Japanese thought,20 while within their own country deep linguistic divisions
remained. They resolved to establish a national language.
Choosing the Right Word

We do not know who first began using the word kokugo as the symbol of
the modern unified state, but it is clear how and why the word was
S. Robert Ramsey 89
picked. As we have seen, for scholars of Western Learning, the word was
already associated with the languages of European states.
But there was another reason why the word fit the needs of the time so
well. Japanese intellectuals of the mid-nineteenth century had a very spe-
cial way of accommodating new ideas coming in from the West, and the
concept of a "national language" was no exception. The method they
chose for importing Western terms was to translate the roots of each new
word into Classical Chinese. The coinages of Nishi Amane were typical.
Nishi Amane was one of the most important Japanese intellectuals of
the early Meiji. He was among the very first to assert that Western civ-
ilization should provide the model for Japan's national reforms, and in
proselytizing for Western learning he became a prolific writer and coiner
of words. Born the son of a samurai physician, Nishi gave up his samurai
status in 1853 and began to devote himself to full-time study of Western
thought. By 1862 he was accomplished enough to be sent by the Tokugawa
shogunate to Holland to study the social sciences. When he returned,
Nishi gave himself over with a missionary-like zeal to the transmission
of Western ideology, particularly positivism and utilitarianism. Nishi's
goal was to "civilize and enlighten" the Japanese people, and toward that
end he lectured and wrote widely, producing books and essays and even,
in 1870, a complete encyclopedia of European arts and sciences.
Nishi's specialty was philosophy, and in that Western field of learning
he was confronted with an array of bewilderingly complex terms. One of
the most important of these was the Western notion of "category." (Perhaps
it would be more accurate to say the German word Kategorie was what
Nishi had in mind.) In a linguistic tour de force, Nishi made up the word
hancha to translate the term. Written in formidably difficult Chinese
characters, the new word was an elliptical form of the phrase (ko)han
(kyai)chti 'the Nine Divisions of the Vast Pattern'-a concept described
in the Book of History, one of the Five Confucian Classics. The classical
allusion had nothing originally to do with Western philosophy, of course,
but it was a close enough approximation to serve his learned readership
as a reminder of the topic Nishi was writing about. The word hanchft is
doubly interesting because Japanese intellectuals of the time who knew
the etymology read the kanji with the pronunciation kategori, showing
they were familiar with the German term. There were even those who
wrote kategort in furigana alongside the characters!2' However clever it
may have been, the new coinage was an intellectual conceit, because it
implied that only those versed in both Western learning and traditional
Confucian philosophy could understand the word and thus the philosophical
concept. Nevertheless, in spite of the pains which Nishi took to draw

upon East Asian tradition, the word had no more than a superficial con-
nection to the classical citation. It was a new word for a new age.
Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of the Meiji period's most famous intellectuals,
used the same locus classicus from the Book of History to introduce an-
other concept, that of the Western public speech. The original phrase,
enzetsu, was used in the classical Chinese source in connection with
conveying the Nine Divisions, but Fukuzawa used it as a word for the
speeches given in an 1875 lecture series of an association to which he
belonged." The style adopted for those lectures, and which Fukuzawa in-
sisted on teaching, was that of an English debating society.
Fukuzawa was one of the most important coiners of words. A prime
example of his inventiveness is the word for 'civilization' itself. In his
1867 work Seiyo jija (The state of things in the West) Fukuzawa introduced
the term bunmei(-kaika) as a translation of the English.23 Bunmei 'civiliza-
tion' is of course an everyday Japanese word now, but at the time Fukuzawa
first used it, it called to mind, at least for any educated Japanese gentleman,
a graceful phrase from the Book of Changes meaning 'literary embellish-
ments are resplendent'. The allusion made the word more elegant and re-
fined.
It may seem odd to us today that Fukuzawa would need to invent a
word for 'civilization'. Certainly he and all other East Asians lived in
what we would consider a civilization as old and as grand as any to be
imported from Europe. But even as Japanese looked for Classical Chinese
allusions to render Western terms, they also sensed a fundamental differ-
ence between everything Western and anything in their own tradition. It
did not occur to them that bunmei existed in East Asia, because it really
meant '(Western) civilization'. Another surprising example of an imported
concept is 'art'. In the meaning of 'fine arts', the term bijutsu was coined
in the 1860s, and in the early Meiji it referred only to Western styles and
techniques. Traditional painting and sculpture were not originally thought
of as bijutsu. At first, the word was used to include music and literature,
but after the 1870s bijutsu came to designate only painting and sculpture.
After that narrowing of meaning, another neologism, geijutsu, was subse-
quently coined to cover the broader meaning of 'art'.24
This curious blending of Eastern allusion with Western concept was
fundamental to Meiji culture. The very symbol of the grandly modern
and cosmopolitan in the 1880s had a name with a Classical Chinese
pedigree. Rokumeikan, the name of the state-owned guest house for visiting
dignitaries, meant 'House of the Cry of the Stag'. The name, which by
S. Robert Ramsey 91
extension was also the name of the era, was an allusion to a poem in the
oldest of Chinese anthologies, the Book of Odes.25 Through this coinage
the government proclaimed to the world its legitimacy in the most venerably
traditional as well as the most innovatively modem.
The first use of aikoku 'patriotism' in the modem sense of 'love of
country' was in 1873, when Itagaki Taisuke founded in Tokyo a political
party called Aikoku K&t6, or 'Public Party of Patriots'. The characters
for the term had appeared in the Nihon shoki, but there they were read
mikado wo omofu 'revering (or being faithful to) the emperor'. Itagaki's
usage was the first one with reference to the Japanese state. It was the
first conceptual linking to the advocacy of citizens' rights and welfare.
And then, as it was subsequently used, aikoku came to have a meaning of
'patriotism' similar to the corresponding words used in Western states.
Words made up in ways similar to that of hanchai include gainen 'con-
cept', which was a rendering of German Begriffas well as the English;
koten 'classics'; shisi 'thought' (a word that existed before the Meiji but
had then referred only to thoughts for one's beloved); as well as the myr-
iad of terms of modem society and technology still used today. These in-
clude such words as keizai 'economics', seiji 'politics', kagaku 'science',
shakai 'society', gunkan 'warship', ansatsu 'assassination'- and so on,
and so on.
Though such words are virtually without exception Japanese coinages,
they were so cleverly cloaked in Classical Chinese form that the Chinese
themselves later adopted the usages without question as Chinese words.
An irony of the modem Chinese state is that much of its vocabulary-
including such things as 'imperialism' (digu6zhiyi, from teikoku-shugi);
'capitalism' (zibvnzhiyi, from shihon-shugi), and even 'communism'
(gngchdnzhuiyi, from kyosan-shugi) and 'socialism' (shehuizhiuyi, from
shakai-shugi) are actually words made in Japan.
Thus, it is no accident that Kokugo seems to have a venerable Chinese
ancestry. It, too, like so many other such terms, was reintroduced into
China earlier in this century to become Gudyii, the name for the Chinese
standard language, a meaning it still has in Taiwan.27 But in all of its
modem meanings the word is clearly a Meiji-period Japanese creation.
We may wonder why the Japanese would bother to look in the ancient
Chinese classics for ways to translate Western terminology. There is
probably not one true synonym to be found in those sources for any
Western technical term, as the Japanese well knew. On the face of it, the
world of Classical Chinese seemed almost the polar opposite of the modem
West. It represented the old way of thinking that the Japanese leaders had
resolutely decided to reject. Yet, this blending of the seemingly incom-

patible represented the thought processes of the Meiji intellectual (and to
some extent many Japanese intellectuals today). Men of samurai back-
ground such as Nishi Amane and Fukuzawa Yukichi had grown up with
the Chinese classics, much as Americans in the nineteenth century grew
up with Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Education was grounded
in the Confucian canon, and they had learned to write in a style that bor-
rowed heavily from Classical Chinese. For men of that background there
was no other way to present formal argumentation about intellectual is-
sues. Writing dense with kanji was the norm for serious essays. (We still
see that legacy in the kanji-filled newspaper and magazine editorials of
today.) Kana was for lightweight topics. Kanji was associated with learning.
Writing overloaded with kanji had a certain authoritarian prestige, and
many formal expressions in Chinese had no easy Japanese equivalents.
Moreover, the economy and brevity of Classical Chinese had an enormous
esthetic appeal for a Japanese society in which forbearance and taciturnity
were highly prized virtues. The unstated and suggestive qualities of the
Classical Chinese allusion were part and parcel of the style.
We must also remember that with the opening of Japan new words
came into the country in such a flood from the West that it would have
been difficult, if not impossible, to remember and assimilate them in their
original English, German, or French forms: unlike today, few Japanese in
the mid-nineteenth century had a familiarity with English or any other
Western language. For the Meiji elite, Classical Chinese was the vehicle
for serious thinking. It was the only medium those educated men could
use to take in so many new things so quickly.
Looking for a Standard

At first, the people who spoke of this new Kokugo were not quite sure
what they meant by it. There was a great deal of searching and confusion.
Many suggestions for what kind of national language could be used to
unify the Japanese people were breathtakingly, but also sometimes re-
freshingly, radical. It goes without saying that in many of these suggestions
there was no awareness at all of the difference between writing and
speaking.
One of the earliest mentions of Kokugo in its modern meaning comes
from a petition submitted in 1866 by Maeshima Hisoka28 (the man who
later founded the Japanese postal system) to the shogun advocating the
complete abolition of kanji. The "National Language [Kokugo]," Maeshima
S. Robert Ramsey 93
asserted, should be written as simply as possible. Kanji, which are difficult

to learn, should be abolished, he continued, and the people should be en-
couraged to use "phonetic letters" like kana and write in ordinary sentences.
This was the way to spread education among the common people, Maeshima
concluded. Of course, despite his advocacy of kana, Maeshima drafted
his petition using a sdribun style dense with kanji. It was the only style
allowed in the situation."
A few years later, in 1869, Nanbu Yoshikazu submitted a petition en-
titled "On Reforming the National Language [Kokugo]" to the new Meiji
government. Nanbu's proposal went farther than Maeshima's. His was
an essay advocating the abolition of all of the Japanese writing systems.
He argued that the twenty-six letters of the Roman alphabet should be
used to write Japanese. It is curious that, unlike later advocates of roman-
ization who preferred to speak of Nihongo, Nanbu referred to Japanese
only as Kokugo.30
But the strangest and most radical proposal for the National Language
unquestionably came from the American-educated statesman Mori Arinori,
a man who was later (in 1885) to become the Minister of Education in
It6 Hirobumi's cabinet. In those early days of Meiji state-building, when
Japan seemed irredeemably far behind the West, Mori despaired completely
of the possibility that Japanese could be used as the vehicle for modern
civilization. Thus, in 1873, he wrote:
Our meager language ... is doomed to yield to the domination of the English
tongue, especially when the power of steam and electricity shall have pervaded
the land. Our intelligent race . . . cannot depend upon a weak and uncertain
medium of communication ... The laws of state can never be preserved in the
language of Japan. All reasons suggest its disuse.31
Mori believed that the only way out was to replace Japanese with English.
He argued that English should be adopted as the national language, and
he campaigned widely for this proposal. In his eagerness for the English
solution, he corresponded with distinguished Western linguists in order
to solicit their opinions about how it might be carried out. He went so far
as to travel to New Haven, Connecticut, in order to consult with the em-
inent Yale linguist, William Dwight Whitney. However, in response to
Mori's question about the feasibility of his solution, Whitney coolly re-
plied that he had never heard of such a thing being accomplished and did
not think the Japanese could manage such a thing even if it were in their
best interests, which he also doubted.32
As Meiji modernization moved ahead, thinking began to focus upon
the selection of a national standard out of what already existed. Miyake

Yonekichi, later to become president of Tokyo Normal University, first
addressed the problem of selection in 1884, when he was twenty-five
years old. In Kana no shirube (Friends of the syllabary), the journal used
as a forum for the so-called Kana Club, the young Miyake discussed the
various methods of unifying the language that had by this time been pro-
posed.33 First of all, he argued against the prevalent idea that Classical
Japanese be made the standard. The national standard should be "refined
and elegant," he said, but should also as far as possible be something
modem. Three modem choices had been suggested: (1) the language of
the old capital Kyoto should be made the standard; (2) the language of
the new capital Tokyo should be made the standard; and (3) there should
be a national survey of the dialects and the dialect with the most speakers
should be made the standard. What was to be done? Miyake's solution
was a laissez-faire one, in which, he said, modern improvements in trans-
portation and communication would automatically bring the people of
Japan together, and they would unconsciously make corrections in order
to talk to each other. In other words, the citizens of the new Japan would
develop a standard on their own without interference and without even
realizing that they had changed their speech habits.34
Miyake's approach, in other words, was one that would fit well into the
ethos of twenty-first century America. No action was necessary. Without
government interference, and without forcing linguistic minorities to
conform, the Japanese people would by themselves, through the natural
forces of a kind of linguistic free market, arrive at a common language. It
seemed at the time an eminently reasonable idea.
But other members of the Kana Club disagreed. In the next issue of the
journal, which appeared in 1885, Shimano Seiichir6 published an essay
promoting middle-class Tokyo speech as the basis of the standard. Others
soon wrote expressing their concurrence with this view, and a consensus
for a more active governmental role began to build.3"
By the turn of the century opinions had settled. For most, Miyake's de-
centralist proposal had become the target of increasingly sharp criticism.
In 1902 Okakura Yoshisabur6 charged that Miyake's passive method
was not only wrong-headed but actually dangerous: it was too indirect,
Okakura said, and as such it could not guarantee that some "other national
language" (ta kokugo) would not creep in from the outside. (Perhaps this
criticism was an allusion to Mori's famous proposal advocating English
as the standard.) Okakura argued for a direct method of government con-
S. Robert Ramsey 95
trol: "When education in Kokugo is pressed forward in the schools, regional

speech will slowly be corrected as the central language is introduced."36
Miyake was the victim of changing times. More than anything, his pas-
sive attitude reflected the more free-wheeling spirit of the first two decades
of the Meiji era, when a wide variety of ideas were tolerated. By the turn
of the century, however, the breadth of intellectual inquiry had narrowed.
More positive and artificial methods of unification had come to the fore.
Nationalism and the National Language

The man who best represented this new Japanese spirit was Ueda Kazutoshi.
Ueda was the first professor of Kokugo at Tokyo Imperial University, but
he was not primarily a scholar. His agenda was political. Ueda wanted
above all to create a true National Language and to mold a discipline -
Kokugogaku-that responded to the needs of that National Language.
Ueda's main contributions came as an official in the Ministry of Edu-
cation, a post he held concurrently with his university professorship. The
establishment of the National Language Research Committee (which is
now the Council on the National Language) came out of his political
skill. This committee produced many important works on the Japanese
language, but its primary purpose was to prepare the basic materials for a
national language policy.
Virtually Ueda's only published books were the two volumes of collected
essays entitled Kokugo no tame (For the sake of the National Language).
Whatever their value for linguistic scholarship, these works are important
because they represent the credo with which Ueda lived his life. Here are
the famous opening lines of Kokugo no tame:
The National Language is the bulwark of the Imperial Household;

The National Language is the blood of the Nation.37
Consider also this quote from his book (cited, in part, earlier):
Just as blood shows a common birth in the realm of the flesh, language, for the
people who speak it, shows a common birth in the realm of the spirit. If we
take the Japanese National Language as an example of this, we should speak
of Japanese as the spiritual blood of the Japanese people. 38
As a young man, Ueda had been deeply involved in Western scholarship.

He had studied under the Englishman Basil Hall Chamberlain at Tokyo
Imperial University, and after graduating in 1888 he was sent by the gov-
ernment, in 1890, to study linguistics in France and Germany. He was, in
fact, the first Japanese to have studied Western linguistics overseas. In

1894 he returned home and was given a teaching position at Tokyo Im-
perial University, where he lectured on Western linguistics.39 From Ger-
many he had brought back German philological methods (Germany being
the country then most advanced in linguistic science), as well as German
influence on certain aspects of his thinking, and many of his arguments
for the role of the state in language policy were based upon the movement
in that country to purify the German language. Ueda also used a variety
of other European examples to support his agenda for a standard language,
and he was particularly fond of citing the role of the French theater and
the French Academy in improving the French language.40
But after returning to Japan, Ueda became ever more passionately ded-
icated to raising national consciousness of the Japanese past and tradition.
In his writings and speeches he stressed the importance of Japanese na-
tional character in researching the national language and literature. He
considered himself a true patriot whose mission in life was to "restore
and raise the status of [the] Japanese language to a level above the 'yoke'
of foreign (Western and well as Chinese) languages."41
Ueda's openly anti-foreign attitude typified a growing nationalism among
certain Japanese intellectuals around the turn of the century. Ueda was
frustrated by the Chinese cultural legacy of his country and wanted a na-
tional language independent of this giant neighbor. For him, like the rest
of his countrymen, the most important event of the age was the Japanese
defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. The Japanese peo-
ple exulted in this victory and rejoiced in their nation's new-found power
and prestige. The ease of Japan's victory over China brought Meiji Japa-
nese to a new height of national awareness. It became a symbol of their
cultural independence.
Eradicating the Dialects

Aggressive policy abroad led to aggressive policy at home. The turn of
the century, just after the victory in the Sino-Japanese War, marked a
turning point in the government's attitude toward Kokugo.
Ever since the beginning of Meiji, Kokugo had been a standard course
of study in the school curriculum, but its principal focus had always been
reading and writing. To be sure, the spoken language was not completely
neglected, but the language of the classroom was more likely to be whatever
the local variety of speech was rather than anything passed down from
the Ministry of Education. The concept of a standard for the spoken lan-
S. Robert Ramsey 97
guage was fuzzy at best. In fact, the term itself, hy-ijungo 'the standard
language', apparently dates only from 1890; in that year, Okakura Yoshi-
saburO spoke of defining the standard in his lectures on language unifica-
tion and is said to have been the first to use the word.42 In any case, it is
clear that at least in the early Meiji period, students were not forced to
speak in anything approximating the language of the textbook.
With the emergence of Japan on the international scene after the Sino-
Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, however, the classroom situ-
ation changed. More positive action was deemed necessary. The language
was still deeply divided by regional dialects, and government authorities
decided that the only way to unify Japan was to require all its citizens to
speak "only one Japanese language." That language was to be the classroom
language taught as Kokugo.
From this point on, dialects were considered unclean things that needed
be eradicated. The idea of government policy from the third decade of
Meiji until the end of World War II was to spread the standard language
while extirpating regional dialects. The slogans of the day, written on
placards and signs hung in public places for all the people to see, became
Higen kyosei 'correct the dialects' and Hogen bokumetsu 'eradicate the
dialects'."43
In a sense, the dialects were also parts of Kokugo. (What else could
they be?) But so were such words as baka 'stupid fool', yatsu 'guy', and
kuso 'shit', which were also forbidden. If we Westerners have difficulty
seeing why baka and yatsu were so bad, let us remember that in England
and America during the Victorian era even legs was almost a taboo word
-thus the euphemism limbs was used when talking about the appendages
of a piano. And in Japan, as late as the 1950s, the Prime Minister was
publicly censured for shouting Baka! 'Fool!' at a member of the opposition
party. Both regionalisms and bad words such as these were considered
vulgar and inferior and classed together as things to be corrected. A dia-
lect was a thing that brought deep shame to its speakers.
This movement had Western antecedents, and Ueda and the others had
learned them well, consciously or unconsciously. The concept of a uniform
langue national went back to the French Revolution, when social radicals
introduced the idea that equality before the law could only be obtained
by eliminating the prejudices and inequities that resulted from differences
in speech. It was a strange kind of irony, in which social and ethnic mi-
norities were given legal rights by ruthlessly extirpating their individual
languages and dialects. In the Europe Ueda visited there were other intel-
lectual currents, too, and the notions of "purifying" and "preserving the
beauty" of the language were especially strong in nineteenth-century

France and Germany.44
These ideas appealed to linguistic nationalists in Japan as well, who
applied them with great passion. The result was a degree of authoritarian
intolerance for non-standard usage that amazed many Europeans.45
The government's battleground was the school, and its weapon was
school policy. Forces were mobilized nationwide. In some places, such
as the hill country of the Northeast (T6hoku), special measures were
taken to correct pronunciation because the problem of standardization
was considered especially serious there. One well-documented example
involves the study institute (koshiakai) that was established in 1900 in
Higashitagawa District, Yamagata Prefecture, in order to devise methods
of correcting pronunciation. From that time on, in the elementary schools
of the area, conversation practice sessions were held for each grade level
once a week, and for the entire school once a month. Parents, too, were
of course involved. They attended separate discussion sessions where
they were instructed in how they could help correct their children's pro-
nunciation. From 1908 on, the institute pursued these activities vigorously.
The importance which the work of the institute was perceived to have is
shown by the fact that around that time, for about five years, it was
headed by Izawa Shuiji (1851-1917), a scholar famous not only as the ed-
itor of the first national textbook of the Japanese language, but also as the
person who had been instrumental in adapting sign language for use in
Japan.
According to stories of the time, pronunciation practice at these ele-
mentary schools was treated like physical training. Each morning, when
all the children gathered together in the schoolyard for their usual morning
exercises, they were required to do an additional fifteen minutes of kuchi
no tais6 'oral calisthenics'. These "oral calisthenics" began with the chil-
dren reciting in a loud voice the syllabic units of the traditional syllabary:
a, i, u, e, o; ka, ki, ku, ke, ko ... Later, after the children were warmed
up, they began reciting individual words, which were also chanted in
unison. Finally, after lunch, all the children of the school were gathered
together one more time for another fifteen minutes of this kind of pronun-
ciation practice.46
To make the eradication of non-standard speech more effective, many
regional schools put up what was called a hegen-fuda 'dialect board',
which was used as a kind of punishment record. If any pupil was caught
using a dialect form or any other kind of "vulgar" word, his name was
put on this hdgen-fuda. There were even punishments that involved sticking
S. Robert Ramsey 99
the board on the offending pupil's back. After about 1905, this system
was adopted in various schools nationwide.47
Standard language education took its harshest from in Okinawa. The
language of this southern island, like forms of speech throughout the
Japanese archipelago, was referred to as a "dialect" of Japanese, even
though the relationship of Okinawan to the speech of Tokyo could only
be unraveled by the comparative linguist; anyone else would have trouble
discerning that the two languages were related at all. In Okinawa as else-
where, the system of the punishment board was also introduced, sometime
around 1907, but there the application was more draconian. In Okinawan
elementary and middle schools, the punishment board was utilized not
only for pupils, but for their parents as well!""
Until that time, there had been considerable enthusiasm in Okinawa for
learning the "Common Language" (futscigo, as the standard was called
in this outlying region). Clubs and societies dedicated to standard language
education had been spontaneously established and were thriving. Many
middle school students had voluntarily taken a vow to stop using dialect.
But then, with the institution of the punishment board system, Okinawan
attitudes suddenly changed. The punishment board was viewed as cruel
and oppressive. Now, instead of cooperating, the same students who had
vowed to stop using dialect began resisting the system, speaking Okinawan
openly even in the schools. The movement for the furtherance of the
Common Language had unexpectedly hit a stumbling block.
School authorities did not relent. In 1917 the Dialect Control Edict was
laid down, and the punishment for dialect offenses increased. A wooden
tag 1 x2 inches in size was readied, and for each Okinawan word used
each day one was given over to the offending student and two points
deducted from his deportment grade. It is said that this system resulted
more often in student failure and expulsion from school than all academic
transgressions combined."49
Feeling frustrated and helpless, one student struck out in the only way
he knew how, pasting a satirical verse on the main gate of the school for
all to see:
Yamatoguchi fuda toru goto ni omofu ka na

Hogen no fuda wa yame-takunosuke.
On the face of it, the poem was slightly humorous: "Each time I get a
Yamato-language [i.e., standard Japanese] tag, I think (to myself), I'm
Mr. Want-to-stop the dialect tag." On another level, however, obvious to
everyone who read this piece of doggerel, it was an irreverent jibe at
school authorities, because the first word, Yama(to)guchi, and the last
phrase takunosuke, formed a parody on the name of the principal of the
school, Mr. Yamaguchi Takunosuke. In its own way, considering the
place and time, this particular piece of student graffiti was a biting criticism
of the system. The poem expressed well the indignation that Okinawan
students felt in those days.s5
The Results of the Language Policy

Standard language education was furnished to virtually every Japanese
citizen, and it was expected that all would become proficient in speaking
the standard. But that did not happen- at least not as a result of the
school system. Here is a case that has been cited51 to show what actually
happened:
In northern Japan in the hills of Iwate Prefecture, near the Sanriku coast,
lies a very isolated part of Honshi often referred to as Japan's Tibet. The peo-
ple in this areas traditionally did not speak the widely derided zaza-ben ['zaza-
sounding dialect'] for which the Northeast is famous [mimetic ziiza referring
to an inability to distinguish the pronunciations of/i/ and /u/ after /s, z, t/]. Old
women who have never once been outside their own village clearly pronounce
/si/ different from /su/, and /ti/ different from /tu/. However, the young people
in the area no longer distinguish the sounds. Unlike their parents, they do
speak ziiza-ben. Like all children in the Northeast, they learned in Kokugo
class at school that zaza-ben is bad and inferior, yet they began speaking that
way anyway. Why? The reason can be found in the fact that zvza-ben is what
is spoken in Morioka, the nearest big city. For these young country folk, rela-
tively sophisticated Morioka is more to be admired and imitated than anything
they hear in school. Prescriptive language policy does not have the persuasive
power of the natural language children hear around them.
The policy to eradicate dialects through school policy did not succeed,
but what it did do was to plant in the psyche of the children affected by it
feelings of inferiority. These feelings would dog them throughout their
later lives whenever they ventured out of the country to the city- par-
ticularly if the city was Tokyo. In Japanese society the painful burden of
this derision was worse than that of the hugen-fuda.
In the May 22, 1957, issue of the TOkyd Shinbun, an article appeared
describing the gruesome suicide of a young mother who had thrown
herself and her child on the railroad tracks of the Trbu Line. The woman,
who had arrived in Tokyo a half year earlier from Shimane Prefecture,
was said to have committed suicide as a protest against the cruel heckling
she had experienced from neighborhood children because of her country
S. Robert Ramsey 101
accent. Whatever the truth of this reportage, the article precipitated a

storm of fault-finding in the op-ed columns of major Tokyo dailies. The
people of Tokyo were arrogant, one letter said; they made fun of other
accents so easily, without thinking, and had no idea how much other peo-
ple were hurt by this teasing."s2
The "dialect complex" that resulted from government policy earlier in
the century still exists and is felt, to a certain degree, by everyone from a
place the Tokyoite would deem inaka 'the country'. Even natives of the
dignified old capital of Kyoto are not completely exempt from this feeling.
But the stigma is of a different dimension entirely for people from T6-
hoku, the Northeast. These speakers of the so-called ziza-ben of T6hoku
are treated as the hicks of Japan. Most Japanese think this accent sounds
very funny, and a lot of jokes are still made about it. But the humor came
after the image. Features similar to those of T6hoku zaza-ben are also
found in the coastal dialects of Hokkaid6 53 and, here and there, on the far
western coast of Honshu as well. But people from these other "ztzu'
areas are much less often made the butt ofjokes, and the "dialect complex"
is less pronounced in those places. T6hoku has been singled out because
it is a part of the country that developed economically very late, and in
the twentieth century thousands of migrant workers came from there to
Tokyo seeking jobs. The relatively low social status of T6hoku speakers,
combined with their conspicuous presence in the city, made the dialect
into a symbol of underdeveloped mental and social capacity. To find a
parallel, Americans only have to think of the thousands of workers from
the rural South working on Detroit assembly lines after World War II.
Just as Americans used to laugh at Hee-Haw and The Beverly Hillbillies,
so too did Japanese laugh at jokes about ztizai-ben.
More positive results came out of the official manipulation of language
through the medium of radio. In a little more than a year after radio
broadcasting was begun by T6ky6 Broadcasting Station in 1925, the
Japanese government took steps to insure that anything sent over the air-
waves was standard. In August of 1926, the Communications Ministry
dissolved the three broadcasting stations that had been set up a short time
earlier and established the government organ, the Nippon Ho6s Ky6kai
(NHK), that would monopolize the country's broadcasting industry until
after World War II. Under NHK's supervision, all radio announcers had
to be certified speakers of hy6jungo 'the standard language', and all
words and usages to be broadcast had to be scrutinized to make sure they
were standard before being approved.
Within short order, the sounds of this standard were heard in every cor-
ner of the country. In 1932 there were over a million radio sets in Japan.
Within three years that number doubled, and by the time the country was
in the midst of the Pacific War, at least half of the households in the
country had sets and were tuning in to the standard sounds of government-
supervised broadcasts.
Radio was a very passive way to spread the standard and by itself did
little to change how people in outlying regions actually spoke. But the
medium was not without effect. Its listeners may not have changed their
pronunciation very much in imitation of it, but they did learn to understand
the broadcasts. Moreover, radio was also a significant factor in raising
public awareness of the spoken standard. In both of these ways, NHK did
much to create among the Japanese people an acceptance of linguistic
unity in a national standard.
The Universality of Standard Japanese

Government policy has changed since the end of World War II. No
longer are dialects a social evil to be rooted out and destroyed. Instead,
there is a positive nostalgia for these colorful reminders of the past, just
as there is for other aspects of regional Japanese culture. Today there are
dialect speech contests. Dialect souvenirs and gift items are hawked to
tourists throughout Japan, the kitsch for sale including such things as
dialect towels, dialect picture postcards, and even dialect key cases. The
government, through the National Language Research Institute, has poured
hefty sums of money into a study of Japan's regional variety, producing,
among other things, an enormous and detailed dialect atlas for the whole
country. Oral histories produced by the "purest" dialect speakers have
been preserved on tape and put into archives. The old unbending policy
of standardization has long since become a distasteful symbol of an ear-
lier, more autocratic era.
Yet, the fact is that much of the regional variation in the Japanese lan-
guage has already disappeared. (It is perhaps easier to become nostalgic
for that which no longer threatens.) Moreover, the standard language
continues to spread today, now more rapidly than ever before. As was
mentioned above, this spread, as well as the demise of dialects, has not
been primarily due to Kokugo education. Nor has radio, nor even the
ubiquitous television, had the standardizing effect usually imagined. Japa-
nese researchers tell us that there are other, more important factors that
have raised the ability of the average Japanese citizen to speak the standard
language.
The most potent stimulus for learning, we are told, is the creation of
situations where communication is only possible through the standard
language. The experience of the military was in this sense very important
to young men from the provinces. But the turmoil of the war years
brought Japanese together in a variety of other ways. After the Pacific
War, the rapid change in Japanese society accelerated the mixing process.
As the country continued to industrialize, young men and women left the
sealed world of the village to work elsewhere, invariably coming into
close contact with people from other parts of the country. Even housewives
in the cities, who in earlier times had been confined to the neighborhood
around their own household, began leaving to go to the workplace.
The most important migrants have been the dekasegi, seasonal workers
who return from metropolitan areas to their home villages during the off-
season. Dekasegi increased dramatically in number in the latter decades
of the twentieth century; millions of these workers from other parts of
the country were found in the Tokyo -Yokohama area. When they returned
to their villages, they brought with them not only money but also the cul-
ture and language of the capital.
There is almost certainly not a single Japanese citizen alive today who
does not understand standard Japanese as it is normally spoken. In 1958,
the dialect researcher Shibata Takeshi reported that, of the more than one
thousand people he had interviewed over the length and breadth of Japan
during the preceding twenty years, only one had not been able to understand
an interview conducted in standard Japanese.'4 That one person had been
a woman over eighty years old that he had met in 1949 in the village of
Mitsune on Hachijojima, an island located approximately 112 miles off
the southeastern coast of Honshfi. For her, Shibata says, he had required
an interpreter to conduct an interview. Understanding does not mean
speaking, of course. Shibata hastened to add that, at least in 1958, there
were still many people who did not speak standard Japanese. The same
may well be true today. Still, what had happened was, and is, a remarkable
achievement. In scarcely more than eighty years after the founding of
Meiji, Japan had become a nation in which virtually every man, woman,
and child could understand the standard language.
Tradition, Old and New
It is a mistake to think that cultural traditions are always old. At Christmas

time, we Americans tend to forget that our image of jolly old Saint Nick
was largely shaped by the cartoons of Thomas Nast in the nineteenth
century and, later, by Coca-Cola advertising in the twentieth. But we are

not alone. The same is true in older cultures. What is thought of as tra-
ditional French bread-the baguette - was introduced into Paris in the
middle of the nineteenth century as an imitation of a Viennese-style loaf;
until that time the staple of the city had been a round sourdough boule, a
fact most Parisians today have forgotten."s Young Koreans believe that
their martial arts tradition is at least a thousand years old, when in fact
(as their grandparents often remember) Taekwondo as practiced today is
an offshoot of karate that was Koreanized in the 1950s. (The Japanese,
for their part, took karate earlier in the century from the Okinawans,
who, in turn, had adapted an earlier martial arts form imported from
China, where, in the meantime, the techniques were for centuries forgotten,
or at least neglected.) The ancient appearance of something like Kokugo
can often be an illusion. The content of tradition is constantly being
"revised, renewed, and renegotiated.""56
For the Japanese, Kokugo is an intimate part of their cultural tradition.
As Kamei has testified, "the word Kokugo has put down roots in the
soul" of the Japanese people. The content of this particular tradition may
not be as old as it seems, but it was nurtured carefully by men like Ueda
Kazutoshi. It was, after all, "the blood of the nation." In constructing the
Kokugo textbook, authors wrote of things close to the spiritual life of the
Japanese people. In 1885 the schoolchild opened his Kokugo text and
read: Takaki yama. Hikuki tani ... Naku mushi. Mafu tefu ... "The high
mountains. The low valleys ... The crying insects. The dancing butterflies
..." (How different are our American primers, with their "See Dick run,
see Mary jump" examples!) Kokugo classes today have kept much of the
kind of content of which Ueda would have approved. Generations of
Japanese have grown up feeling close to Kokugo.
Now, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Kokugo Gakkai,
the place of Kokugo in Japanese society appears once again to be changing.
Almost everywhere, it is gradually being replaced by Nihongo. Reforms
have been underway in Japanese higher education for some time, and al-
ready, well before the renaming of the Kokugo Gakkai, many universities
had begun changing the names of their language and literature departments
with the intention that they conform to newer, more international ways of
thinking. Nihon bungaku is what 'Japanese literature' is now called at
Tsukuba University. Such changes are also underway at the University of
Tokyo, as well as at many other national universities. The question is
how deeply these changes will penetrate the Japanese educational system
and Japanese life.
NOTES
1. Asahi Shinbun, 25 February 2003.
2. Ky6goku 1990: 64. Also cf. Kyogoku 1986: 8, where a few other such ex-
pressions are cited. Phrases like Nihon no gengo, however, seem to be
found only in documents from the middle or late nineteenth century.
3. At the very least, the word was extremely rare before that time. Kybgoku
(1986:9) cites a single, isolated example from the mid-Edo period:
In translating Dutch [Orandago] into Japanese [Nihongo], although for each form
one must know the name for that form ... (Mori Yoshinaga, Wakai reigen, 1790).
There is no reason to believe that this one occurrence of the collocation of
characters now read as Nihongo was the tip of an iceberg; Edo-period works
on Dutch were notorious for odd use of language, including nonce creations.
4. Herein lies one of the thorniest problems in interpreting the Japanese
written records: how was the word actually pronounced? The kanji with
which the word is written can be read in at least these two ways, and unless
the author or editor included pronunciation indicators to disambiguate the
form, there is no sure way to know which to choose. At the very least, we
know that both pronunciations of the word existed in the nineteenth century.
In an article written in 1874 about a trip to the West, the journalist Kanagaki
Robun appendedfurigana giving the pronunciation:
We still don't know foreign language, and so if you understand here and there,
please go ahead and say it in Japanese [Nippongo].
Kanagaki, writing in a countrified dialect style reminiscent of Mark Twain,
may have intended the pronunciation to sound humorous. On the other
hand, Hepburn's dictionary of 1886 gives the pronunciation of the word in
romanization as Nihongo.
There is very little mention of this problem in Japanese sources. Kyogoku
Okikazu, who has done some of the most thorough research on the use of
this word, explicity avoids the issue, assuming that the pronunciation was
Nihongo (Kyogoku 1986: 11).
5. Cited in Ky6goku 1990: 64.
6. Yoshida later gained fame as a nationalistic writer and teacher. He was
the founder of the legendary Shika Sonjuku, a private school he set up in
his own home where he trained the group of young samurai intellectuals
who were central to the overthrow of the shogunate and the founding of the
Meiji government. This sobering stay in prison, in fact, was the period in
which he consolidated his thinking on the Sonn3 joi 'Revere the emperor,
expel the barbarians' movement.
7. Cited in Kyogoku 1986: 9.

8. Cf. Ky6goku 1986: 10 for examples of both writers and their works in
which the word appears.
9. Kamei et al. 1965: 202. One wonders if the feelings Kamei expresses
about Nippongo were shared by intellectuals in the Meiji period, or if that

"standoffish feel" is the result of semantic drift in the early twentieth century.
Cf. note 4 above.
10. Cf. Norman 1988:133.
11. There is a disjunction between this word, as found in the Classical Chinese
tradition, and the modem twentieth-century Chinese form gudyt, which was
deliberately borrowed from contemporary Japanese usage; it is an example
of what Victor Mair calls a "round-trip word." Cf. Mair 1994; Ramsey
1991.
12. Again (as mentioned in note 4 above) there is the nagging problem of
how the word was actually pronounced. Was the word really kokugo?Kyigoku
(1986:11) says that even into the Meiji period the form written with these
two characters might possible have been read as kuni kotoba. This philological
puzzle is another problem inherent in the Japanese writing system.
13. This example is cited in Mair 1994:731.
14. Sugita Genpaku, Oranda iji monto (Questions and answers on Dutch med-
ical matters), vol. 1. This and the next three examples are cited in Kyagoku
1986 and 1990.
15. This observation comes from KyOgoku 1986.

16. From Genpaku'sRangaku kotohajime.
17. This observation about the meaning of kokugo around the turn of the cen-
tury comes from Kamei et al. 1965:203-204. This work is an especially
valuable source for the sociolinguistic history of the Meiji period, and I
have relied on it heavily for what is presented here. The same phrase from
Ueda is quoted on pp. 113-114 of Tanaka 1981.
18. The diary was published under the title Toyo zakki (Sundry notes of an
eastern outing) in 1788. The passages cited here are given in Kamei et al.
1965:344-346.
19. This particular telling of the story comes from Tokugawa Munemasa 1978:
17-18. But similar versions can be found in TOj6 Misao 1937: 100, Yanagita
Kunio 1963:510, and many other sources. Though possibly apocryphal in
all its versions, the story is in no way an exaggeration of the linguistic dif-
ferences between the two regions involved; for without knowledge of the
modern standard language, people from TOhoku and Kagoshima would still
be unable to talk to each other. Only diglossic control of that standard links
the various regions of modem Japan together.
20. In spite of how these countries appeared to the Japanese, the reality was
different. See, for example, Tanaka Katsuhiko 1981, especially chapter 4.
21. Cf. Kamei et al. 1965:25-27.
22. Inagaki 1992:68.

23. Fukuzawa used bunmei 'civilization' or kaika 'enlightenment' alone, or, on
occasion, both together as the translation of civilization (Inoue Kiyoshi

1971:252).
24. Takashina et al. 1987:23-31.
25. Seidensticker 1983:69.
26. Inoue Kiyoshi 1971:386.

27. Cf. Mair 1994; Ramsey 1991.
28. The relevant passage from this famous document is the first citation given
under the definition 'Japanese' for the entry kokugo in the largest dictionary
of Japanese, Shogakkan's Nihon kokugo daijiten. However, Kyigoku (1986:
6) disputes the interpretation, arguing that the underlying feel of the word is
still the general meaning of '(some) country's language'.
29. Twine 1991 contains an excellent and detailed discussion of the history
and the atmosphere of the time, as well as of Maeshima (i.e., "Maejima")
and his role in the Genbun itchi Movement; see especially pp. 227-230.
30. Kamei et al. 1965: 353.
31. The translation is from Miller 1977:42.
32. This telling of the story is patterned after Miller, ibid.

33. The form of the essay itself is revealing. By modern standards it looks odd.
Unlike the "mixed" style of present-day Japanese prose, Miyake's prose is
written all in kana, with liberal spacing between words. Like the question of
which variety of Japanese was to be chosen as standard, matters of written
style were apparently still fairly open in his day. Miyake's work is called
Kuniguni no namari kotoba ni tsukite (About the dialect words in the various
provinces), and it appeared serially in Kana no shirube 1884.2, 3, and 6.
The importance of Miyake's work is discussed in many sources; e.g., Shibata
1958:110-112.
34. Cf. Twine 1991:215.
35. Ibid., p. 216.

36. Cf. Kamei et al. 1965:349; Shibata 1958:113-114.
37. Cited in Kamei et al. 1965:31.
38. Ibid., p. 204; also cited in Tanaka 1981:113-114.

39. Twine 1991:163-165.
40. Ibid., p. 219.

41. Doi 1977:267-268.
42. Twine 1991:219.
43. Shibata 1976:64 gives a succinct description; Shibata 1958:115ff describes

the situation more discursively and in more detail.
44. The French Revolution and language standardization is the subject of dis-
cussion of Tanaka 1981, chapter 4; how the European ideas were transferred
to Japan, and in what form, are topics taken up in chapter 5.
45. Shibata 1958:112.
46. After World War II, when language policy had changed dramatically, the
National Language Research Institute conducted a follow-up study of pro-
nunciation in the area. Researchers concluded that these 'oral calisthenics'
had left almost no trace in the dialects spoken in the area, at either the
phonological or phonetic level. Details of the study are published in Report
#5 of the National Language Research Institute (1953).
47. Shibata 1976:64-65.
48. Ibid., p. 65.

49. Kamei et al. 1965:367.
50. Hokama Shuzen 1964 is the primary source for this description of Okinawan
educational policy. The anecdote about the poem is taken from pp. 668-670
of that work.
51. By Kamei et al. (1965:359ff).

52. Cf. Shibata 1958:93-94.
53. Shibata 1976:79.
54. Shibata 1958:142.
55. Cf. the article on French bread in the January 1995 issue of the Smithsonian,
p. 52. Like the rest of us, many Frenchmen today associate sourdough only
with San Francisco!
56. The quote is from Robert J. Smith's 1989 presidential address to the As-
sociation for Asian Studies (cf. Smith 1989: 716), which Smith tied into
points discussed in Bestor 1989. Both works, Smith's essay and Bestor's
book, are helpful for understanding the traditions relating to language as
well.
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The Japanese Language and the Making of Tradition

Author(s): S. Robert Ramsey

Japanese Language and Literature 38 (2004) 81-110

dence? We could certainly imagine that Yoshida, a Japanese nationalist

Kamei's description is eloquent testimony to the cultural significance

in 1815, an older Genpaku reminisces about the beginning of his fascina-

Thus, because of an eccentric nature, I became a disciple of Mr. Aoki and

[I]f we take the Japanese national language [Nihon kokugo] as an example

fairly cohesive, the linguistic differences between it and other domains

Furukawa himself was born in what is now Okayama Prefecture.

fragmentation became immediately apparent. Accounts of that period

Bringing the Parts Together

Choosing the Right Word

concept. Nevertheless, in spite of the pains which Nishi took to draw

resolutely decided to reject. Yet, this blending of the seemingly incom-

Looking for a Standard

asserted, should be written as simply as possible. Kanji, which are difficult

the selection of a national standard out of what already existed. Miyake

trol: "When education in Kokugo is pressed forward in the schools, regional

Nationalism and the National Language

The National Language is the bulwark of the Imperial Household;

As a young man, Ueda had been deeply involved in Western scholarship.

fact, the first Japanese to have studied Western linguistics overseas. In

Eradicating the Dialects

beauty" of the language were especially strong in nineteenth-century

Yamatoguchi fuda toru goto ni omofu ka na

The Results of the Language Policy

accent. Whatever the truth of this reportage, the article precipitated a

The Universality of Standard Japanese

Tradition, Old and New

It is a mistake to think that cultural traditions are always old. At Christmas

century and, later, by Coca-Cola advertising in the twentieth. But we are

1. Asahi Shinbun, 25 February 2003.

7. Cited in Kyogoku 1986: 9.

about Nippongo were shared by intellectuals in the Meiji period, or if that

10. Cf. Norman 1988:133.

15. This observation comes from KyOgoku 1986.

22. Inagaki 1992:68.

occasion, both together as the translation of civilization (Inoue Kiyoshi

25. Seidensticker 1983:69.

26. Inoue Kiyoshi 1971:386.

31. The translation is from Miller 1977:42.

32. This telling of the story is patterned after Miller, ibid.

34. Cf. Twine 1991:215.

35. Ibid., p. 216.

38. Ibid., p. 204; also cited in Tanaka 1981:113-114.

40. Ibid., p. 219.

42. Twine 1991:219.

43. Shibata 1976:64 gives a succinct description; Shibata 1958:115ff describes

48. Ibid., p. 65.

51. By Kamei et al. (1965:359ff).

54. Shibata 1958:142.

Bestor, Theodore C. 1989. Neighborhood Tokyo. Palo Alto: Stanford University

Hokama, Shuzen. 1964. Okinawa no gengo kyoiku shi (A history of language

Imai, Seiichi. 1974. Nihon no rekishi 23: Taisho no demokurashi (A history of

Inagaki ,Yoshihiko. 1992. Writing a speech. Japanese civilization in the modern

SatO, Kiyoji, ed. 1977. Kokugogaku kenkyaijiten (A dictionary of National Lan-

Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge

- . 1992. The ups and downs of dialects in Japan. Japanese civilization in