deviate somewhat from what I call the orthodox pronunciation. It should be pointed out, too, that though passages from Japanese classics have been romanized according to the same Hepburn system, these readings represent those used by contemporary Japanese when reading such works. The pronunciation prevailing at the time the various classical works were actually written was, of course, different.
There are also places in my original which, if translated simply as they are, would not be easily understood by people unfamiliar with Japanese. At Miss Hirano’s request I have either rewritten such places or given fuller explanations.
I would finally like to express my heartfelt thanks to Miss Hirano, who has exerted untiring efforts in translating my book, and also to the people of the Charles E. Tuttle Company, who made it possible for this book to see the light of day.
—HARUHIKO KINDAICHI
Tokyo, Japan
Translator’s Note
This is an English translation of Nippongo (The Japanese Language) by Kindaichi Haruhiko, published by Iwanami Shoten in 1957.
When I first read it some years ago, I thought it very interesting and stimulating, for it explains the different aspects of the Japanese language which are intimately connected to the nature of the Japanese people and the country in which they live. For a foreign student of Japanese, it will serve as a wonderful guide for solving some of thedifficult problems and as a good introduction to Japanese studies. Several years later, when I was at Columbia University teaching Japanese and Japanese literature, I realized the value of this book even more keenly, and it was then that I decided to translate it into English.
The book abounds in proper names, historical analogies, literary references, classical quotations and, above all, book references. Since the book was originally written mainly for the Japanese reader, footnotes and annotations were not necessary. Foreign readers, however, would not be able to suffciently understand and appreciate the book without them. Hence, the translator has added annotations, mostly in the form of footnotes and supplementary notes at the back, totaling several hundred items.
By its very nature as a work dealing mainly with words and characters, this book contains frequent insertions of romanized Japanese words and phrases. In such cases their English translations appear along with the words and phrases and after the quotations. All sources referred to in the text are listed by publisher and date of publication at the back of the book.
One of the interesting features of the book is the author’s use of comparative examples from various languages of the world in discussing the characteristics of Japanese. I sincerely hope that this book will be of interest not only to the student of Japanese language and literature, but also to the general reader with an interest in Japan and the Japanese people.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Father E. R. Skrzypczak of Sophia University for his valuable advice and to Professor David A. Dilworth of New York State University and Miss Sharon Woods for their assistance in the preparation of this book.
—UMEYO HIRANO
Note: Throughout the main text, all Japanese proper names are written in the traditional style: family name first, given name last.
the JAPANESE LANGUAGE
Introduction
The life of the Japanese language
Soon after World War II, Shiga Naoya wrote an article entitled “Japanese Language Problems” for the magazine Kaiz that shocked the Japanese people. The article began with the following words: “Japan has never experienced such hard times as the present. We are ceaselessly bueted by an angry sea ofdifficulties.” Shiga went on to argue that the Japanese language was the cause of the terrible war and of Japan’s present sufferings. He concluded by saying, “Japan might as well, at this juncture, adopt French as her national language.”1
At that time the Japanese were beginning to lose confidence in all things Japanese. Shiga was a person of stature, referred to as the God of Fiction. Once during the good old days, before Japan dashed into the doomed war, Shiga appeared in a newsreel, and a literary-mad youth blurted out spontaneously, “Hats off to Shiga Naoya!” What Shiga said about adopting French was, of course, whimsical, but it nevertheless reflected a widespread feeling that the Japanese language had suddenly lost its vitality. There were even some people who had the illusion that in ten years’ time the Japanese language would be prohibited in the elementary schools and parents would be listening with sad resignation to the fluent English of their children.
Now, sixty years after the war, the Japanese language is as vital as ever. The voices that advocated the adoption of French have disappeared, leaving only a subject of reminiscence. This is as it should be—the language of a whole people does not disappear so easily.
It was in the 16th century that the Spaniards came to the Philippine Islands. At the end of the 19th century, America displaced Spain as the dominant power there. Thus, until their acquisition of independence in 1932, the Filipinos were under Western control for a total of four hundred years. But after regaining their independence, they found no obstacles to adopting the Philippine language as their national language, for the Filipinos had not forgotten their language during those four hundred years of foreign rule.
There is a tribe of people called Lati in the mountainous region deep in the Yunnan province of China. It is said that they are a community of only four hundred people. The Lati language which these people speak is even purer than modern Japanese and does not seem to have been influenced by surrounding languages.2
There was no reason why the language of close to 100 million Japanese should disappear just because they were under the influence of the United States for a period of only five or ten years. It seems the Japanese and their language are bound to be inseparable for a long time to come. If so, we Japanese cannot help being greatly concerned about our language: What kind of language it is; whether it is a superior or an inferior language; what its strong points are; and how its weak points can be overcome.
I intend to discuss in this book “the nature of the Japanese language” in the terms stated above, or, to use a more ambitious expression, “the characteristics of the Japanese language.”
Evaluation of the language
Various evaluations of the Japanese language have been made. The view of the poet Hagiwara Sakutar
When Japanese is compared with other languages (especiallyOccidental languages), its conspicuous defects are, first, its lack of logicality and of precision of meaning, and second, its weakness in rhythmical quality and its monotony of auditory impression.3
However, if we turn this statement around, we can say, as England’s W. M. McGovern has said, “Japanese is flowing and melodious,”4 and as Okazaki Yoshie, authority on Japanese literary arts, says, “Its simple construction permits it to embrace complicated flavors and relationships.”5
But the most frequent criticisms of Japanese have been directed at its difficulty.
In 1942, at the beginning of World War II, when the Japanese people were in high spirits, the Japanese language spread east and west with its
