and therefore cannot be disregarded when one discusses the lineage of Japanese. In present-day Japanese, there are the following two types of characteristics: (1) those transmitted from the ancestor language before it split into other languages, and (2) those formed under the influence of other languages after the separation of Japanese from the ancestor language and its establishment as the Japanese language. If there is a language whose inherited characteristics resemble those of the Japanese language, that language must belong to the same lineage. If this is so, through which aspects of Japanese will the character of the ancestral language be conveyed? Generally speaking, when a language changes with the times, the sound changes least, and grammar only slightly more. This is an established theory in linguistics. Thus, the aspect that retains the ancestor’s traces longest is, first, the sound system, and second, the grammar. What, then, are the peculiarities of the Japanese sound system and grammar, and what languages do they resemble?
The significance of clarifying the nature of Japanese is not limited to these points. In cultural anthropology, speech is called “the vehicle of culture,” and the words of a language in particular are called “the index of culture.”13 This shows that language can be looked upon as a reflection of culture and not simply as a tool for the transmission of thought. In other words, the clarification of the Japanese language— especially its vocabulary and the characteristics of its expressions— will surely be helpful in any reconsideration of the life and way of thinking of the Japanese people.
Footnotes
* Kana: two syllabic alphabets. Katakana is angular, and hiragana is curvi-form.
* The 1,850 kanji offcially selected for daily use in 1946.
PART I THE POSITION OF JAPANESE
1An Isolated Language
What are the characteristics of the Japanese language? In thinking about this question, I would like first of all to consider the language as a whole, as “a system of signs,” without breaking it into components such as pronunciation or vocabulary. There are two kinds of characteristics: those found when comparing Japanese with other languages, and those found when looking at the construction of the Japanese language itself, as something apart from other languages.
Origin
The Japanese language has a unique position among the languages of civilized countries. That is, there is absolutely no other language of a similar nature. This characteristic catches our eye when we compare Japanese with the languages of the world.
In the middle of the Meiji period when Western linguistics was introduced to Japan, the lineage of Japanese became a subject of much discussion. The Japanese language was said to be related to almost every known language, including: the language of the Ry
Hattori Shir
Originality
In his book Kokugo Kenkyh (The Methods of Research into the Japanese Language),3 Tokieda Motoki writes that once while he was lodging at an inn in Paris, his French landlady and a Spanish lodger were engaged in a conversation. He overheard them say that they could understand each other when one spoke Spanish and the other Italian, but not when one of them spoke French. In short, people who had nothing to do with philology were discussing problems like “The Relation between the Romance Languages” in daily conversation.
This is an interesting story. When a Japanese hears Korean or Chinese, he thinks how entirely different it is from Japanese. In Europe, however, the degree of difference between languages can generally be illustrated as follows: one person speaks Swedish, one Danish, and another Norwegian, and yet they all understand one another. The Japanese equivalent might be a conversation among three people, one speaking the T
