Abstract
Until the end of the nineteenth century in Japan a linguistically complex situation existed where written Classical Chinese (kanbun 漢文), written Classical Japanese (bungo 文語), and many spoken variants of Japanese coexisted. While bungo conserved Classical Japanese over the centuries, the spoken language gradually changed. Beginning around 1700 elements of spoken language began to be integrated into written texts: partly in prose, to some extent in drama, and also in haiku poetry. However, these genres belonged to popular entertainment and were considered low and vulgar (zoku 俗) as opposed to the elegant (ga 雅) classical written language. Around 1800 an argument was presented which suggested that contemporary spoken language was the only effective means of writing poetry. A century before the genbun itchi movement, a group of poets pleaded for the use of the contemporary vernacular in elegant poetry and at the same time emphasized that poetry could not be restricted to elite groups.
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Notes
- 1.
The influence of translation on the modern written language is one main focus of the present volume. For details see Kawato in particular.
- 2.
Harootunian describes Nativism as the “eruption” of a new mode of discourse in a situation when the “ordering capacity of language had failed to account for a proliferation and dispersion of sensory experience” and contemporary language was perceived as being opaque and not able to touch on reality directly (1978, 63; 85).
- 3.
One of the exponents of early linguistics was Fujitani Nariakira (富士谷成章, 1738–1779), the first scholar in the Tokugawa period to develop a comprehensive system for classifying the elements of the Japanese language according to their grammatical functions. He distinguished four parts of speech, which he labeled na (names, i.e. nominal or indeclinable parts of speech), kazashi (挿頭hairpins, i.e. particles and connectives), yosoi (装clothing, i.e. declinable parts of speech), and ayui (脚結cords, i.e. particles and auxiliary verbs). His linguistic treatises include Kazashishō (挿頭抄 On Particles and Connectives), 1767, and Ayuishō (脚結抄 On Particles and Auxiliary Verbs), 1778. He also studied the inflection of Japanese verbs and the syntax, and proposed a periodization of the Japanese language in six periods, which was used widely thereafter (Loosli 1985). Motoori Norinaga, the other seminal figure of Japanese linguistics and a contemporary of Nariakira, will be treated in more detail below.
- 4.
Roger K. Thomas’ English language introduction to the history of Edo period waka and waka theory deplores the indifference towards and dismissal of waka poetry by general histories of Japanese literature and emphasizes the ties with contemporary social, intellectual, and literary currents. His book is the first comprehensive English language introduction to the history of the waka poetry of the Edo period. (Thomas 2008).
- 5.
The term derives from the particles te, ni, wo, and wa but it refers more generally to particles, auxiliary verbs, to the ending of verbs and of inflected adjectives, and to suffixes. It was at the end of the eighteenth century that grammarians began to use the term in the more restricted sense of particles. In the 1770s two influential scholars, Motoori Norinaga and Fujitani Nariakira, were working at the same time on particles and on verb endings and their correlation. This gave rise to a scheme of Japanese grammar that concentrated on syntax and on the system of verb inflection. Motoori Norinaga was especially interested in the correlation of particles and on the specific sentence endings that were governed by them. This system of kakari musubi (correlating sentence ending) had already faded away in the spoken language by the Tokugawa period and was thus an important topic for the discourse on language change—or the “flaws” of contemporary language—and an important issue for manuals of poetic expression. Motoori devoted several studies to this topic: Teniwoha himokagami (てにをは紐鏡 A Mirror of Teniwoha Correlations) 1771, Kotoba no tama no o (詞玉緒 The Jewel Like String of Words) 1779, where he illustrated kakari musubi with poems taken from the first eight imperial waka anthologies (tenth to thirteenth century), and explored the differences in usage in literary works from the eighth to the eleventh centuries (Yanada 1950, 474–503).
- 6.
For more details see the translation “On Mono no Aware” by Michael F. Marra (2007, 172–194).
- 7.
- 8.
This text was written down in 1811 by Taira no Naoyoshi (one of Kageki’s students) when Kageki had fallen seriously ill. It was based on Kageki’s interpretation of Niimanabi and was first printed in 1815.
- 9.
Kageku teiyō is a collation of notes from students taken down by Kageki’s pupil Uchiyama Mayumi in 1843.
- 10.
Here Kageki is alluding to the Chinese preface of the first imperially commissioned waka-anthology the Kokin wakashū (古今和歌集 Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems, 905) where the power to move heaven and earth, steer emotions in fierce gods, and the power to evoke ethical norms is attributed to waka poetry (Kojima et al. 1989, 338–339).
- 11.
Sakai Naoki has analyzed Motoori Norinaga’s attempt to reconstruct the original reading of the Kojiki (712) in terms of the representational language versus the practice: “[…] the entire project of his Kojiki-den can be summarized as the attempt to reclaim the text from the realm of seeing and to restore it to the realm of speaking / hearing. In many respects, this attempt coincides with the shift from representational language, where distance is inevitable (seeing also requires distance), to practice. […] Thus, this shift from seeing to speaking/hearing includes not only the refusal of distance inherent in vision but also a strong impulse toward the annihilation of separation between signifier and signified.” It is in practice and in the performative situation that “distance and therefore disparity between speech and its meaning are supposedly absent” (Sakai 1992, 262–263). It is in this sense that Kageki refers to the performative or presentational function of language as opposed to the representational but without a critique of the written word (Kagawa 1966, 158–159, and for a more detailed analysis: Árokay 2010, 148–158).
- 12.
Masaoka Shiki (正岡子規1867−1902), who is considered one of the main figures in the reform movement of Japanese poetry, consequently reverted to classical written verbal endings while integrating colloquial elements like nouns or adjectives into his poems.
- 13.
Nakamura Yukihiko has argued that Shiki might not have known any of the poetic writings of Kageki, and if he knew them at all he was clearly not interested in the details (Nakamura 1982, 321).
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Árokay, J. (2014). Discourse on Poetic Language in Early Modern Japan and the Awareness of Linguistic Change. In: Árokay, J., Gvozdanović, J., Miyajima, D. (eds) Divided Languages?. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03521-5_6
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