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 advancing army. Japanese was taught to foreigners in the scorching southern islands and in the frigid northern regions. Kokugo Bunka Kza, Volume 6, entitled “The Japanese Language Expansion,” was edited at that time. It was expected that Japanese would naturally be admired as an ideal language. However, Shimomura Hiroshi, who played a leading part in the overseas expansion of Japanese culture at the time, said the following at the beginning of the book:
The Japanese language is making great advances abroad, following the expansion of the nation. Although this is the natural result of the advance of the Japanese nation, it is for that reason that I hope the Japanese language will become clearer and more accurate. I keenly feel that it is exceedingly disorderly at the present time. Indeed, Japanese speech and the characters that express it are extremely irregular and complicated. Recently at a university in Berlin, a course in Japanese was given for two academic years,but, by the time they had graduated, the students, who numbered thirty at first, had decreased to one-tenth that number. Likewise, it is said that at Helsinki University in Finland, the more than twenty students who enrolled for the Japanese course when it was first given had gradually decreased until not one was left at the end of the third year.6
We cannot say that Japanese is truly difficult just because it is difficult to teach to foreigners. In Europe, the Basque language is generally acknowledged to be difficult. It is the language of a small nation lying on the boundary between France and Spain. Legend has it that God, in punishing the Devil for the crime of tempting Eve, sent him away to the Basques with the command to master their language. After seven years, God, repentant for having dealt so severe a punishment, pardoned the Devil and called him back. The Devil rejoiced and immediately set out for home. The moment he crossed a certain bridge at the border, he completely forgot all of the Basque words which he had learned in seven years.7
The reason for the difficulty of the Basque language for neighboring peoples is that it is far removed from other European languages. The real difficulty of Basque, therefore, must be discounted. Likewise, we cannot say that Japanese is truly difficult if it is difficult only for foreigners.
The Japanese language, however, seems to be difficult not only for foreigners but also for the Japanese themselves. European children generally learn how to read and write their own language in two years in Italy, three years in Germany, and in Great Britain, where it takes longest, five years. In Japan, even after six years in elementary school and three years in junior high school, a pupil cannot adequately understand the newspaper. It is common knowledge that even after finishing senior high school, students cannot use the kana syllabaries* and kanji (Chinese characters) correctly when writing.
After the war it was argued that one of the causes of Japan’s defeat was the intricacy of the Japanese language. Commander Spruance, who took Japan’s combined squadron by surprise in the Battle of Midway, is said to have acknowledged: “As Japanese is a language that lacks clarity, I thought confusion would surely arise in the transmission of instantaneous command, so I made a surprise attack.”8 An Asahi newspaper correspondent who collected data on the International Military Tribunal said: “Hearing the speeches in Japanese by Japan’s defense counsel and those in foreign languages in the same setting, I was left with the disagreeable but distinct impression that Japanese is no match for foreign languages.”
We have to recognize that Japanese is difficult, but we need not lament that we are burdened with a troublesome language. A language is something created. Present-day German and French both have a great many created elements.
Our predecessors have endeavored to reform the Japanese language. The establishment of many Japanese equivalents to foreign words at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912) is a conspicuous example. Although this has, in some respects, led to difficulty in understanding Japanese, we have to recognize its merit in changing medieval Japanese into modern Japanese. When Ogata Tomio, a medical doctor, went to India and was asked by a professor of medicine at an Indian university, “In what language is medicine taught in Japan?” Ogata wondered what the professor was trying to say. He finally realized he was being asked, “Is medicine taught in English or in Japanese?”9 We may think that this was a very odd question, but during the Meiji period such ideas were common among the Japanese themselves. Until Fukuzawa Yukichi’s first speech in Japanese, it had been generally thought that one could not even make speeches in Japanese.10 Today, how ever, Japanese can hold its own among present world civilizations. Ogata says: “People say again and again that Japanese is imperfect, but it is fortunate, at any rate, that science can be handled quite accurately in Japanese.”