What is stylistic regularisation of hiragana in the Meiji period?

A reflection from the diachronic grapheme corpus*

Kazuhiro Okada (ILCAA, TUFS) [email protected] 1. Introduction This paper addresses a reflection from the diachronic corpus of hiragana grapheme demonstrated in Okada (2013), with a particular interest in how that tiny corpus illustrates changes in hiragana. It is well recognised that hiragana, a Japanese moraic script, underwent a significant change at the turn of the twentieth century that resulted in the standardisation of hiragana graphemes in 1900. Before that, it was ‘only possible to be shaped in joined-up writing’ (Suzuki, 2007: 71). The change involves a change in style: It remoulded irregularly cursived letters into formal ones. In terms of the style hierarchy in the scripts of the Sinosphere, it can be termed stylistic regularisation. This phenomenon is interesting because it marks an epoch in the history of hiragana: It simplifies the components of hiragana strokes and standardises variations in size. Before the regu- larisation, hiragana was written in a manner in which the stroke is drawn more subtly and each grapheme has its own size, as in the differences between ‘c’ and ‘d’ in height and between ‘t’ and ‘w’ in width. Today, the script is written monospaced and more uniformly in stroke. The phenom- enon can be seen as a restructuring process. The phenomenon was first mentioned in Furuta (1974) and elaborated upon in Yada (1998). Their interests lay in recognising the change, but not in how the change altered the way in which hiragana is organised. This paper identifies what changed in the stylistic regularisation by comparing- be fore-and-after examples in the corpus, with regards to size and stroke. Moreover, the regularisa- tion is responsible for some changes: differentiation of previously poorly distinguished graphemes and the standardisation of graphemes. At the heart of the standardisation was Irohagana, a set of hiragana graphemes that was taught to pupils in the very first place.

1.1. Background The change was triggered when the Japanese phonogram was compared with Chinese characters in light of growing awareness of Japanese nationality, viz. during the Edo period, when the increasing influence of ancient studies in the Sinosphere had prepared the ground for later revolutions: This is a way towards stylistic regularisation of hiragana, a Japanese script, that is dis-

* The author wishes to express his gratitude to Daniel Kobayashi-Better and Sven Osterkamp who kind- ly read an earlier version of this paper and offered insightful comments. All remaining errors and shortcomings are my own. tinguished from older ones. Scholars of Kokugaku, or national study, published their writings in a style that both Chinese characters and hiragana are rendered in, the ‘regular script’, kǎishū. As is well known, hiragana has its origin in the rough script, cǎoshū, a style of Chinese characters. It lead to a custom (which is not necessarily the sole reason) that hiragana and the regular script would hardly ever be juxtaposed in a single phrase: Even when Chinese characters are rendered in reg- ular script, hiragana remains in cursive. There were also a hierarchy of style that ranked cursive scripts below regular script1), reflecting that the formal Chinese texts, the highest writing in the Sinosphere, were rendered by the script2). A motivation for breaking the custom is the intention to render Japanese texts the same as Chinese texts (Yada, 1998). There is no other way besides ren- dering Japanese texts in man’yōgana, which is no more than a loan of Chinese characters3). Thus, the fact that Kokugaku scholars preferred to write in regular script means that they endeavoured to establish hiragana, a Japanese innovation, as a prestige means of writing. This manner can be com- pared to those scholars of either Yōgaku, Western studies, or Kangaku, Chinese studies, who would write Chinese characters in regular script but hiragana in cursives. During the following Meiji period, regularisation accelerated and finally was established in its own right. Two prominent factors were involved in regularisation, the development of a national education system on the one hand and of movable type on the other. Those two factors independently contributed to the progress. The newly established national education system re- jected the educational style of pre-modern eras, during which students learned the cursive scripts, and employed the style of Kokugaku scholars. This was partly because Kokugaku scholars played a central role in the establishment of national education, but the Minister of Education also judged that it was suitable for education. The reason is not necessarily clear: There is a possibility that they learned from English spelling books. The other factor, movable type, adopts the Song type- face imported from China at the dawn of the Meiji period. They first employed the cursive style hiragana, but soon changed to regular script. The reason for this is not clear, but it seems that the nature of squarish types, which does not allow letters to be rendered continuously, favoured regu- lar script more, since it vividly renders strokes. While the term concerns a Chinese character style, regular script, the phenomenon itself

1) Cursive is ‘[m]ore than one part of a letter is made in a single stroke, cf. Calligraphic scripts in which individual letters or parts of a letter are formed separately’ (Lowe, 2006). Here the term cursive scripts of Chinese character is comprised of two styles, rough script and running script, xíngshū. In a stricter sense, there is no boundary between the cursive scripts, as is the case of regular script and run- ning script. This fact seems to be grounds for a questionable intuition repeated in literature that stepless cursivisation from the regular script to the rough script. However, there are actually steps; we just have never agreed upon to which style a particular step belongs. 2) Under the stylistic hierarchy of the Sinosphere, the regular script, as its name suggests, occupies the highest position. Kitagawa (2003), citing Zhāng Huáiguàn of the Tang dynasty, points out that the term kǎishū was originally not a style, but a type of the clerical script, lìshū. According to Zhang, kǎishū means ‘formularised, well-formed, and regularised script’ (cited in Kitagawa, 2003: 3). Although the idea of regularity has changed, being well-formed has been long associated with formality. In contrast, cursive writing is associated with informality. 3) It also can be seen that Kokugaku scholars rendered hiragana imitating manyōgana. The method of imitat- ing the ancient is investigated in Uchida (2001), inter alia. is not concerned with that script. Rather, the term implies that it is concerned with the change undergone in a fresh combination with regular script, in contrast with the good old company of cursive scripts. This phenomenon corresponds to a stylistic shift from running script to regular script from the Edo to Meiji period. Therefore, the term is not intended to compare the phenom- enon with the development of regular script.

1.2. Materials The materials are based on Okada (2013), with some minor changes. The corpus samples approximately 200 characters from the beginning of each material. In this paper, examples for each grapheme are randomly selected from the corpus. When an example includes parts of neigh- bouring letters, those parts are removed from the data4). Some examples are modified for better image recognition. Materials investigated are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Materials investigated (based on Okada, 2013) Abbreviation: Full explanation Kōya: Kōyagire No. 1 manuscript, Kokin wakashū (late 10c): Reprinted in Nihon meihitsu zenshū, Vol. 3, 1955 Tosa: Seikei Shooku manuscript, Tosa nikki (1236): Reprinted in Ikeda Kikan, Koten no hihanteki shochi ni kansuru kenkyū, 1941 Myōichi: Myōichi Memorial Hall manuscript, Kanagaki Lotus sūtra (13c): Reprinted by Reiyūkai, 1988 Ashikaga: Ashikaga Gakkō manuscript, Kanagaki Lotus sūtra (1330): Reprinted by Bensei- sha, 1974 Sairaiji: Sairaiji manuscript, Kanagaki Lotus sūtra (17c): Reprinted by Ryōkarin, 1993 Wakabayashi: ‘Bettai Hiragana’ in Shōgaku tokuhon by Torasaburō Wakabayashi (1884): Reprinted in Nihon kyōkasho taikei: Kindai hen, Vol. 4, 1963. Hōbundō: Minchōfū 1-gō katsuji tekiyōroku, Hōbundō Kappan Seizō Hanbaisho (1916) Tsukiji: 5-gō minchō katsuji sōsū mihōn, Tōkyō Tsukiji Type Foundry (1898): Reprinted in Uchida Akira, Tsukijitai kōki 5-gō kana no shutsugen jiki to shoki ‘antique’ katsuji ni tsuite, In H. Komiyama and M. Fukawa (eds.), Katsuji insatsu no bunkashi, 2010 Gakujutsu: Gakujutsu Jōhō Kōkan’yō Hentaigana, Information-technology Promotion Agency and National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (2015)

Although Okada (2013) includes Koseki Tōitsu Moji (2004), this paper replaces it with Gakujutsu 4) There is a case in which the exact boundary of a grapheme in a joined-up context cannot be deter- mined by a given example. If there is apparent turning of a stroke, it will help distinguish the exact boundary, but if there is just a continuation from the previous letter, the boundary needs to be com- pared with other examples. However, in the case of less-autonomous graphemes like ko or ru that do not appear anywhere other than in continuous environments, it is impossible to settle the points of where the grapheme in question begins and ends. Modification of examples of the latter case was not performed systematically. Jōhō Kōkan’yō Hentaigana (2015). In addition, this paper includes Minchōfū 1-gō katsuji tekiyōroku by Hōbundō to compare a less-regularised typeface with 5-gō minchō katsuji sōsū mihon, by Tsukiji, which undergoes more regularisation5). Wakabayashi is an Itaigana chart that lists non-Irohagana graphemes, in which major graphemes are written in bigger script and minor graphemes are in smaller script. Since the diff erence in size is not caused by the nature of the grapheme itself, minor graphemes have been removed from the samples. The regularised examples are Tsukiji and Gakujutsu, both of which are example of type- faces, and Wakabayashi. Hōbundō is also an example of a typeface, but its stroke reserves older styles and not regularised. 2. The change in the size of graphemes Regularisation involves standardisation of the relative size of graphemes. Hiragana shapes previ- ously had their own size. Suzuki (2007) demonstrates that size of type was unifi ed according to grapheme in a premodern wood type printing press, the Saga press. That is, the letter-width is all the same, but a grapheme that is long in height has longer letter height than the shorter ones. (Note: Older Japanese writing is completely vertical.) Introducing a squarish body in both educa- tion and typeface, the relative size of graphemes inevitably experienced standardisation. Yasuoka and Yasuoka (1996) translate the calligraphic terms into operational defi nitions. Among others, the defi nition of ‘diff erential of character sizes’ deals with diff erences between lines of calligraphic works. Thus, when it is adopted to a set of characters, the result will be the diff erential within the set. Let 1C , C2, … Cn be each character, and let S1, S2, … Sn be the area of minimal area rectangles of characters. Then, the diFFereNtiaL oF CharaCter sizes is defi ned as:

Here, a larger value of a diff erential suggests more size variations in a material. The minimal area rectangles are calculated using OpenCV 2.4.12. The thresholding method is Otsu’s Binarisation. This binarisation method treats low contrast images well:

» » Myōichi (to) Kōya1 (ha 盤)

5) The specimen of Tsukiji type is dated earlier than the Hōbundō type, but it is so listed since the original creation of the Hōbundō type is earlier than the Tsukiji type. The Hōbundō type includes a faithful copy of the Two-line English type of the Tsukiji Type Foundry, which fi rst appeared in 1888. The Tsukiji type cited here is the Small Pica type, which fi rst appeared in 1898. The Hōbundō type imitates the Iroha copybook of the Oieryū style, which is the offi cial style of the Tokugawa shogunate and the dominant style for copybooks. A closer look at the Hōbundō type fi nds some infl uence from regulari- sation, but it is limited (see Section 2). Images are inverted since OpenCV’s contour recognition recognises white parts as objects. When the binarisation fails, the original image is optimised to gain better results. Table 2 shows the values of the differential of character sizes for each material. The dif- ferential values of handwritten examples are more than 0.5 point, and those of types are less than 0.5 point. Provided that the typeface is a product of squarish design, it is no wonder that typefac- es are more standardised in relative size than handwritten products. Rather, it demonstrates that there is a boundary between regularised and unregularised examples within a media. With the exception of Ashikaga, the majority of unregularised handwritten examples range between 0.68 to 0.79 point, and regularised typeface examples range between 0.31 to 0.35 point. In this way, Wakabayashi is 0.1 point lower than others, and Hōbundō is 0.1 point higher. This fact clearly proves that regularisation involves standardisation in relative sizes of graphemes.

Table 2. Differential of character sizes for each material Abbreviation Differential of character sizes Kōya1 0.7980177402 Tosa 0.78113154 Myōichi 0.6800855411 Ashikaga 0.8531422599 Sairaiji 0.7542903702 Wakabayashi 0.5850585931 Hōbundō 0.4395411338 Tsukiji 0.351231488 Gakujutsu 0.3156922325 3. The change in stroke Stylistic regularisation involves changes in stroke: It is not limited to adaptation to squarish writ- ing, but rather involves standardisation and contrast between elements of each stroke. In the cursives, it has a totally opposite manner, in which elements of the character are implied by dots or subtle twists or even omitted from a stroke. Thus, contrasting elements relate to unearthing buried elements; furthermore, it relates to restoration of the original Chinese character. Conse- quently, it cancels older unification and creates differentiation. This section deals with such recog- nitive problems of stylistic regularisation. The appendix at the end of the paper includes a com- parison between Hōbundō and Tsukiji for reference of general changes in strokes. By the very nature of cursive writing, elements get more and more joined, even leading some elements to being totally hidden in a single stroke. Stylistic regularisation attempts to invert this to a certain degree: Elements get more and more contrasted with one another, even though doing so is not historically correct. An example of inversion is the second strokes of ne ね, re れ, and wa わ. Originally, the beginning of the stroke is not stressed, as in Hōbundō. However, regularisation makes it more elaborated, as in Tsukiji. Strictly speaking, it was only wa in which the second stroke begins at a point near the upper part of the first stroke. The second strokes of the other two, by contrast, begin at the lower left and directly head to the upper right of the boundary. Those three had been surely confused by the end of the Edo period, but were never as stressed as in Tsukiji. This kind of laying stress to elements can be found in to 登, for example. Unification of similar strokes can be found betweenka 可b and no の. The original stroke of ka goes as follows:

Kōya1 (ka 可) However, as in Tsukiji, the second stroke is remodelled into the one like no. A more subtle case is found by comparing ki き and sa さ. While the second stroke of sa bends toward the left in Hōbun- dō, in Tsukiji, it leans toward the right. This can be regarded as an example of unification of stroke patterns. In contrast, standardisation affects previously undistinguished graphemes. In cursive writ- ing, unless its elements are preserved in a certain way, jointing two or more elements does not create a new grapheme. The way of implying elements in a stroke includes not only replacement with dots or twists, but also preserving a certain length that implied elements would need if not omitted. In the following examples, both derived from a Chinese character, jiè, the example on the right made in a single stroke the second and third strokes of the example on the left, but it retains the original length of those strokes:

Kōya1 (ke 介) However, the inversive nature of regular script does not allow for this kind of vagueness. This seems to explain why regularised materials include fewer joined graphemes.

3.1. Irohagana and the regular script Regularisation is one reason why Irohagana was at the heart of the standardisation of hira- gana graphemes, at least explaining why it was used as a basic set in typeface design. It was because the simple and well-balanced structure of the included graphemes made it robust to remould into a squarish boundary. Moreover, it was a set that can be referenced. A good example in this regard is Hōbundō, a faithful copy of Irohagana. There must have been better graphemes than Irohagana, but those graphemes have never been organised into a set. 4. Conclusion An investigation into a tiny diachronic corpus of hiragana grapheme has yielded the following re- sults. In the process of regularisation, hiragana made regularised in size and stroke: It changed hi- ragana to a certain degree. The changes created a value of Iroha as a set against non-Iroha in the overall robustness to regularisation. Literature Furuta, Tōsaku. 1974. Hentaigana kara hiragana e [From hentai-gana to hiragana]. Rpt. in Furuta Tōsaku kin-gendai nihongo seisei korekushon Vol. 2, Tokyo: Kurosio, 2011. Kitagawa, Hirokuni. 2003. Kaisho jitai no teichaku [Establishment of the regular script]. Daitō shogaku: Daitō Bunka Daigaku Shodō Gakkai shi 3. Lowe, Kathryn A. Lowe. 2006. Paleography, Greek and Latin. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics 2e. Elsevier Okada, Kazuhiro. 2013. For diachronic corpus of hiragana grapheme. Presented at the 24th Seminar on Computing in East Asian Studies, Kyoto University. —. 2014a. Meiji-ki no iroha gana [Irohagana in the Meiji period]. Rpt. in Okada (2015). —. 2014b. Meiji kentei-ki tokuhon ni okeru hiragana jitai [The hiragana graphemes in au- thorised elementary school reading books of the Meiji period]. Rpt. in Okada (2015). —. 2015. Hiragana jitai ishiki to meiji-ki tokuhon [Awareness of Hiragana Graphemes and Na- tional Language Textbooks in the Meiji Period]. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Hokkaido University, 2015. Suzuki, Hiromitsu. 2007. Kokatsuji-ban no taipogurafī [The method in the Early Japanese typog- raphy]. Rpt. in Nihongo katsuji insatsu-shi [A history of Japanese typographic printing]. Nagoya: The University of Nagoya Press, 2015. Uchida, Sōichi. 2001. Kokugōkō no kana jitai: kungana shutsuji jitai no kihi, tsuikō [Kana graph- emes in Kokugōkō: abstention of using kana graphemes originated from kun reading, revisit- ed]. Gobun 75, 76. Yada, Tsutomu. 1998. Suzu-no-ya no moji ishiki to sono jissen [The master of Suzunoya’s thought on writing system and its practice]. Rpt. in Kokugo moji/hyōki-shi no kenkyū. Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 2012. Yasuoka, Motoko, and Yasuoka, Kōichi. 1996. Konpyūta ni yoru sho no kagaku-teki bunseki e no apurōchi [An approach to scientific analysis of calligraphy with computer]. IPSJ SIG Technical Reports CH 1996(42). Appendix. Comparison of Hōbundō and Tsukiji * Note that the grapheme identifier just fol- Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji lows deciphering convention and is not neces- sarily something essential. Note as well that き although relative size within each material is preserved, that between materials is not. The き 幾 body size of the Hōbundō type is around 24 起 points, and that of the Tsukiji type is around 11 points. く Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji く 久 あ 具 あ 安 け 阿 介 い け い 希 以 遣 う う こ 宇 こb え こ え 古 江 故 お さ お 於 さ 佐 於b 左 か

可 か 可b

閑 Modern Grapheme Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji

し つ

しb 川 し つ 志 徒

新 津

す て

す 春 天 て 須b 天b

せ 帝

せ 世 と

勢 堂

そ と 止

曽 登 そ 曽b 登b

楚 な

た 奈

堂 奈b た 多 な 奈c

多b 那

ち 那b ち 知 那c Modern Grapheme Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji

に は

丹 八

仁 は 婆 に 爾 波

爾b 者

迩 ひ

ぬ 悲 ひ ぬ 努 飛

怒 飛b

ね ふ

ね 年 ふ 婦

祢 布

の へ へ 乃 遍

の 廼 ほ

能 保 ほ 能b 保b

本 Modern Grapheme Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji

ま ゆ

万 由 ま ゆ 末 由b

満 遊

み よ

み 三 よ 与

美 与b

む ら

む 無 らb ら 舞 羅

め 良 め 免 り

も 利

も 毛 り 李

毛b 理

や 里 や 屋 る

留 る 累

類 Modern Grapheme hiragana Identifier Hōbundo Tsukiji

れ

礼 れ 禮

連

ろ ろ 路

わ

わ 和

王

ゐ ゐ 井

ゑ

ゑ ゑb

惠

を

をb を 越

遠

ん ん