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Finaedits 6 7 14 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2013 Proto-Genbun Itchi Discourse and from the rest of society.1 Other calls for writing reform in early Meiji were also primarily the Philology of Itō Jinsai concerned with the adoption of a simplified script © Kelly Hansen, San Diego State University to facilitate education and increase literacy rates, whereas later genbun itchi advocates such as Genbun itchi is conventionally described as a literary critic and writer Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859- Meiji-period language reform movement that 1935) sought a new written form capable of sought to eliminate archaic forms in written elevating the Japanese literary tradition beyond the Japanese, and instead develop a style closer to the perceived frivolity of Edo-period gesaku writings. spoken vernacular of the time. This study seeks an Despite these differing goals, genbun itchi expanded linguistic model for genbun itchi, rooted proponents in the early decades of Meiji shared in pre-Meiji philological discourse. Although overt two significant points of commonality: an empha- calls for language reform would not emerge until sis on the need for a transparent written medium the Meiji Restoration, changing approaches to capable of realistically depicting contemporary lexicographical studies by leading scholars such as society, and a heavy reliance on contrastive analys- Itō Jinsai (1627-1705) served as important es of Japanese and Western writing scripts and precursors to the genbun itchi movement. In Gomō literary traditions. The introduction of Western jigi (The Meaning of Terms in the Analects and discourse as the impetus for the genbun itchi Mencius), Jinsai rejected the notion of literary movement has characterized the majority of twen- Chinese as a medium embodying abstract, fixed tieth-century critical writings on genbun itchi as meaning, and instead rooted his philological well.2 analyses within the parameters of the concrete, everyday, contemporary world. By insisting on 1 Yamamoto Masahide, the foremost scholar direct, transparent relationships between kanji on genbun itchi, traces a framework for the signifiers and their real-world referents, Jinsai movement that locates its origins in Maejima’s contributed to the formulation of a new discourse focused on the status of the written word itself. petition. See Genbun itchi no rekishi ronkō (To- kyo: Ōfūsha, 1971); Genbun itchi no rekishi ronkō Proto-genbun itchi is a neologism I have created to zokuhen (Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1981); and Kindai buntai describe the growing awareness of the gap between the written and spoken languages that surfaced in hassei no shiteki kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, seventeenth-century Japan, and to mark the 1965). In English, prominent scholars of the genbun itchi movement such as Nanette Twine significance of this as a harbinger for later have followed the same framework. See her nineteenth-century proposals directly advocating writing reform. Language and the Modern State: The Reform of Written Japanese (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). However, this is not to suggest Toward a Theory of Proto-Genbun Itchi that Maejima was the first to criticize the un- Critical works and analyses traditionally situate the origins of the genbun itchi movement in wieldiness of the Japanese writing system. Arai Hakuseki’s (1657-1725) Seijō kibun (Tidings of Maejima Hisoka's (1835-1919) 1866 unsolicited the West, 1715-25), a work based on interviews petition to the shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1913) entitled "Kanji gohaishi no gi" with the Italian missionary Giovanni-Battista ("Proposal for the Abolition of Kanji"). In this Sidotti (1668-1714), observed how comparatively concise and efficient the Western alphabet was. petition, Maejima vehemently attacks both the Although Hakuseki did not go so far as to call for cumbersome system of kanji as well as the tradi- tional style of education, particularly its focus on script reform, this is one more piece of evidence Sino-Japanese writings (kanbun), a course of study illustrating that the status of the written language was at issue well before the start of the Meiji that took years to master and served as a powerful period. discourse effectively separating the educated elite 2 Several scholars have challenged the critical emphasis on Futabatei Shimei's novel, Ukigumo (The Floating Cloud, 1887-89), as the seminal 3 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2013 While not discounting the impact of the West, between the spoken and written languages, gener- locating the development of modern written ally described as one of the key impetuses for the Japanese within the narrow confines of Western genbun itchi movement, is also frequently cited as discourse has resulted in the construction of an one of the defining characteristics of language in unrealistic linguistic model that attributes the Edo Japan.4 However, this is not to suggest that creation of genbun itchi to a few prominent indi- conventional written forms such as literary Chinese viduals. This framework also places genbun itchi steadily lost ground to increasing use of verna- firmly outside all pre-Meiji traditions, despite the cular-based language. On the contrary, Chinese fact that the limitations of conventional written written discourse proved stubbornly adaptable to forms were very much at issue in the Edo period as linguistic and literary shifts, frequently serving as well.3 In fact, a growing awareness of the gap the medium for new genres and forms of 5 expression well into the Meiji period. This study work in the genbun itchi movement. Karatani Kojin, for example, considers Mori Ōgai's Mai- late Edo period, thus suggesting that the goal of hime (The Dancing Girl, 1890) closer to the goal of these writers was not to "create" a new written genbun itchi. Although written in classical bun- language, but rather to establish and stabilize a gotai style, Karatani finds it "easier to translate standardized written form from among the many in into English" because it is more realistic and use. Other chapters in this collection provide follows "the conceptual and grammatical structure historical background for the etymology of forms of a work written in a European language and with which later genbun itchi writers would translated into Japanese." Ukigumo, on the other experiment, highlighting both the diversity of writ- hand, he states, never escapes "the pull of the ten forms in the early modern period, as well as the ninjōbon and kokkeibon styles of Edo period complexities of genbun itchi language discourse gesaku fiction." See his Origins of Modern not captured in many other critical studies. Still, Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary (Durham this work does not present an overall framework and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 50-51. for incorporating genbun itchi discourse into pre- In Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Meiji writing. Possible reasons for this will be Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, discussed in the conclusion of this paper. 1974), Masao Miyoshi uses Futabatei's own 4 See, for example, Okimori Takuya, Nihon- translation style as a point for comparative goshi (Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1989), 31; and Kamei Taka- analysis, concluding that Futabatei's Russian shi et al. ed., Kindaigo no nagare, Nihongo no translations more accurately approximate the rekishi 5 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007), 260-61. In realism of West-ern novels and exhibit a style English, see Naoki Sakai, Voices of the Past: The closer to a modern Japanese narrative than Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japan- Ukigumo (37). Karatani and Miyoshi offer fresh ese Discourse (Ithaca and London: Cornell Uni- perspectives from which to examine the genbun versity Press, 1991), and H.D. Harootunian, Things itchi movement, but it is worth noting that they still Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in locate it within the framework of Meiji-period Tokugawa Nativism (Chicago and London: The Western discourse. University of Chicago Press, 1988), 40-75. 3 Recent studies on genbun itchi have placed 5 The poet Kan Sazan (1748-1827), for ex- more emphasis on pre-Meiji written forms as ample, first trained as Confucian scholar but later models for genbun itchi writers. See, for example, returned to his hometown and appropriated the Hida Yoshifumi, ed., Genbun itchi undō, Kokugo medium of Chinese poetry, or kanshi, to describe ronkyū 11 (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 2004). This edited the everyday activities in the lives of the people volume focuses on language style (buntai). In around him. Similarly, in the genre of gibun, or Chapter Two, Hattori Takashi situates his analysis playful literature, writers such as Hattori Bushō within the framework of the "langue/parole dis- (1842-1908), who produced Tōkyō shin hanjōki tinction," and brings up the important point that the (Record of Tokyo’s New Prosperity, 1874-76), wide variety of sentence endings found in early appropriated Sino-Japanese discourse for descrip- genbun itchi works were already in existence in the tions of modernization and Westernization. Early 4 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 2013 examines how Jinsai’s philological approach as the purposes of this article, the preponderance of presented in Gomō jigi reflects a shift in discourse lexicographies is one more piece of evidence aimed at transparent language capable of depicting supporting the status of language itself as an issue contemporary society, and in doing so, highlights in Tokugawa Japan. Thus, Jinsai's method, to apply the not insignificant role that Chinese discourse lexical analysis in support of a new philosophical
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