Toward Simplicity: Script Reform Movements in the Meiji Period Author(s): Nanette Twine Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 1983), pp. 115-132 Published by: Sophia University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2384557 Accessed: 30-09-2015 12:07 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sophia University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Monumenta Nipponica. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 147.251.102.99 on Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:07:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Toward Simplicity ScriptReform Movements in the Meiji Period by NANETn TwNmE Tl9HE earlyMeiji period was a timeof upheavalin thepolitical, economic, cultural,and social spheresin Japan.A furtherarea in whichthe need for changewas recognizedby a farsightedfew was the revitalizationof the writtenJapanese language. Without a uniform,easily comprehensible written lan- guage,the assimilation of thenew Western learning and thesmooth running of an efficientsystem of mass communication,both essentialto the developmentof the modernstate, would be severelyrestricted. In 1868,the year of the Meiji Restoration,the Japaneselanguage was by no means an effectiveinstrument of communication.There was a complicatednet- workof regionaldialects; the spokenand writtenlanguages were so dissimilaras to necessitatethe compilation of separategrammars for each; thewritten language itselfwas dividedinto severaldiscrete styles, each drawingits vocabularyand syntaxfrom early medieval Chinese or Japanese;and therewere more than ten thousandChinese characters in use. Japaneseintellectuals regarded writing as a means of displayingtheir erudition, a kind of academicshowcase rather than a practicalservant. Its separationfrom everyday affairs was of such long standing thatit could not functionconcisely and effectivelyto conveyinformation. The problemwas not,as mightat firstbe supposed,that the majority of Japanese wereilliterate. At the end of the Tokugawa periodthere existed a wide rangeof educational institutionsvarying in scope from small temple schools offering commonersa rudimentaryeducation to governmentConfucian academies for the highereducation of samurai.The governmentgave officialsupport to schoolsfor the upper class, whose membersas rulersand administratorsof the country neededa highdegree of education.Commoners with no such standardsto main- tain wereleft to fendfor themselves in obtainingbasic literacyskills; schooling was not forbiddenthem, but neitherwas any officialsanction or assistanceex- tended until the late Tokugawa period, and educationremained a matterof personalenterprise. Despite this,the numberof privateschools for the lower THE AUTHOR is Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Modem Asian Studies, Griffith University. This content downloaded from 147.251.102.99 on Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:07:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 116 MonumentaNipponica, xxxviii: 2 classes in both ruraland urban areas multipliedrapidly as the influenceof the merchantclass grew in the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies. They offered basic instructionin thethree Rs, supplementedby some kind of moral and occupa- tionaltraining. The difficultytherefore lay not in widespreadilliteracy, but rather in the natureof the writtenJapanese used at the officiallevel. Years of arduous studywere requiredto masterthe literaryforms and scriptof officialdom,and onlythe upper classes had theleisure to devoteto it.The degreeof literacy attained by commonerswas usuallyjust sufficientfor the small concernsof everydaylife and theperusal of popularfiction. In the early Meiji period,the genbun'itchiRU-~R movementto replace the unwieldyliterary styles with a colloquial stylebased on a standardizedform of everydayspeech began to make slow and fitfulheadway in theface of stiffopposi- tion frombureaucrats and intellectuals,products of the traditionaleducation system.'In additionto stylereform, several other changes were necessaryto transformwritten Japanese into an efficientvehicle for communication,among thembeing script reform, the establishmentof a standardversion of Japaneseto overcomethe regional dialect problem, and thedevelopment of a systemof punc- tuation.The most obvious, scriptreform (kokuji kairyJ X*QtkA), was already being discussedin the late Tokugawa period,and duringthe firsttwenty years of the Meiji period a campaignaimed at replacingkanji witha simplerscript developedparallel to thegenbun'itchi movement. The firstto feelthe need forscript reform were students of theWest (yogakusha Adt), who could nothelp noticing the conciseness of the26-letter Latin alphabet compared with the more than ten thousand charactersused in Japan. Arai HakusekiS4AF, althoughnot himselfa yogakusha,wrote a book titledSeiy5 KibunNAiR$Rh, 1715, based on his interrogationof an Italian missionarypriest, Giovanni-BattistaSidotti, who had landed at Yakushimain Kyushuin 1708. In this account,Arai commentedon the remarkableconciseness and flexibilityof the alphabet.2His remarkswere confined to simpleobservation of the fact,how- ever; staunchConfucianist that he was, Arai did not suggestthat Japan should adopt the foreignsystem. Dutch studies(rangaku X*) influencedthe thinkingof Japanesescholars on theirown languageboth by reinforcingthe discoveryof the alphabet'ssimplicity and by bringingto theirnotice criticismsof the Japaneselanguage made by foreigners.Among these latterwere a Dutch book mentionedby Morishima Chiry6 -AfibPAin Oranda Zatsuwa ;, 1787, which ridiculedthe vast networkof charactersused in Chinese and the consequentinability of most people to read theirown language,and NihonFfizoku BikJ HF {{)Gr, 1833,a Japanesetranslation of a book publishedin Amsterdamby J. F. van Overmeer ' Furtherinformation about thismovement 333-356. is provided in my 'The GenbunitchiMove- 2 Seiy6 Kibun BigRN, in Arai Hakuseki ment: Its Origin,Development, and Conclu- Zensha : Kokusho Kank6kai sion', in MN xxxiii (Autumn 1978), pp. Sosho, 1906, iv, p. 763. This content downloaded from 147.251.102.99 on Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:07:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TWINE: Toward Simplicity 117 Fisscherafter a sojournat theDutch tradingpost on Deshimain whichhe decried the use of ideographs,declaring that the Japaneseconsidered them the flowerof writingand failedto realizethe extentto whichthey hindered learning.3 The studyof the Dutch languageitself led severalJapanese scholars to comment on the remarkablesystem whereby any word could be writtendown by usinga simpleand concise alphabet. Got6 Rishun JA54ffi,,in Oranda Banashi 4 1765, wrote out and brieflydescribed the Dutch alphabet; Otsuki Gentaku 7k;JlARin RangakuKaitei Id, 1783,remarked on how easily it could be learned; Shiba K6kan WINSJ&G, in Oranda TensetsufnmRA, 1796, praised the ease affordedreading by the use of a phoneticscript. Shiba suggestedthat kanji be replacedby kana, an idea supportedby Yamagata Bant6 LUnOR, in Yumeno Shiro*Ik, 1802,and Honda Toshiaki 4*14f'Win Sei-ikiMonogatari It", 1798. Honda even recommendedthe use of the Westernscript itself, which, he noted,was moreflexible than kana and had theadvantage of beinginternationally recognized.With these proposals, between 1796 and 1802,took shape theembry- onic ideas whichwould later lead to theformation of theKana Club and Romaji Club. Nothingmore was heard on the subject of scriptreform until 1866, when Maejima Hisoka '141JI presentedto the Shogun a petitioncalling for the replace- mentof kanji by kana. From thattime on, the idea of riddingwritten Japanese of its heavyburden of kanjibegan to take root in the mindsof a smallgroup of intellectuals.Some believedtheir purpose could be accomplishedby restricting the numberof kanji to reasonabledimensions, others by using only kana, and still othersby usingonly romaji. Moves to Limit theNumber of Kanji Those who espousedthis cause werefew. To do so was to flyin theface of hide- bound traditionalism,for kanji had formedthe basis of writtenJapanese since the sixthcentury. More than merelya formof writing,the ideographswere a culturalinstitution, the yardstickagainst which scholars measured their erudi- tion.Their very difficulty was prizedfor the mystique with which it investedwrit- ing. To phase themout completelywould have involvedmuch more than just a change in writinghabits-it would have meant a completelynew attitudeto the art and aims of writingitself, and a reversalof traditionalideas on the true natureof learning.Nevertheless, it was clear that the systemas it stood was detrimentalto modernization.The difficultChinese scriptwas just as great a barrierto understandingas thearchaic literary styles used in contemporaryprose. Lower-classeducation extended to littlemore than the kana scripts;even upper- class children,ostensibly receiving a thoroughConfucian education, often merely learnedto recitepassages by heartrather than actually read and understandthem. 3 Both books are cited in Sugimoto Seiritsu idif R1*ODAA, Oftisha, 2nd ed., Tsutomu t5Az-9L t, Kindai Nihongo no 1961, pp. 155 & 163. This content downloaded from