DIALECTOLOGY WILLEM A. GROOTAERS I. BIBLIOGRAPHY For linguists who are not specialists in Japanese dialectology, there are three English language bibliographies. Robert H. Brower's A Bibliography of Japanese dialects, 75 pages (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1950), compiled mainly from secondary sources, gives 995 items, practically all dating from the prewar period. This work does not attempt a selective listing. Although favorably reviewed by Shibata Takeshi, in Kokugogaku 12. 25-38 (June, 1953), "Kore kara no hogen-kenkyu" [Dialect studies from now on], certain Japanese scholars have resented the patronizing attitude of its "Author's Intro- duction". A more valuable tool is the chapter on dialects contributed by Kindaichi Haruhiko (pages 117 to 133) to Japanese Language Studies in the Showa Period, edited by JosephK. Yamagiwa, 153 pages (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1961). Kindaichi lists 187 items of which 88 belong to the postwar period. The works are well selected and constitute a handy reference list for a linguist who wishes to be introduced to Japanese scholarship in this field. Kindaichi's list was closed approxi- mately in 1957 and his description of recent trends in Japanese dialectology does not mention the surge of dialect geographical studies that started around 1955. We will therefore give a relatively large place in our summary to this branch of dialectal studies. A third work is explicitly meant for the foreign scholar who is engaged in the study of Japanese linguistics: Bibliography of Standard Reference Books for Japanese Studies, with Descriptive Notes, Vol. VI (A): Language, 155 pages (Tokyo, The Society for International Cultural Relations, 1961). It lists twenty-two works on dialectology with a detailed description of each. The last work constitutes the first stepping stone toward direct contact with Japa- nese language bibliographies of which we will describe only the most recent and exhaustive ones. The first is the authoritative Kokugo nenkan (Linguistic Year-book) 586 WILLEM A. GROOTAERS Tokyo, Shuei Shuppan, Vol. I (1954), Annual. Compiled by the members of the Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo or National Language Research Institute of the Ministry of Education (see below), this work covers the whole range of linguistic studies. If we limit ourselves to the dialectal studies and if we take as an example Vol. XI (1964) covering the year 1963, we find a short summary of dialectal studies under the year in review (pp. 12-3), a list of all books on dialects (24 books listed on pp. 42-3), a list of all articles on dialects (120 articles listed on pp. 88-92), a list of all newspaper features on dialects from the twelve leading newspapers of the country (pp. 144-51), a who's who of 4000 Japanese scholars in the field of language (pp. 193-274), a list of journals, etc. A less exhaustive list, but one which stresses comment rather than enumeration is given each year or every second year by Kokugogaku, the official quarterly journal of the Kokugo Gakkai or Society for the Study of the Japanese Language. For instance, the June 1964 issue presents four reports on publications on dialectology for the years 1962-1963 (pp. 55-78), under the headings: General Dialectology, Phonemes and Accents, Grammar, and Vocabulary. The two publications last mentioned will continue to furnish information on future publications in dialectology. A recent book has gathered in one list all postwar publications on dialects; this general dialect bibliography lists 500 books and 4000 articles and has been appended at the end of the book Nihon no hogefi kukaku [Dialect divisions in Japan], a volume presented to Professor Tojo Misao in November 1964 (pp. 541-684). The foreign linguist who is able to make use of the above bibliographies will of course need to progress to the basic introduction to all Japanese linguistic studies written for the young Japanese scholar. Called Kokugogaku [Japanese linguistics] 824 pages (Tokyo, Sanseido, 1961), one of its eighteen chapters is headed Dialec- tology. Written by Hino Sukezumi, it gives successively a survey of the history of dialectal studies (pp. 440-5), a program for future dialect research (pp. 446-7), and a detailed discussion of the contents of thirty-nine important books among which nineteen are from the postwar period (pp. 448-89). Japanese linguistics is also one of the few fields to possess a complete encyclopedia compiled by specialists and for specialists. This work is the Kokugogaku jitefi [Diction- ary of Japanese linguistics], 1289 pages (Tokyo, Tokyodo, 1955), published by the Kokugo Gakkai. Finally, a word must be said about the Ryukyu (Okinawa) dialects which by their archaism and their variety constitute a treasure-house of Japanese dialectology. Kokugogaku (the book and not the journal) has an appendix on the Okinawa dialects with commentary on nine works. But a more recent work is the basic tool for Ryukyu dialect research: Bibliography of the Ryukyus, 120 + 118 pages (University of the Ryukyus, 1962), a work which is in both Japanese and English, in which dialectology occupies pages 43-53, with 194 books and articles listed; this is an exhaustive listing but unfortunately without commentary. DIALECTOLOGY 587 II. THE LANDSCAPE OF JAPANESE DIALECTOLOGY: AN APPRAISAL The word "landscape" is meant to convey the special flavor of Japanese dialect studies and the atmosphere in which they are carried out in Japan. This landscape is not without influence on the methodology of science and has therefore to be briefly sketched. 1. Japan broke down the barriers between the feudal domains into which the country was divided in 1866, a few years before Germany or Italy, and, as in these two countries, the economic and administrative barriers which kept local political units apart for many centuries have helped in creating dialectal diversity. However, unlike Germany and Italy, Japan has been and is still a country which is strongly centralized linguistically, through the unity that comes from its standard spoken and written language. This language was the Kyoto language from 794 to 1868, and is now the Tokyo language. Japan is not unlike France, with innovations in language and culture originating at the capital. A throwback to the day when the Kyoto-Osaka area was culturally active is found up to the present day in the use of its dialect for literary purposes, in many movies, and in the popular performing arts. 2. Japan's language, without any kinship with Chinese, has not only taken up loanwords from China, as Britain did with Roman words; a recent statistic shows that 47.5 per cent of all words in ninety popular magazines are of Chinese origin. Japan also found in China its writing system. The KANJI or Chinese ideograms, by their nature, do not allow us to reconstruct ancient Japanese sounds. This is of course even more true for Japanese than was the case with the reconstruction of ancient Chinese; in Japan the system of ideograms is completely alien to the spoken language system. The KANA, being a phonetic syllabary, gives some idea of the sound system; but again, all through history it was used mainly for the language of the capital city, first Kyoto, now Tokyo. The KANA were used by local dialectologists all over the country up to World War II as the only tool to transcribe the sound of dialects; it has many defects when it tries to represent sounds and it influences un- consciously many dialectologists who continue to think in terms of syllables as re- presented by the KANA, so that for instance they are not ready to accept the possibility of a phonetic change from [he] to [e], because the KANA has two different signs for these sounds. Because of the centralization and the written language, we find linguistic science in Japan centered upon philological disquisitions to a degree unknown even to nine- teenth century Europe. The interest in dialects could only be for the purpose of proving the survival of ancient literary words. This left the field of dialectology before the war in the hands of amateurs of folklore, who gathered "curious" local words, that is, words not found in the standard language. Until recently phonetic descriptions of dialects would describe only the "curious" sounds of the local language, and not its total phonological system. A recent trend in dialect studies is towards the investiga- tion of the linguistic structure of the dialects, although large dialect vocabularies in 588 WILLEM A. GROOTAERS dictionary form are still being published. Strangely enough, the field of dialectal accent shows the contrary tendency; a strong feeling for the structural types of accent has impeded the recognition of individual changes in accent. A general inferiority complex felt by dialect speakers gave strong roots to the belief that local languages are only corruptions or derivations of the capital's language. To the fact that a privileged position is given to the standard language user, with a subservient position taken by the local speakers, we must add another psychological factor, namely, the traditional Confucian ethic. Even when it is reduced to mere unconscious motivation, the conviction remains that the "ruler" is responsible for the conduct of the "ruled", and that the latter should be moulded on the former. This mentality brings forth in linguistic terms a strong pedagogical trend in dialect investigations. The dialects are studied in order to find ways to "correct" them, to replace them by the standard language. Of course, the scholars in Japan who are occupied in linguistic research are often free of this quirk; but they have to pay hp service to this point of view in order to obtain public support, or, which is still more important, to secure grants from the Ministry of Education.