The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan (review)

The Ideology of Kokugo, by Lee Yeounsuk, is a wonderful addition to the increasing body of Japanese scholarship that has been translated into English. The original Japanese version of the book, published in 1996, remains among the most influential works in Japan on the complex topic of the Japanese language reforms that began in the early Meiji period and continued into the early postwar era.¹

Lee's central theme, as her title implies, is the establishment of "kokugo" as ideology: how it was produced, defined and redefined, and further reified. Although her discussion focuses on two scholars, Ueda Kazutoshi (1867-1937), credited with the founding of kokugo (national language), and the lesser-known Hoshina Kōichi (1872-1955), a loyal student of Ueda's, Lee also takes up such writers as Maeijima Hisoka (1835-1919), Mori Arinori (1847-1889), Baba Tatsui (1855-1888), and Mozume Takami (1847-1928) and in the process offers groundbreaking perspectives on the early Meiji period. In addition, she sheds light on the inextricable link between the kokugo reforms and language policies in Japanese colonies including Korea and Manchuria and then further extends her discussion to the debates over kokugo reform that took place following World War II through close readings of works by such writers as Yamada Yoshio (1875-1958) and Tokieda Motoki (1900-1967).

The book's crowning jewel is the discussion of the Meiji discursive space, which occupies the first half of the volume. In her introductory chapter, Lee argues that in the pre-kokugo era "Japanese" had yet to become an "autonomous unity" (p. 5). She takes up an impressive array of writings, highlighting their conflicting views. Take, for example, Mori Arinori's famous argument for simplified English and Baba Tatsui's case against it. In contrast to earlier critics' characterization of Mori as a deranged anti-nationalist who called for an "abolition of Japanese," Lee convincingly shows that it was not "Japanese" he sought to jettison: Mori, she argues, wanted to adopt English as a practical medium for writing, one that would replace "Chinese"-which refers, in this context, to "kanji (Chinese characters), kango (Chinese words), and kanbun (Chinese phrases and sentences)" (p. 12). He sought to uphold the duality that existed between written "Chinese" and spoken "Japanese," but substituting simplified English for "Chinese." Baba, in countering Mori's claim that Japanese was an "insufficient language," produced (in 1873) An Elementary Grammar of Japanese Language, known to be the "first book that systematically described Japanese grammar" (p. 14). However, as Lee suggests, the irony of it all was that Baba wrote this work in English, exposing the very limitation that Mori had shown.

Both Lee's discussion and the debates themselves reveal the chaos inherent in the system of signification used to formulate the ideas of language reform themselves. There were, for instance, instances of disagreement in the uses of basic terms—such as "Japanese," "Chinese," "spoken language," "written language," and "grammar"—that are normalized in our minds today. This chaos continued well into the second and third decade of the Meiji period.

After discussing the multitude of problems that advocates of reform attempted to tackle, Lee boldly takes up the works of Ueda Kazutoshi. She traces his affinities to kokubungaku (national literature) scholars, including Sekine Masanao and Ochiai Hirobumi, who sought to distinguish themselves from old-school kokugaku. Lee argues, however, that Ueda set himself apart from the other kokubungaku scholars by severing kokugo from kokubun through his engagement with Western linguistics,which had established itself as a discipline by eschewing the philology of "dead texts" and instead positing "language" as a system of the present. She writes, "the basis of Ueda's idea of kokugo was his clear awareness of "the present," or "synchronicity," a term in linguistic methodology: the basis of kokugo must be sought only in the language that is spoken or written now, at this very moment" (p. 97). At the...