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7 Introduction The Japanese Language before Kokugo: Views of Mori Arinori and Baba Tatsui I-1. Mori Arinori’s View of the Japanese Language In debates about kokugo and its merits as the national language in post-Meiji Japan, one person never fails to be mentioned: Mori Arinori, the first minister of education for the Meiji government. He is remembered, however, not as a model devotee of kokugo, but as an unpardonable traitor to the nation’s language. When he was the chargé d’affaires for the United States, Mori proposed what was afterwards called “the abolition of the Japanese language” and “the adoption of English.” He did so in the introduction to his book (written in English) Education in Japan (1873; Meiji 6), and also in a letter of May 21, 1872 (Meiji 5), to William Dwight Whitney, a distinguished linguist at Yale University . These writings never gained any support and became the target of criticism by scholars after his time: they either laughed at his proposal as an absurdity or attacked it as an outrageous opinion. However, these attacks and ridicule did not necessarily reflect an accurate understanding of Mori’s assertions, as seen in the following passages: When he was the chargé d’affaires for the United States in early Meiji, Mori Arinori asserted that the Japanese language had too many defects to meet educational needs, and he sought the advice of Western scholars regarding his idea to abolish kokugo completely and to adopt English as kokugo instead. On hearing this, the scholars reacted negatively. For example, Whitney warned him that such a wild scheme would endanger the nation’s foundation; some scholars, such as Sayce,1 were scornful of such an audacious proposal, and others ignored it and did not respond. (Yamada 1935, 298; emphasis mine) Scholars of classics in the Edo era, while adoring the elegant classical language, despised the spoken language of their time as the vulgar language of the common people. Similarly, people in Meiji lamented the chaos of their own language and 8 Introduction script. . . . Some people worshipped Western languages and alphabets, and they dreamed of replacing kokugo with one of them. Takada Sanae and Tsubouchi Shōyō were among those people, but Mori Arinori’s proposal for abandoning kokugo was the most famous. (Tokieda [1940] 1966, 157) In a well-known episode, Whitney, an American linguist, reprimanded Mori Arinori for proposing to abolish the Japanese language and to replace it with English. It seems that Mori was not the only one in early Meiji who had such an idea. (Tokieda 1962, 40) In early Meiji, Viscount Mori Arinori, who would later become the minister of education, was troubled by the extreme complexity and irregularity of the Japanese language. He was very concerned about the severe inadequacy of the language for effective education of the people, and was of the opinion that the use of English in education would be more advisable. (Hoshina 1936b, 11) Among the scholars who encountered the superior civilizations of the West, there were some whose worship of the West went so far as to advocate the reform of kokugo by replacing it with a Western language. This phenomenon during the Meiji Restoration was the same as the phenomenon in the past when the Japanese quickly adopted into their official writings the language and characters of China together with its civilization. The phenomenon in Meiji is represented by the proposal for “the adoption of English” by Mori Arinori in Meiji 5, who was at that time chargé d’affaires for the United States. (Hirai 1948, 173) Many of the thinkers and intellectuals of that time believed that Western civilization was the ultimate civilization, and that Japan’s progress depended on her adaptation to it. Such belief drew them to Western phonetic alphabets and even led them to advocate the adoption of a Western language to reform kokugo. For example, in June of Meiji 5, Mori Arinori, chargé d’affaires for the United States and later the minister of education, sent W. D. Whitney, professor of linguistics at Yale University, a proposal to reconstitute the Japanese language (nihongo) by replacing kanbun, Chinese writing, with English. (Ōno 1983, 19; emphasis mine) We must notice, however, something subtle and strange in these condemnations of Mori’s proposals. Their lines of argument, which lack an accurate understanding of Mori’s true intentions, conceal a fact that explains the Japanese people’s sense of their language. First of all, each critic has different...

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