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- Convenor:
-
Ian Rapley
(Cardiff University)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Language and Linguistics
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 3, T16
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how Japanese people engaged with the planned language Esperanto, from the late 19th to the mid 20th centuries: how they used it to analyze the key role of language in ordering society, to make connections across borders, and to advocate a fairer, more modern and better world.
Long Abstract:
Esperanto, the language created and proposed by Ludwig Zamenhof in the late nineteenth century for use in international as well as transnational contexts, has long held a position in the footnotes of East Asian historiography. Read studies of such figures as Ōsugi Sakae, Kita Ikki, Nitobe Inazō, Yanagita Kunio, Deguchi Onisaburō, and Miyazawa Kenji, and you will find passing mentions of their engagement with and advocacy of the language. But beyond this position in the margins, recent work such as that of Gotelind Mueller Saini, Ulrich Lins, and Sho Konishi has made the case that, rather than a piece of historical marginalia or exotica, Esperanto as language, idea, and community in Japan and China is a sociolinguistic phenomenon worthy of more serious consideration.
This panel will explore Esperanto in three different historical contexts: Meiji-period first encounters, 1930s left-wing thought and language reform, and Sino-Japanese connections on the eve of the Pacific War, in order to develop our understanding of why Esperanto has appealed to Japanese people over time, and what it reveals about the history of language in Japan's domestic, international and transnational settings.
Although it never achieved the mass uptake of which its advocates dreamed, Esperanto has an almost unbroken history of organised activity in Japan dating back at least to 1906 and continuing today, supported over time by a diverse, bottom-up movement and embodied in a wide range of different ideas and practices. Esperanto has been read, written, spoken and sung by Japanese figures ranging from diplomats at the League of Nations to revolutionaries in prison, from leaders of religions old and new, scientists and doctors, to schoolchildren in rural villages. As a language of foreign contact, it offered the possibility of an easy-to-learn alternative to the likes of English, French and German; to some it also represented a vision of a more equitable international order; and finally, it was a practical medium of communication, allowing Japanese people to make connections across East Asia and the wider world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
Esperanto has no identifiable links to Japanese, and yet it remains popular in Japan. How is it the most famous of putatively international languages can have acquired such a following in Japan? This presentation examines this question with several case studies.
Paper long abstract:
Of all the many putatively international languages, Esperanto has been by far the most successful, still marshalling a loyal following around the world. Its creator Ludwig Zamenhof (1859-1917) had grander aspirations, but his language survives to this day, in the year of the centenary of his death. Zamenhof knew many languages—he was a native speaker of four (Russian, Polish, German, and Yiddish) and acquired many more through study—all of which presumably played a role in creating Esperanto. But, one of the most striking things for an East Asian scholar is the all but total absence of any Asian element in this man-made language. Nonetheless, Esperanto has had an extraordinary following among Chinese and Japanese over the past century or more. What accounts for this among Japanese? My paper will look into this issue, both linguistically and culturally, and will then address the individual case of one of Japan's most famous Sinologists, Shimada Kenji (1917-2000), who also wrote on Japanese intellectuals and was, incidentally, born in that same year (1917) when Zamenhof died. Long before Shimada turned his attention to China studies or knew a word of spoken Chinese, he was a devoted Esperantist, and while a middle- and high-school student in China, he established long-lasting friendships with Chinese from various walks of life. Later, though, he abandoned Esperanto for reasons that remain murky and require some thought. Esperanto remains inordinately popular in Japan.
Paper short abstract:
By considering familiar linguistic events such as Mori Arinori's English proposal and some unfamiliar ones such as the planned language projects of Volapük and Zilengo, this paper will begin to write an international dimension into the history of Japan's nineteenth century linguistic thinking.
Paper long abstract:
In 1906 Futabatei Shimei published Sekaigo, an introduction to the planned language Esperanto. This was only one event in an explosion of Esperanto activity in Japan that year—public meetings, the creation of study groups and national associations, and the release of textbooks and dictionaries. This paper will place this Japanese Esperanto boom into a broader context of foreign contact and language reform, examining a series of languages and encounters in order to argue that that an international dimension was present in conversations about language throughout the early Meiji period.
The core of the story of Meiji language reform, and indeed more generally of language and the modern nation-state, is the creation of national language—the erasure of dialects, standardisation of scripts and grammar, and the elimination of diglossia in the pursuit of a single uniform language. However, at the same time as nineteenth century state making often involved identifying and unifying a national people, it also involved fitting the new nation-state into an international system of diplomacy and trade. New ideas about language thus involved thinking internationally as well as nationally.
From Dutch translators at Nagasaki, to Samuel Wells Williams and his Chinese assistant on the Perry mission, to Sino-Japanese "brushtalk," the need for a language for foreign contact was by no means new to the Meiji period. However, the new patterns and scale of exchange led to new priorities in the choice and use of language. What is more, whilst the opening of Japan brought with it a cacophony of foreign sounds and scripts, it also brought new tools. Some hoped that perhaps modern reason might provide a means to reform language similarly to how time and space were rationalized through new calendars and measures. By considering familiar linguistic events such as Mori Arinori's proposal to adopt English and Yokohama Pidgin Japanese, and some unfamiliar ones like the planned language projects of Volapük and Zilengo, as well as the 1906 Esperanto moment, this paper will begin to rewrite the international dimension into Japan's modern history of language.
Paper short abstract:
The linguist and Esperantist Saitō Hidekatsu (1908-1940) believed that a child's native written language as well as their second language should be easy to learn. He proposed a two-step process: learn Romanized Japanese. Then Esperanto. A debate over inclusive design of language ensued.
Paper long abstract:
Many scholars tend to assume that standard written Japanese is perfectly natural and appropriate for modern Japan, but a number of sociolinguists have argued over the last century or so that the dominant dialect and script have long favoured the powerful over the socially disadvantaged. Already in the 1930s, some leading Japanese researchers and activists campaigned vigorously to correct this imbalance. One such researcher was the linguist and Esperantist Saitō Hidekatsu (1908-40), who was sentenced to prison as a violator of the Public Order Law of 1925 for advocating radical language reform attempting to alter the "national polity" (kokutai). He founded and edited a journal entitled Moji to gengo (Script and Language, 1934-38), to which such notables as Takakura Teru (1891-1986) the activist and novelist; Tōjō Misao (1884-1966) the Japanese linguistics scholar; and Ōshima Yoshio the linguist and Esperantist (1905-92) contributed. He also translated writings on the Chinese Romanization movement by the great writer and intellectual Lu Xun (1881-1936) and by Ye Laishi (1911-94) the Romanization advocate and Esperantist.
To establish easy-to-learn written language, Saitō and other Esperantists proposed that Japanese children first master the writing of their native language in the Roman alphabet and then learn Esperanto as a second language. The Roman alphabet would enable children to learn both their native language and their second language Esperanto easier. The fact that Esperantists built a sizable worldwide community in spite of little initial interest in Esperanto demonstrated for Saito that switching to easy-to-learn scripts and languages was possible.
Long before the establishment of the "universal" or "inclusive design" concept in engineering in the 1960s, he and other progressive intellectuals were proposing such "designs" of language, that aimed to benefit those children whose educational disadvantages stem from physical disabilities, discrimination, and poverty. This paper will unearth articles from Moji to gengo by advocates of "inclusive-design" language reform, and analyze their debates with opponents of it.