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Paper short abstract:

The nature of hentaigana charts, or charts of non-standard hiragana characters, in Meiji textbooks is discussed. A statistical analysis of the charts shows that they largely overlap, implying that the charts differ from the characters used in the contents, contrary to earlier views.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reconsiders the nature of hentaigana charts in Meiji textbooks. Hentaigana refers to non-standard and obsolete hiragana graphs that were used before the 1900 hiragana standardisation, one of the reformations that occurred when the national compulsory education system was established. Before the standardisation, hentaigana was taught at elementary schools; hentaigana charts were one of the devices employed in education and presented in the early years of primary education. The self-contained charts have been considered to be suitable tools for observing the shifts in standardisation. A hentaigana chart is considered to present or relate to the degree to which hentaigana is used in a textbook. By examining the charts of government-edited textbooks, earlier studies made observations of the changes in the numbers of characters used in the charts and concluded that the number of characters used had gradually decreased from the beginning of the Meiji period. Although this view seems to be plausible, the basic assumption about the charts has not been proved. In addition, before nationalisation of textbooks, a larger number of textbooks were edited by the private sector, which were previously not taken into account. As a preliminary investigation, the author examined the relationship between the characters used in the contents and those used in the charts in several earlier textbooks. The result showed no clear relationship between the contents and the charts, which implies the independence of charts in regard to contents. Since the materials used in this analysis are partial, a larger and more balanced corpus is needed to confirm the results. In the present paper, the author attempts to confirm the preliminary findings and also examines the relationship of charts between textbooks using a statistical analysis of used characters compared to a larger group of charts and controlling for publisher and publishing dates. The results confirm the preliminary results and show that most of the characters in the charts overlap. The results imply that hentaigana teaching has not drastically changed during the era; in other words, the standardisation, contrary to expectations, has made radical changes to hiragana.

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Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, we show the relationship and similarities between the words of Iroha-Jiruishō (色葉字類抄), one of the old Japanese dictionaries from the Heian period, and the words of the ancient diary "Meigetsuki" (明月記) written by a male noble of the same era.

Paper long abstract:

Iroha-Jiruishō (色葉字類抄) is one of the old Japanese dictionaries from the Heian period. This dictionary is considered to have been compiled mainly to assist in writing native Japanese words with Chinese characters. In other words, it was designed for people writing Hentai-Kanbun (変体漢文 pseudo-kanbun).

In this presentation, we examine the relationship and similarities between the words of Iroha-Jiruishō and the words contained in "Meigetsuki" (明月記), a diary by Fujiwara-no-Teika (藤原定家). In the present Japanese, we write both in Kanji (ideograms) and Kana (phonograms), but in Meigetsuki (and also in other diaries by educated people in that era) the use of Kana was very limited and Kanji was mainly used. This makes it difficult for us to know how people really pronounced these characters at that time.

In such cases, we researchers often use old Japanese dictionaries like Iroha-Jiruishō. For example, the sentence of Meigetsuki is: 九日未時許参内,―which means that he went to the imperial court around the hour of the sheep (about 2 p.m.) on the 9th (of February). Iroha-Jiruishō includes over 30,000 words and "未 ヒツシ hituji," "時 トキ toki," and "許 ハカリhakari" are all listed. However, "九日"and "参内"are not listed despite the similar words "五十日" and "参仕" are listed.

Therefore, we compare the vocabulary used in Meigetsuki with that of Iroha-Jiruishō, report the research results, and verify how useful Iroha-Jiruishō use to be to write diaries at the time, while taking the composition of this dictionary into consideration. The words in this dictionary are classified in the iroha order and sub-classified into 21 categories according to their meanings or their forms (cf. "未" is categorized into the group of directions (方角部)，and "時" is categorized into the group of natural phenomena (天象部)).

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss the status of newly created words in Japanese that refer to new social phenomena or trends such as konkatsu (marriage hunting) or ikumen (men engaged in child-rearing and homemaking). My analysis is based on words collected from articles in Japan Times from 2015 and 2016.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss a series of newly created words in Japanese that refer to new social phenomena or trends such as konkatsu (marriage hunting) or ikumen (men engaged in child-rearing and homemaking). One of the main properties of these words is that they are not translated, but transliterated in the romanization system in foreign texts related to Japan. My analysis is based on words collected from recent articles in Japan Times and has a quantitative dimension and a qualitative dimension.

My interest in these kind of words is twofold. On one hand, I discuss how these words are created in Japanese and what are their phonetic, morphological and semantic properties. I argue that they are created taking as a model a well established compound. For example konkatsu is created in a similar way with the well-known shūkatsu. I also examine the role of loans from English in the creation of these new words.

On the other hand, I will discuss the status of these words in the English text (their syntactic integration, their orthography and the way of paraphrasing their meanings), as well as the way in which the usage of these words influence the image the foreign readers have about Japan.