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.