Reischauer on the Japanese Language

Posted on 19. Dec, 2008 @ 3:20 pm by in Books, Culture, Language Views: 770

As I’m in school again I have been doing a lot of reading. Luckily for this blog a lot of that reading is about Japan!

What do you think of this passage?

“Japan’s cultural distinctiveness has perhaps been accentuated by her linguistic separateness. Although the Japanese writing system has been derived from that of China and innumerable Chinese words have been incorporated into Japanese in much the same way that English has borrowed thousands of Latin and Greek words, Japanese basically is as different from Chinese as it is from English. Its structure is strikingly like Korean, but even then it appears to be no more closely related to Korean than English is to the Sanskrit-derived languages of India.”[1]

I especially wanted to point out this part… he continues:

“Possessing a writing system more complex than any other in common use in the modern world and a language with no close relatives, the Japanese probably face a bigger language barrier between themselves and the rest of the world than does any other major national group.”[1]

This is passage is from Japan: The Story of A Nation by the late prominent Japan scholar Edwin Reischauer.

Makes Japanese sound right difficult doesn’t it? The passage is also is meant to show that Japan’s isolation is not simply geographical, but the language is a big factor as well. I know a lot of JapanNewbie readers are not newbies and have studied Japanese… how does it feel to be one of the few people able to break through the barrier the author is speaking of?

Just to put this into perspective, Reischauer was born and raised in Japan. He later went on to Harvard to earn a PhD, and went on to teach Japan Studies there for many years. The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard bears his name today. He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966. If you’ve ever studied about Japan in an academic setting you have probably read some of his work. Reischauer is relatively old school, but the concepts in his book are all relevant today.

Just last week Joi Ito was at our school giving a talk about the Creative Commons and he mentioned how fascinating Japan is to people who study technology and its effect on society. As an aside, he said that Japan was like Galapagos to those who study technology. Lots of interesting things going on there so it’s a lot of fun to peek in and have a look from time to time. Japanese society is so isolated and unique however, that without considerable effort by the Japanese themselves or foreigners embedded into the Japanese culture it is unlikely that any of the trends ever leave Japan and become international phenomenon. This is exacerbated by the fact that so few leading Japan techies speak English.

Reading and hearing all this makes me think that I should be doing something more profound with my Japanese language abilities… Do any of you Japan-studying readers out there have any big dreams for your Japanese skills? Think big!

- Harvey

[1] Edwin Reischauer, Japan: The Story of A Nation, 8.

  • http://www.flat3d.co.nr Ormo

    Well… I’m a student of Japanese at the moment…

    But it strikes me that if I were learning Chinese the writing system would be considerably more complex to attempt to learn… And while the grammar wouldn’t be so complex, the tonal nature would confound me…
    Having said that though, there are actually more tonal than non-tonal languages in the world… Shouldn’t Korea be as isolated, if not more? With it’s (also unique) writing system and (just as) unique language?

    Don’t get me wrong, I love Japan! And Japanese is difficult (either that or I’m as dumb as rocks… or both!) But I think every language has it’s difficulties…
    I have friends who are learning other east asian languages such as Khmer and others learning tribal dialects in the Philippines and rural parts of China and hearing from them makes me positively delight that Japanese is well studied and documented and that we can find good teachers using modern techniques!

    John

  • http://www.japannewbie.com harvey

    Hi Ormo!

    I wouldn’t agree that Chinese would be considerably more complex to write from Reischauer’s point at the time, mainly because Chinese at least sticks to one single writing system. Japanese as you know has three, one of them being Chinese which was jerry-rigged to fit into the already established Japanese language. At least with Chinese the characters mostly have a fixed reading.

    I agree Chinese tones would be extremely tough. The Protestant missionaries in the 18th and 19th century who were in China said that the Chinese language was likely created by the devil himself, and unlearnable. They found it absolutely impossible, and thought that the devil made the language to protect the Chinese from their evangelistic efforts! I heard that in a book called “Sentimental Imperialists” if you’re interested.

    On Korea, in Reischauer’s time the U.S. had little to do with Korea and it was relatively unimportant. It probably wouldn’t have crossed his mind even to discuss the Korean language. however, on isolation, I think the fact that Korea shared a border with China and lots of Chinese culture and people flowed into Korea would have caused him not to describe Korea as isolated.

    As far as today and us is concerned, I agree that every language has its difficulties and though Japanese is tough, I don’t think it’s ridiculously hard. As you said it’s so well documented, and there are so few exceptions in the grammar. Also as you mentioned… no tones!

    I plan to tackle Chinese next. I’m not looking forward to the “nothing-but-Chinese-characters” lifestyle… that’s going to take some getting used to!

    - Harvey

  • http://ashtonius.blogspot.com Ashton

    Harvey,

    It’s also worthwhile thinking about what’s at stake in building these walls of difference around Japanese language, Japanese culture, and “the Japanese.”

    I’ve read Reischauer, and as you say he is pretty old-school. Some of his scholarship is still valuable, like East Asia: the Great Tradition, but I think the stuff he wrote to appeal to a wider audience is pretty horrendous. Keep in mind that Reischauer was not a linguist. Yes, Japanese is difficult, especially its writing system, but to say that “the Japanese probably face a bigger language barrier between themselves and the rest of the world than does any other major national group” buys into all sorts of Nihon jinron ideas that obscure the complexities of Japan’s cultural position (both in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s AND historically) in East Asia and in the world.

    (Check out stuff by Roy Andrew Miller and J. Marshall Unger for more nuanced ideas about the Japanaese language.)

    But this shouldn’t be so surprising, right? As the ambassador to Japan, it was part of Reischauer’s job to publicize a particular image of Japan that fell in line with the government’s increasing emphasis on Japan as a bunka kokka and all that.

    I think all I can really see in this genre of Reischauer’s work at this point is agenda. Interestingly, there used to be a much stronger overlap between “Japanology” and national service — the famous British historian of Japan George Samson was also a career diplomat, and I’m sure there were many others. Seidensticker lamented in his autobiography that this was no longer the case, but I wonder if maybe things have changed for a reason. Are we beyond nation-state ideology? Scholars working on Japan nowadays do seem less invested in Japan per se (or the US, or Britain), and more attuned to critical work that contextualizes as opposed to isolates. Which isn’t to say that this approach doesn’t have its own political agenda, but at least politics can be negotiated.

    Sorry for going on for so long! Seriously Harvey, Chinese is going to be a cakewalk for you. The tones will be difficult, but in terms of comprehension? You could already get by.

  • http://ashtonius.blogspot.com Ashton

    Also, a lesser known moment in Reischauer’s biography:

    http://www.froginawell.net/japan/2006/04/a-stabbing-incident/

  • http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

    I disagree with almost everything posted, but that’s just from my own perspective. All of those quotes and paraphrases are very Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

    Japanese isn’t difficult at all, and the only barrier to the language is psychological. Actually, the language itself is much easier than English because of how logical it is. Most people don’t succeed at Japanese because most people can’t invest the dedication required for the language.

    I think, also, people underestimate its link to Korean. Perhaps etymologically it only shares compounds deriving from Chinese, but the way the words themselves work (including shared uses of equivalent terms) are very similar. (If you disagree, ask my Korean wife! Ha ha)

    And Joi Ito seems to hold a very dated view of Japan. Japan was built on mimicry and reproduction of existing technology (like their imitation of Swiss watch technology), and eventually found their ground and picked up on innovation. But these days Japan is most certainly not the forefront of technology. LCDs? Korea (Samsung, LG). Cell phones? America (Qualcomm), Finland (Nokia), Korea (Samsung). Portable Audio? America (Apple), Korea (iRiver).

    Japan dominates on brand names that were built on innovation but have more recently lost their drive.

    If you restrict “technology” to mean only electronics, then Japan still looks OK on paper, but if you incorporate “technology” to the fullest extent of its application and include things like construction technologies, design and materials, and so on, Japan is considerably lower in technology standards.

  • http://www.japannewbie.com harvey

    Just one thing to point out regarding the Joi remark – he wasn’t saying that Japan was ahead in terms of existing technology, he was saying that Japan was ahead in terms of how integrated the use of technology is in the average persons (especially emphasizing teenagers) daily life. People reading & writing novels on cell phones, cell phones used as wallets, kids connected to their peers in one way or another 24/7. Things like that. Not the level of technology of the products that are being manufactured in Japan, but the way Japanese society integrates the technology that exists whether it be Japan-made or not.

  • http://japanetics.blogspot.com Brett McCluskey

    I want to publish a grammanetics come check out my Japanese langauge study blog with similiar interests and views

    http:japanetics.blogspot.com

  • http://2nihon.wordpress.com 2nihon

    I disagree with the assertion that Japanese is a more difficult language to learn. Now, I’m still working through Heisig, but I believe that once the seeming-barrier of kanji is overcome, then any excuses I might have been harboring before will be gone. I believe that English is a much more backwards language; there’s a rule for every exception, stuff isn’t pronounced like it looks (through, rough, cough), you have to determine where to put all the punctuation…the list goes on and on. The fact that I have already learned, in my opinion, a much more difficult language than Japanese, is somehow a comfort to me. If I learned the first language, then by golly, I can certainly learn the second, third, and so forth.

    I’m with Alex in that I think the only people who think Japanese is hard are the people who either a) aren’t dedicated to it enough, or b) don’t have efficient study methods. I could not have imagined learning Japanese before I found Khatzumoto’s blog.

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