Kanji Politics by Gottlieb

Author:Gottlieb,
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136882975
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Chapter 4

After the war, the National Language Council emerged from its period of eclipse and reconvened, holding a general meeting just three months after the surrender, in November 1945. These were busy and exciting times for those bent on script reform, who were now released from the restraints imposed on their activities during fifteen years of ultranationalism and who made the most of the new intellectual climate of the immediate postwar period. Just as language modernisation had been perceived by many to be essential to the modernisation of Japan itself during the Meiji Period (1867–1911) and afterwards, so now as Japan faced the necessity to resurrect herself from the devastation of war the reform of the written language – specifically script – was again spoken of as an essential element in the problems being faced.

In a recoil from the kokutai and kotodama ideology of the militarist years, when characters had been imbued with a mystique linking them to national values, characters were now spoken of by some as having in some way contributed to the evils of the war. Funabashi Seiichi, conservative member of the Council who opposed the postwar reforms which were about to take place, asserts that the Education Ministry proceeded with them in the belief that because Japan had undertaken misguided actions while using the old orthography it would be better to do away with it now that the war was over.1 An often-voiced criticism of script reform during the Occupation period is that it was carried out at the behest of the American authorities rather than originating with the Japanese themselves, and that the Americans saw characters as the root of many evils in Japan, including some related to the war. One example of this is Ôno Susumu’s statement that the Occupation forces saw script reform as having a role to play in rooting out the deluded convictions of the war years, destroying militarism and assisting in inculcating the concept of democracy. The fanatical resistance of the Japanese people, they believed, had stemmed from their inability to receive proper intelligence as to the progress of the war, in part because the military controlled information but also because the ordinary person could not read the fiendish kanji and was thus cut off from knowledge of the world situation in the press.2

One novel and radical solution was proposed by Shiga Naoya (1883–1971, famous and well-respected novelist), who in 1946 suggested that the Japanese language be abandoned altogether in favour of French3. This idea was not new, having been first suggested in the 1870s by Mori Arinori (1847–89), later Minister for Education, whose proposal was that English, as the language of a progressive western country and an internationally understood language, replace Japanese. The concept had been howled down at the time, but Shiga now revived it, suggesting that had Mori’s plan been adopted Japanese culture would now be much further advanced and the war with America might have been averted. Having no hope of becoming a cultured nation without

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