The Making of Monolingual Japan by Heinrich Patrick;

Author:Heinrich, Patrick;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Published: 2012-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

6 The Most Beautiful Language in the World

However absurd it might seem, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss a proposal to completely replace one language with another. Such radical linguistic proposals deserve our attention, for they tell us much about the language ideology that inspires them, particularly when they have been put forward by powerful language ideology brokers like Mori Arinori. Another such broker was Shiga Naoya (1883–1971), who in 1946 proposed that French be adopted as the national language of Japan. Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, just as in the early part of the Meiji restoration, notions of culture, tradition and language were the subject of much debate. In particular, national language problems (kokugo mondai) re-emerged as a topic of discussion, leading to the re-examination of many issues thought to have been settled by the successful modernization of Japan and the adoption of Japanese as the national language early in the 20th century.

The dominant language ideology came under pressure in the post-war years because modernist ideology identifies itself with, and is legitimized by, notions of progress. In light of the disastrous outcome of Japan’s involvement in World War II, the ideologies and practices of the past were re-evaluated to determine just how progressive they had actually been. Language was no exception, especially given the pivotal role that it had played in Japan’s modernization. The post-war period was thus one of reflection, and Shiga’s essay, which is to be discussed in this chapter was one such example of reevaluation. It is important for students of ideology to study such periods of reflection as the Meiji period (1868–1912), the period of US occupation (1945–1952) and the so-called lost decade (the 1990s) – the rather catastrophic collapse of the Japanese economy in 1990/1991 and its by now two-decade long impact on all aspects of life in Japan, for reflection is invariably a quest for alternative ideologies and practices that would otherwise have been drowned out by the dominant ideology. It is perhaps unremarkable, then, that all proposals relating to language planning developed during the Meiji period also saw a revival after 1945 (see Carroll, 2001: 51–71).

Perhaps the most famous and influential contribution to language-related discourse in the post-war period was that of Shiga Naoya, who submitted a four-page essay to the influential journal Kaizō in March 1946. While Mori Arinori’s proposal to introduce English is both well known and frequently made reference to (e.g. Coulmas, 1985; Lee, 1990, 1996; Neustupný, 1995), Shiga’s proposal attracted relatively little attention among linguists. Nevertheless, Shiga’s proposal deserves our attention because his essay illustrates the fundamental principles at work in language ideology, and because it played a defining role in the re-affirmation of Meiji language ideology in post-war Japan.

Shiga’s suggestion to replace Japanese with French was in many ways even more adventurous than Mori’s 1872 proposal to replace it with English. In the late-19th century, Japanese faced a multitude of problems related to its development and adaptation to the demands of modernity. No

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