Collected Lectures of Linguistic Ecologist Takao Suzuki: Let's Stop Looking at the World Only Through Human Eyes

2020/02/19

Belatedly, about four or five years ago, as I approached the age of 90, I realized that the Japanese language and culture unique to us Japanese people have a truly interesting effect and influence on foreigners who have had some opportunity to come into contact with Japan. I decided to call this phenomenon the "tatamize effect" of the Japanese language and culture.

The central part of the mechanism of this "tatamize effect" that I named is that, despite Japan now being a modern major power on par with the Western powers, Japanese people still retain the feeling of valuing the relationship of coexistence and co-prosperity between ourselves and all of the surrounding nature in a so-called polytheistic form, involving various fears and respects for nature. This sense was something that ancient humans everywhere on Earth possessed, but in modern times, it has been almost entirely lost under the influence of monotheistic countries such as those in the West and Islamic nations. For nearly 2,000 years, for very fortunate geopolitical reasons, the Japanese people have continued to hold onto this.

However, I found it extremely difficult to gain the interest of Western researchers and their loyal non-Western associates on this issue. This is because modern Western linguistics focuses on the phonetic and physical elucidation of language, clings to a human-centered and human-supremacist perspective, and has not been able to free itself from the biased perspective of evolutionary anthropology.

Therefore, in my previous book, "Japanese Sensibility Will Change the World: A Linguistic Ecological Theory of Civilization," I addressed in detail the fact—not very well recognized even in Japan—that the relationship between the Japanese language and the common Japanese people is actually completely different from that in Western countries. For Japanese people, the Japanese language is more than just a tool for communication between people; it is culture itself, reflecting the Japanese worldview.

And this book with the long title is a record of my lectures on the theme of what kind of mechanisms and aspects human language has in the first place, which will be useful for understanding what the "tatamize power" of the Japanese language is. Based on these, in my next book that I am currently planning, I intend to finally approach the heart of "tatamize power," but the question is whether my strength will hold out until then.

Collected Lectures of Linguistic Ecologist Takao Suzuki: Let's Stop Looking at the World Only Through Human Eyes

Takao Suzuki

Fuzambo International

208 pages, 1,800 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.