Exploring the Factors Behind the Evolution of Japanese Characters

2024/10/31

I teach Japanese linguistics in the Major in Japanese Literature. When I tell people I study the Japanese language, they often say they feel like I'm checking to see if their Japanese is correct. However, I want to assure you that most modern researchers of Japanese are not studying to act as guardians of the language, so there's no need to be intimidated.

So, what do researchers of Japanese actually do? While studying the Japanese language is our common ground, the subjects and approaches are diverse. Many, of course, focus on modern standard Japanese or the language of famous classical works, but others work on reconstructing the state of the language before written records, or on documenting languages that are now disappearing (obsolete words or dialects with no remaining speakers) and newly emerging languages (new words and grammar in various regions). Despite minor differences, I suppose our job is to record and elucidate the facts and mechanisms related to the Japanese language.

As for what I do, while broadly teaching the mechanisms of modern Japanese, I research changes in "the characters most widely used by native speakers to write Japanese" (hereafter simply referred to as Japanese characters). I have been particularly interested in the transformation of characters in the 19th century. The 19th century was when Napoleon swept across Europe, the Taiping Rebellion occurred, and the Exposition Universelle was held in Paris. In Japan, there were changes corresponding to global movements, such as the establishment of the Ezo bugyō, the Bunsei Reforms, the Meiji Restoration, and the promulgation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan. To put it very broadly, Japanese characters also changed from the sōrōbun style and gyōsho/sōsho script (the so-called "kuzushiji," or illegible characters) to the de-aru style and kaisho script. Although writing style is not directly related to characters, I include it because the purpose of writing greatly influences the choice of characters. In my doctoral dissertation, I studied the phenomenon within this transition where, in 1900, the types of hiragana were unified into the current set, and all others were eliminated as hentaigana.

You might be surprised that there are still unresolved issues in such a recent matter, but the circumstances surrounding why the current hiragana were chosen had not been sufficiently examined. In Japan, public records are often not well preserved, making it difficult to trace the process in detail, and it is no longer possible to clarify what discussions led to the decision. However, by focusing on the control of characters in private-sector textbooks of the Meiji period—an area previously overlooked—I succeeded in shedding light on the practices in the field and capturing this change (published in 2021 under the title "Kindai Hiragana Taikei no Seiritsu").

While this is merely a phenomenon of a specific period, it seems quite remarkable that a previously stable writing system undergoes change and then stabilizes again (as if nothing had happened!). Without even looking at writing systems around the world, Japanese kana themselves originated from the introduction of kanji, which were adapted to write Japanese, and at some point, they gained morphological independence to become the pre-modern kana. Kanji and the various alphabets also have long histories of change.

Of course, compiling the changes that have occurred in individual characters has yielded immense results, but in reality, there seems to be surprisingly little research into the human background behind such phenomena. It's not that I'm not moved by the beauty of calligraphy, but my interest seems to lie more in this direction than in debating which is the best. Believing that the study of kana and gyōsho/sōsho kanji will surely contribute to the formulation of a general theory of character change, I am currently advancing my research.

*Affiliation, job title, etc., are as of the time of the interview.