Registers of Japanese
The Japanese of today are far more thoroughly disconnected from their past, particularly the recent past, than anyone in the West.
Someone asked in the comments to my last paid post about the debate over whether to render the text into “postwar style” that Mishima had with the publishers. Since the English-speaking general public may not be familiar with these matters, and since they are in fact at the heart of a major transformation in postwar thought and culture the like of which is completely impossible in the West for reasons that will become clear, I thought I would write a longer post about this.
I. The Pre-1868 Linguistic Landscape
Prior to 1868 Japan had no standardized language in the modern sense. Instead, three broadly-defined registers of writing existed.
Classical Chinese, known in Japan as 漢文 kanbun lit. Han writing, and Classical Japanese, the full grammar of which is based on the language of the tenth-century Heian Court, were used in government and in all serious intellectual and historical writing. “Pure” - from the perspective of actual Chinese it was broken and heavily Japanized - Classical Chinese was more commonly used by the warrior caste and by scholars of Chinese and Buddhist learning, while pure Classical Japanese was generally used by those who stood against Sino-Buddhist thought and sought to write from a purely Japanese perspective.
It was of course more complicated than that. The Japanese never read Classical Chinese as Chinese, but employed a curious method known as 漢文訓読 kanbun kundoku, literally Japanese reading of Han writing. Japanese readers would take a Classical Chinese sentence and, without bothering themselves with the niceties of actually learning Classical Chinese, translate it on the fly into Japanese. Tokugawa scholar Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728) seems to have been the first and perhaps the only major Japanese figure to object to this method.
Various mixed registers also existed, e.g. the sōrōbun epistolary style, which combined Classical Chinese with Classical Japanese. As those who have been to the Yūshūkan and have seen the correspondence between Konoe Fumimaro and Tōjō Hideki on display there are aware, this style was still in use in some circles until 1945. There were also texts of Buddhist and Sinitic thought written in Classical Japanese, for example the numerous collections of stories of karma and nirvana known in Japanese as setsuwashū.
And although the full range of Classical Japanese grammar used across time was set down in the Heian period, actual usage was increasingly simplified, incorporated spoken vocabulary and grammar, and, due to phonetic changes, amassed what would have been considered orthographical errors in the tenth century. A standard Classical orthography based on the original pronunciation of the Heian period would not be reconstructed until the Tokugawa era by Keichū (1640-1701).
But the main point is that all serious intellectual, political, and historical, and a significant amount of literary, writing was done using these two languages.
The spoken language was also used in writing, mainly in theater and other types of art, but, due to the lack of a standard, was strongly influenced by the dialect of the writer.
II. 1868-1945
The linguistic landscape changed dramatically after the Restoration. Although Classical Chinese continued to be used in some corners, e.g. the Dainihonshi, the first publications of modern European-style history, and for a few years state documents, the drive to distance Japan from all things Sinitic rapidly led to the abolition of Classical Chinese and its total replacement with Classical Japanese using the reconstructed Classical orthography developed by Keichū and his students. Nevertheless, this Classical Japanese was largely written in a style known as 漢文直訳体 kanbun chokuyakutai, or literal translation from Classical Chinese, which retained the stylistic features and heavily restricted range of grammar used in kanbun kundoku. This type of writing was used in all government documents, including the military, until shortly after the war.
This style also predominated in non-fiction writing by the general public until the Taishō period (1912-1926), when a register that mixed Modern Japanese grammar, vocabulary, and diction with greater or lesser amounts of Classical Japanese influence came into general use. In many cases, the only thing that distinguished this register from the Classical style used by the government was the use of the modern copula.
The world of literature followed a rather different trajectory. The Classical language was in broad use for the first two decades of the Meiji era, and a very small number of figures like Higuchi Ichiyō wrote in an extremely archaic, pseudo-Heian period style. But with the birth of a modern standardized spoken language based on the speech of bureaucrats in Tōkyō, the literary world moved away from Classical Japanese and toward the use of the spoken language, albeit with some remaining Classical influence. As a result, almost all modern Japanese literature from 1900 onward has been written in Modern Japanese.
Thus, the writings of Natsume Sōseki are in a form of Modern Japanese that is readily comprehensible to any educated Japanese man and woman or bookish child today. Those who do not read books cannot understand him, but such people cannot understand much else that is written, either.
III. Postwar
The educated, the bookish, and the politically active of the prewar period could readily read and understand texts written in Modern Japanese, Classical Japanese, and Classical Chinese. Their actual beliefs notwithstanding, they had access to the full range of thought, literature, and experience of their predecessors in its Sinitic, Buddhist, and other varieties.
This is no longer the case. The SCAP occupational regime and its supporters summarily abolished the use of the Classical language, reformed kana orthography to bring it into line with the pronunciation of the modern standard language, and simplified and heavily restricted the range of Chinese characters in use. This has made all prewar writing in its original form incomprehensible, or so difficult to read that it is as good as incomprehensible to all but a few trained specialists and die-hard fanatics. The few who held out against this by continuing to write in prewar characters and orthography like Mishima, Fukuda Tsuneari, Maruya Saiichi, and author of A Complete History of the Greater East Asian War Hattori Takushirō have inadvertently made their writings either largely inaccessible to posterity or at the mercy of the companies that control publication and distribution of their texts. As for the prewar world, what is not selected for translation and republication in Modern Japanese and postwar orthography remains locked away, forever to remain unknown and inaccessible to the general public.
Any Westerner who so desires can directly access the world of ideas that was prohibited after 1945. But the average educated Japanese, whose knowledge of the language of that time is limited to what is necessary to pass a few tests, cannot. As a result, the Japanese of today are far more thoroughly disconnected from their past, particularly the recent past, than anyone in the West.
Thank you for this very clear and comprehensive article. It seems like a tragic loss for modern Japanese people that I did not appreciate before now. Do I understand correctly that Mishima wrote in the older pre-war form and that a Japanese person today without special education would have to read him in "translation"? Is it even possible that older translations into foreign languages are truer to the original ideas than translations into today's Japanese?
Fenollosa claimed that the systems of Japanese pronunciation of Classical Chinese are likely far closer to their original pronunciations than contemporary Chinese reconstructions, given Japanese's capacity for phonetic encodings. This makes sense to me, but I've found absolutely no discussion of this question in anglophone scholarship. Do you think this is the case?