Gender, language and ideology : a genealogy of Japanese women's language 2014030879, 9789027206497, 9789027269294

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Gender, Language and Ideology

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Volume 58 Gender, Language and Ideology. A genealogy of Japanese women’s language by Momoko Nakamura

Gender, Language and Ideology A genealogy of Japanese women’s language

Momoko Nakamura Kanto Gakuin University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nakamura, Momoko, 1955[Onna kotoba wa tsukurareru. English] Gender, Language and Ideology : A genealogy of Japanese women’s language / Momoko Nakamura. p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 58) “The Japanese version of this book, Onna kotoba wa tsukurareru [Constructing Women’s Language], came out in 2007 and received the 27th Yamakawa Kikue Award, which recognizes outstanding research in women’s studies, and I was invited to speak about Japanese women’s language by universities, women’s organizations, teachers’ unions and government agencies all over Japan.” Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Japanese language--Sex differences. 2. Japanese language--Social aspects. 3. Women-Japan--Languages--History. 4. Japanese language--Sex differences--History. I. Title. PL698.W65N3413 2014 306.44’29560082--dc23 2014030879 isbn 978 90 272 0649 7 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 6929 4 (Eb)

© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents Acknowledgements List of figures and tables List of abbreviations in transcriptions Notes on Japanese names, the Romanization of Japanese language and translation of Japanese into English

vii xi xiii

Introduction

xv 1

part 1.  Women’s speech as the object of regulation: The premodern period   chapter 1   The norms of feminine speech

39

  chapter 2   Normalization of court-women’s speech

55

part 2.  Gender and national language: Nation-state building in the early modern period   chapter 3   Construction of a national language for men

77

  chapter 4   Modernization of the norms of feminine speech

87

  chapter 5   Creating indexicality: Schoolgirl speech

103

  chapter 6   Masculinizing the national language

137

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part 3.  Women’s language into national language: The impact of war   chapter 7   Women’s language as imperial tradition: Legitimating colonization

159

  chapter 8   Gendering of the national language under national mobilization

171

part 4.  Essentializing women’s language: The postwar U.S. Occupation,   chapter 9   Women’s language as reflection of femininity

199

  chapter 10   A gendered Japanese national language: Symbol of patriarchy

209

Conclusion Going beyond the gendered linguistic ideologies

227

References Index

231 251

Acknowledgements I owe my greatest thanks to Yoshihiko Ikegami for having taught me the fun of learning about language and encouraged me to continue my research from the time I entered the Graduate School of Sophia University in Tokyo to study linguistics in 1978. I knew that I wanted to study Japanese language from a feminist perspective, but in those days, there was no field called language and gender studies in Japan. After finishing my MA, I was looking for an area of research that would give me some theoretical ideas to think about the relationship between language and gender. In 1986, Dr. Ikegami introduced me to Deborah Cameron’s Feminism and Linguistic Theory; I was delighted to find someone doing what I wanted to do and decided to translate the book into Japanese. I finished the translation in 1990 and it was published later that year as Feminizumu to Gengo Riron. It took me four years, in part because I had my first child, but that was the beginning of my career as a student of language and gender. The Japanese version of this book, Onna kotoba wa tsukurareru [Constructing Women’s Language], came out in 2007 and received the 27th Yamakawa Kikue Award, which recognizes outstanding research in women’s studies, and I was invited to speak about Japanese women’s language by universities, women’s organizations, teachers’ unions and government agencies all over Japan. I am grateful to the committee of the Yamakawa Kikue Award and the chair of the committee, Teruko Inoue, for giving me the opportunity to talk about my research to a wide audience. Many attendees asked me why women’s language became such a socially salient notion in Japan. I learned that people wanted linguists to explain why and how language and gender were related as they were. I started revising the key ideas in my previous book, this time targeting general readers and reframing my arguments from the perspective that the historical discourse approach can give adequate explanations concerning the relationship between language and gender. The new book came out as Onnna kotoba to Nihongo [Women’s Language and Japanese] in 2012. During the five years it took to complete the work, I presented an earlier version of this book at IGALA (International Gender and Language Association), IPrA (International Pragmatics Association), EASJ (European Association of Japanese Studies), EASL (European Association of Sociolinguistic), AAS (American Anthropology Society) and CAS (Canadian Anthropology Society).

viii Gender, language and ideology

I appreciated the insightful comments given to me by the audiences attending my presentations; yet, at the same time, I realized the challenge of formulating my arguments in a meaningful way for non-Japanese audiences. I added new documents and data, attempting to make my points more readily understandable for non-Japanese audiences. In 2010, I was invited to give a plenary speech at the 6th International Gender and Language Conference, held in Tokyo, and presented my arguments with the new materials and data. The Introduction of this book is based on that speech. I am grateful to those who made me aware of the importance of sexuality in analyzing the relationships between language and gender. Learning from previous studies on sexuality and English language, I devoted one chapter to language and sexuality in Kotoba to jendaa [Language and Gender] published in 2001, the first book in Japanese to extensively discuss language and sexuality. I included data from a pornographic novel in Chapter 5 of this book, following Deborah Cameron’s advice gleaned at the 3rd International Gender and Language Conference in 2004 (for which Sally McConnell-Ginet had invited me to make a presentation). An earlier version of Chapter 5 of this book, about the construction of schoolgirl speech, was published as “Creating Indexicality: Schoolgirl Speech in Meiji Japan” in The Language and Sexuality Reader (Routledge 2006, pp. 270–284) edited by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick. I would also like to thank Shigeko Kumagai, Kyoko Sato, and Claire Maree. I learned a lot from discussions with them, when we translated Cameron and Kulick’s Language and Sexuality into Japanese in 2009. Janet Holmes and Meredith Marra also included my essay “Women’s and Men’s Languages as Heterosexual Resource: Power and Intimacy in Japanese Spam E-mail” in Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse they edited in 2010. Thanks are due to those who gave me opportunities to present my research at international conferences and to publish in journals. Miyako Inoue invited me to join the panel that she organized for the tenth International Pragmatics Conference in 2007. I gained key critical insights about the theoretical development of anthropological linguistics from her works. In 2008, I wrote an essay “Masculinity and National Language: The Silent Construction of a Dominant Language Ideology” for the special issue of Gender and Language edited by Shigeko Okamoto and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith. Their comments helped me write about Japanese language and Japanese women in English. Chapter 3 of this book, about the implicit masculinity of Japanese national language, is based on that essay. I joined the series of lectures about gender and violence organized by my colleague, Hirofumi Hayashi, held at Center of Lifelong Study, Kanto Gakuin University. While preparing the book, Renzoku koogi booryoku to jendaa [Series of Lectures: Violence and Gender], published in 2009, I had an insightful discussion with the co-authors, Hirofumi Hayashi, Makoto Hosoya, Chieko Nishiyama and



Acknowledgements

Emiko Miki. I reflect the insights I gained from them in Part 3 of this book, in describing the process in which linguists started praising women’s language as a Japanese tradition during WWI and WWII to legitimate colonization. Also in 2009, I joined a panel on language and affect organized by Jie Yang at the Canadian Anthropology Association Conference and participated in a workshop with Jie Yang and Bonnie McElhinny. They helped me formulate my perspective on language and affect. In Chapters 7 and 10 of this book, I discuss the affective attachment that Japanese have with respect to Japanese women’s language. A shortened version of Chapters 7 and 10 of this book was published as “Affective Attachments to Japanese Women’s Language: Language, Gender and Emotion in Colonialism” in The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia (2014 Routledge, pp. 177–197) edited by Jie Yang. In 2010, I submitted an earlier English version of this book as my doctoral dissertation to Ochanomizu Women’s University in Tokyo. I appreciate the comments given by the members of dissertation committee, Kazuko Takemura, Kaoru Tachi, Midori Takasaki, Hiromi Okazaki, and Edward J. Schaefer. I am particularly grateful to the comments given by Kazuko Takemura, chair of the committee, concerning the theoretical framework of my dissertation, which helped me revise the manuscript for this book. I also want to thank her for agreeing to become chair of my dissertation committee, even though she was battling a severe illness. Learning about this later, I suffered from a guilty conscience. She passed away at the end of 2011. I would like to recognize her invaluable help and pray for the repose of her soul. I am grateful to the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (grant no. 20310155) provided by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2008–2010. I would also like to show my appreciation for the special research grant provided by the Economics Society of the College of Economics, Kanto Gakuin University in 2011. I also want to thank the library staff of Kanto Gakuin University. Without their help, I could not have gathered all the data I cite in this book. Finally, I would like to thank Ruth Wodak, Greg Myers and Johann Unger for giving me an opportunity to publish my work in English and to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments to help me revise the manuscript and make it readable for non-Japanese. Thanks are also due to John K. Gillespie for having patiently helped me write my research in English over the years, since we met at University of the Pacific in 1976. I am also grateful to Isja Conen and Maartje Nuijten of John Benjamins for helping me with excellent editorial work.

ix

List of figures and tables

Figures Figure 1.1 Mi no katami [Half of the Body] (Muromachi 1392–1573). Figure 1.2 Kaibara Ekiken (1710) Joshi o oshiyuru hoo [How to Educate Women]. Figure 1.3 Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1716). Figure 2.1 Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692). Figure 5.1 Female students in hakama around1877. Figure 5.2 Female students in kimono in 1885. Figure 5.3 Female students in Western dress in 1886. Figure 5.4 Female students in maroon trouser skirts in 1900. Figure 5.5 Female students in maroon trouser skirts at an athletic meet in the 1900s. Figure 5.6 Photographs of professional geisha in the schoolgirl uniform in the 1900s. Figure 5.7 Female students in Baika joshi no den [The Story of Miss Apricot Scent]. Figure 5.8 Attitudes of four female student characters in Yabu no uguisu [Bush Warbler] (1888). Figure 5.9 Frivolous female students speaking “teyo dawa speech”. Figure 5.10 Makaze koikaze [Magic Wind, Love Wind] in the Yomiuri shimbun, March 14th, 1903. Figure 6.1 Japan Reader Volume 2. Figure 6.2 Gendered nationalization and linguistic ideologies in Japan’s modernization. Figure 8.1 Lesson 16 Heitai gokko [Play Soldiers] of Asahi tokuhon (1941). Figure 8.2 Genealogy of gender-related linguistic ideologies. Figure 10.1 Unit 7 Yukidaruma [Snowman] in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon.

42 48 49 67 106 106 107 107 110 111 113 121 123 126 148 154 185 193 210

xii Gender, language and ideology

Tables Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 6.5 Table 6.6

Table 8.1 Table 8.2 Table 8.3 Table 8.4 Table 9.1 Table 10.1 Table 10.2 Table 10.3 Table 10.4

Women’s conduct books which list court-women’s speech. Court-women’s speech in sample sentences in letter books. Discourses on women’s speech in conduct books in the Meiji period (1868–1912). Use of schoolboy features by the female students of Baika joshi no den (1885). Use of teyo, dawa, and noyo by the four female students of Yabu no uguisu. Linguistic features masculinized in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). Linguistic features feminized in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). Schoolboy linguistic features in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). The number of occurrences of schoolboy linguistic features in school readers (1886–1993). The number of units about good-wife-wise-mother in school readers (1886–1993). The rates of units using schoolboy linguistic features and units on good-wife-wise-mother in national-language readers (1886–1933). Linguistic features gendered in grammar textbooks from 1918 to 1945. Speakers of boku in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Speakers of watashi in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Sentence-final forms and interjections used differently according to the speaker’s gender in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Characteristics of and reasons for women’s language in Mashimo (1948). Number and percentage of units erased by ink in the Inkerased Readers. Speakers of boku in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954). Speakers of watashi in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954). Sentence-final forms used differently according to the speaker’s gender in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954).

67 69 89 114 121 142 143 146 150 151 151

180 183 184 186 202 217 218 219 220

List of abbreviations in transcriptions The following is a list of abbreviations used in the transcripts. GEN GOAL HON NEG NOM OBJ

genitive particle goal marker honorific marker negative nominative particle object marker

PAST QUOT SFP SFX TOP VEF

past marker quotative particle sentence final particle verb suffix topic marker verb-ending form

Notes on Japanese names, the Romanization of Japanese language and translation of Japanese into English In the main text, Japanese proper names are denoted with the family name preceding the first name. In the references, to prevent misunderstanding, for the authors of Japanese publications, colons are put after the family names. The modified Hepburn system is used to Romanize the Japanese language. However, long vowels, including those of o and u, are marked with additional vowels rather than with macrons, except the cases the Romanized words without double vowels are well known such as Tokyo and Osaka. All citations are translated by the writer (cf. Introduction, note 21). Japanese words, except proper nouns, are written in italics with their English translations or explanations in parentheses. The titles of Japanese publications are not capitalized except the first letter, with their English translations or explanations in square brackets.

Introduction Women’s language is a socially salient linguistic concept and a hegemonic cultural notion in Japan. Many Japanese believe that women’s language has a long history peculiar to the Japanese language and consider women’s language as one of its most crucial characteristics. Kindaichi Kyoosuke, one of the founders of modern Japanese linguistics, states: “In the Japanese language, masculine speech and feminine speech are clearly distinguished and we have never heard of such a subtle distinction being observed in the European languages, from English, German, and French to Latin, Greek and Sanskrit” (1942: 293).1 Women’s language is such a salient and hegemonic notion that it has always attracted national attention in Japan. National surveys on Japanese language, conducted annually by a governmental agency and a national broadcasting corporation, often ask people whether women and men should speak differently, whether women use feminine linguistic features of women’s language, and whether women should speak women’s language.2 People incessantly write letters to newspapers criticizing and complaining about the rough speech of women they witnessed in a train, on the street, and in a store, claiming that these women destroy Japanese language. As a part of common discipline, parents often scold young girls who use vulgar speech. Moreover, as we will soon see in this chapter, numerous etiquette books on feminine speech are published every year preaching to women that they can be beautiful, attractive, and loved by speaking polite, 1. This and the subsequent citations are my translations. I added emphases to the data throughout the book except those noting that the emphasis is original. 2. Both the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachoo) and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) annually conduct a national survey on Japanese language, which often includes questions about women’s language. The 2000 National Survey on Japanese Language (Kokugo ni kansuru seron choosa), conducted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, for instance, was distributed to 3,000 people throughout Japan and included this item: “It is said that the differences between men’s speech and women’s speech have decreased. Select the answer closest to what you think about it?” The very act of distributing, annually and to thousands of people, a statement implicitly presupposing that Japanese women and men have always spoken differently, transforms the survey statement into fact and becomes a self-fulfilling philosophy. The results show: (1) Men’s speech and women’s speech need not be different (7.8%), (2) We should accept the natural changes occurring in the respective speeches of men and women (34.8%), (3) Men’s speech and women’s speech should be different (52.0%), and (4) Other answers (5.3%). About half the respondents prefer women and men to speak differently.

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soft, feminine women’s language. The hegemonic notion of women’s language also constitutes a part of legitimate knowledge taught in Japanese language grammar books and school textbooks. In the following chapters, it will be amply demonstrated that Japanese-language school textbooks and grammar books teach gender-differentiated usages of particular linguistic features.3 All elementary school Japanese-language textbooks used today in Japan, for instance, present gender-differentiated use of first-person pronouns, watashi for girls and boku for boys, in their model lessons. The gender-differentiated usages are simply presented and no textbook explains why girls and boys use different pronouns, or even prescribe the usage, making the gender-differentiated use of pronouns as taken-for-granted common sense.4 Most Japanese consider women’s language as the style of speech actually spoken by women. I have asked many Japanese of different gender, age and occupation, “what is women’s language,” and all of them answered that it was the speech spoken by women. Such understanding of women’s language is most clearly manifested in dictionary definitions of the phrase, “women’s language.” The item of women’s language is cited in most large Japanese language dictionaries, either as onna kotoba, joseigo, or fujingo, which all indicate women’s language.5 The latest 3. Hanashi kotoba no bumpoo: Kotoba zukai hen [Grammar of spoken language: On language usage] by Mio Isago (1995[1942]) is an early example of a Japanese-language grammar book devoting a whole chapter to women’s language. 4. Nakamura (2009) examines the five elementary-school textbooks of Japanese language for first grade (six-year-old children), used in the 2008 school year. All of them include units in which a girl uses the female first-person pronoun watashi and a boy uses the male first-person pronoun boku. Kabashima, et al. (2007: 70, 75), for instance, has a unit, Minna ni shirasetai koto (Things I want to tell everybody), which encourages students to do “show and tell.” In this unit, a boy with a book in his hand is saying, “Boku wa toshokan de kono hon o mitsuke mashita (I found this book in the library),” using the male first-person pronoun, boku. In contrast, a girl says, “Watashi wa koominkan no koosaku kyooshitsu ni ikimashita (I went to the do-it-yourself class at the public hall),” using the female first-person pronoun, watashi. There is no account of why the girl and the boy use different pronouns. 5. Among a large number of terms referring to women in Japanese, four basic words are onna, josei, fujin, and joshi. The word, onna, though the most basic word, is given sexual connotation as shown in usage such as onna ni naru (to become a woman) which means that the woman had a sexual experience. The association with sexual connotation has semantically derogated the term. In the news, therefore, when a woman is an assaulter, she is referred to by onna, while the female victim is called josei. The term, josei, as a result, is the most widely used term for woman nowadays. The term, fujin, used to carry the most elegant and refined connotation, as in the usage fujin fuku (lady’s clothes) as contrasted with shinshi fuku (gentleman’s clothes). As the term, fujin, has acquired the connotation of being old-fashioned, however, the term josei has taken its place. Kokuritsu fujin kyooiku kaikan (National Ladies’ Education Center of Japan), for example, was renamed Kokuritsu josei kyooiku kaikan in 2001. The term, joshi, has been mainly used for



Introduction

edition of one of the most prestigious Japanese language dictionaries, Koojien [Wide Garden of Words], the sixth edition, defines women’s language, under the word josei (woman) as joseigo, as follows: [joseigo] A style of speech peculiar (tokuyuu) to women in the uses of particular vocabularies, styles, and pronunciation. In the Heian period (from the eighth to twelfth centuries), it was found in the avoidance of Chinese words (kango), while, after the Muromachi period (from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries), it became salient in nyooboo kotoba (speech created by women working in the imperial palace) and yuujogo (speech used by the women in licensed quarters). In contemporary speech, it is also observed in the use of the [polite] prefix o, the sentence-final particles such as yo and wa, and in the areas of vocabulary and pronunciation. Fujin-go (lady’s speech). (Koojien the 6th edition, 2008)

It defines Japanese women’s language from three aspects and similar definitions are found in most dictionaries. By looking at each aspect, we can clarify the beliefs and assumptions concerning the notion of women’s language shared by Japanese people. First, it defines women’s language as “speech peculiar (tokuyuu) to women.” The word, tokuyuu, means “peculiar, characteristic or special,” implying that women’s language is spoken only by women, or that women actually speak women’s language. Mashimo Saburoo, a Japanese linguist who wrote one of the earliest books on women’s language, defines women’s language “as speech spoken by women” (Mashimo 1948: 3). Given this widespread notion that women’s language equates with the way Japanese women actually use language, readers’ letters to newspapers often complain that women’s actual speech destroys the tradition of women’s language and parents are expected to discipline their daughters’ speech. Second, the definition refers to nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech), speech created by women working in the imperial palace since the fourteenth century and yuujogo (play-women’s speech), speech used by women in the licensed quarters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as examples of women’s language in the past, implying that Japanese women have spoken differently from men for a long time and that such speech has naturally formed what we now call women’s language.6 If Japanese women have spoken differently from men schoolchildren and athletes because of its youthful and energetic connotation. Recently, more women started referring to themselves with joshi, probably because the word josei is gradually becoming old-fashioned. In translating contemporary Japanese discourses, therefore, I use “woman” for onna and josei, “lady” for fujin, and “girl” for joshi. 6. For more on nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech), see Chapter 2. Yuujo, (lit. play woman), refers to women working in red-light districts in large cities in Japan from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Contrary to the common image associated with the word “prostitute,” play women were professional entertainers, respected for their discipline, talent, and beauty. Upper-ranked play women were highly skilled professionals, competent in

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since the fourteenth century, women’s language becomes a tradition which has a long history peculiar to the Japanese language. Third, the definition cites specific linguistic features, such as the polite prefix o and the sentence-final particles, yo and wa, as characteristics found in contemporary women’s speech, again implying that women’s language is the style of speech spoken by women.7 Behind this definition lies the assumption that, as Japanese women have spoken differently from men for a long time, the style of speech women have spoken has naturally constructed the linguistic notion of women’s language. The reason why women and men speak differently is often accounted for by women’s femininity. While the dictionary definition carefully avoids referring to femininity, Horii Reichi, a contemporary Japanese linguist, states that women’s speech is soft and indirect and “such women’s linguistic expressions are rooted in women’s common sensitivity based on their physiological nature” (Horii 1993: 101). What he means by “women’s common sensitivity” is what is generally called femininity.8 Women speak differently from men, he claims, because women use language based on femininity they all have in common. It is widely accepted in Japan, therefore, that Japanese women’s actual speech naturally and directly formed the notion of women’s language. The conceptualization of women’s language as women’s actual speech has also been the fundamental presupposition in previous studies of Japanese women’s language. Japanese women’s language has been studied mainly in two areas, Nihongo gaku (Japanese language studies) and shakai gengogaku (sociolinguistics). Nihongo flower arrangement, tea ceremony, musical instruments, singing, and dancing, and many of them were able to read and write. Yuujogo (play-women’s speech) is presumed to have developed as a common speech among play women who came from different areas of Japan with all their different varieties of local speech. Some researchers have pointed out the influence of yuujogo on the formation of women’s language (Sugimoto 1985; Ide & Terada 1998). Exactly what features of yuujogo filtered into the present notion of women’s language needs further elaboration. 7. Other than the polite prefix and the sentence-final particles, dictionaries categorize particular personal pronouns, interjections, and many other phonological and grammatical features as women’s language. The linguistic features cited as women’s language, however, differ depending on a dictionary and a different edition of the same dictionary, showing the difficulty of defining Japanese women’s language simply by the use of particular linguistic features. In contrast to Koojien, for example, Seisenban Nihon kokugo daijiten 2 [Concise Edition of Japanese National Language Great Dictionary 2], published in 2006 by Shoogakukan includes four sentence-final particles wa, dawa, yo, and noyo as women’s language. 8. Note here that Horii interprets femininity as if it is based on biological sex differences, as shown in “based on their physiological nature.” Even after feminism has pointed out the sociocultural construction of gender, many linguists still claim the biological foundation of femininity when they talk about women’s language (For further argument, see Note 1 of Chapter 4).



Introduction

gaku, or kokugogaku (national language studies), is the older, dominant field concerned specifically with Japanese language focusing on historical studies. The researchers of Nihongo gaku have established the study of Japanese language as an important field in Japan by producing dictionaries, Japanese-language school textbooks and grammar books and, as evident throughout this book, have substantially influenced language policies in Japan. Concerning the examination of the relationships between women and language, those researchers have mainly contributed by finding and analyzing historical documents. The court-women’s speech cited in the above dictionary definition is one of the examples revealed by their historical studies, as in works such as Kunita Yuriko (1964, 1977) and Sugimoto Tsutomu (1985, 1998). As the researchers of Nihongo gaku have written Japanese dictionaries, many other dictionaries also cite the court-women’s speech as an ancient example of Japanese women’s language. Demonstrated by the dictionary definition of women’s language cited above, the field of Nihongo gaku assumes that women’s language is naturally derived from women’s actual speech. The field of shakai gengogaku (sociolinguistics), in contrast, studies Japanese language based on the theories and frameworks proposed in sociolinguistic studies of English language, characterized by its empirical approach. Sociolinguistic studies in the 1970s and 80s also considered women’s language, in essence, as the language characteristically or exclusively used by women.9 Japanese sociolinguists thus tried to delineate the whole picture of women’s language by conducting empirical studies of linguistic interactions. They assumed that informants could be neatly divided into women and men, compared their linguistic behavior, and presented the differences between the two groups as linguistic gender differences (See Yukawa & Saito 2004, for review). The addition of gender into linguistic study as another demographic factor, along with class and regional factors, thus directly developed into the so-called gender-difference studies. These studies suffered, however, from the circular explanations given to the research results, because they mostly took for granted that the observed gender differences were simply accounted for by the speaker’s gender. Such research presented what Deborah Cameron (1990: 85) has called “correlational fallacy”; it merely shows correlations between certain linguistic variables and a speaker’s gender, and does not in fact explain why such correlation occurs. It has been assumed in both Nihongo gaku (Japanese language studies) and Japanese sociolinguistics in the 1970s and 80s, therefore, that Japanese women’s actual speech naturally and directly evolved into the notion of women’s 9. The researchers of gender-and-English-language studies in the 1970s and 80s also considered women’s language as speech spoken by women. In fact, some researchers analyzed women’s actual interactions to argue against the stereotypes of English women’s language listed by Robin Lakoff in Language and Woman’s Place (1975) (cf. Dubois and Crouch 1975).

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language. I refer to the two fields as “Japanese linguistics” and the researchers in both fields as “linguists” throughout the book.10 Nevertheless, recent studies of women and language have pointed out that the conceptualization of women’s language as women’s actual speech is problematic. The largest problem is the fact that women’s linguistic practices are too diverse to naturally form a single category of women’s language. As we will soon see in the following section, empirical studies on women’s linguistic interactions have demonstrated that women change their ways of speaking according to the relationship with the listener, the purpose of the conversation, and many other situational factors. Women change their way of speaking as they age. The heterogeneity of speech is not confined to women. All speakers change their ways of speaking. It would be very difficult for anyone to speak exactly in the same manner all the time and at every stage along life’s way. If our linguistic practice necessarily changes and varies according to contextual factors, it is impossible to assume that women’s heterogeneous practice naturally evolved into a single category of women’s language. To consider women’s language as the style of speech spoken by women based on their common femininity, moreover, defines women’s linguistic practices as if they are homogeneous and makes the heterogeneity and creativity of women’s speech invisible, deviant and exceptional. We should abandon the prevalent belief that Japanese women’s actual speech naturally and directly formed the notion of women’s language. Once we abandon the belief, new questions arise concerning the characteristics of Japanese women’s language and its differences from men’s language. First, while Japanese regard women’s language as the norm of female speech, they do not regard men’s language as the norm of male speech. Women’s language is considered as a polite, soft, and feminine style of speaking, so female children are often told by their parents to speak more politely because they are women. Men’s language is considered as a rough, direct, and masculine style, but no parents tell their sons to speak more roughly. Why and how has only women’s language gained such normative function? (Part1 of the book will attempt to answer the first question.) Second, women’s and men’s languages are differently arranged in their 10. The researchers in kokugogaku and Nihongo gaku are called kokugogakusha (national-language researchers) and those in sociolinguistics are called gengogakusha (linguists) in Japan. The Society for Japanese Linguistics changed their name from kokugogaku (national-language studies) to Nihongo gaku (Japanese-language studies) in 2004, aiming to synthesize linguistic theories developed overseas into their studies. The change of attitude by the national-language researchers has enhanced communication between the researchers in Nihongo gaku and sociolinguistics and it has become less meaningful to make any distinction between the two fields. I thus refer to the two fields as “Japanese linguistics” and the researchers in both fields as “linguists” throughout the book.



Introduction

relations to standard Japanese. Standard female speakers are generally expected to speak women’s language, especially in informal conversation. The most likely choice of male standard speakers, in contrast, is standard Japanese rather than men’s language, and the use of men’s language is restricted to a special situation in which a specific type of masculinity characterized by physicality, simplicity, violence, and aggressiveness, typically connected to sports, fighting, and war, is emphasized. This indicates that standard Japanese speakers are generally expected to use women’s language or standard Japanese, but even men’s use of men’s language, though it is also a standard variety, is confined to a special occasion. Why is the use of men’s language restricted to a special occasion? (Chapter 3 takes up the second question.) Third, women’s language is assigned more values than femininity, such as the tradition of Japanese language, which is not attributed to men’s language. Why and how has women’s language become the tradition of Japanese language? (Chapter 7 will answer that question.) Fourth, what we call women’s language and men’s language are considered varieties of standard Japanese. While we can observe subtle differences between women’s and men’s speech in some regional varieties, many regional varieties lack the clear distinction as in standard Japanese between women’s and men’s languages. If women naturally speak differently from men because of their femininity, the distinction should also be found in regional dialects. Why is there such explicit distinction only in standard Japanese? (Chapter 8 will attempt to answer the fourth question.) Finally, how has the notion of women’s language become such a salient category in Japan? What historical and political processes made effect on the construction of Japanese women’s language? (The whole book will try to answer the final question.) As long as we equate women’s language with women’s actual linguistic practice, we cannot answer these questions. The purpose of this book is to examine the genealogy of Japanese women’s language, based on the historical-discourse approach, demonstrating that this approach is able to explain why and how the notion of women’s language has been constructed in Japan and assigned the values and characteristics described in the above five questions. The book, in other words, aims to show that, to deconstruct and denaturalize the relationships between gender and any language, and to give adequate explanations concerning why and how they are related as they are, we must take into consideration history, discourse and ideology. I will argue that Japanese women’s language is not a style of speaking that Japanese women have long been using over the centuries, but an ideological construct historically created by discourse, the ideologically-constructed representation of women’s linguistic practices. Specifically, I will redefine the notion of Japanese women’s language as an ideological construct consisting of a set of norms, knowledge, and values – norms operating as a powerful hegemonic construct of preferred feminine speech

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patterns, knowledge concerning the indexical associations between particular styles and linguistic features with particular feminine identity, and values such that women’s language is a tradition of the Japanese language that many Japanese women have spoken based on their “natural” femininity. Having explicitly distinguished those norms, knowledge and values from women’s actual linguistic practice, I will conduct historical-discourse analysis to describe their construction process in Japanese women’s language, starting from the premodern period of the thirteenth century to the immediate post-WWII years (1945–1952). I will analyze the discourse produced during that period, because, though I expect further analysis of the discourse produced before and after the period might well contribute to refining and re-enforcing my conclusions, my research to this point has made it amply clear that the analysis of the discourse during the period can respond quite persuasively to the above five questions concerning the characteristics of contemporary Japanese women’s language and its differences from men’s language, ultimately demonstrating the explanatory adequacy of historical-discourse analysis. By analyzing discourse produced during the period in question, I will try to show exactly why and how people believe that heterogeneous women’s linguistic practices came to constitute a homogeneous notion of women’s language, why and how particular characteristics or values have been assigned to the notion of women’s language, and why and how the notion of women’s language is conceptualized differently from that of men’s language. The analysis will reveal that gender has played a crucial role in the construction processes not only of gender-related linguistic categories, such as women’s language and men’s language, but also those categories seemingly unrelated to gender, such as honorific language, Japanese national language, standard Japanese, regional dialects and Japanese language. The investigation into the construction process of women’s language, I argue, necessarily involves the investigations into the construction processes of these categories, demonstrating that no analysis of linguistic categories is complete without taking gender into consideration. At the same time, by showing that the relationship between language and gender has been dynamically changing in the shifting historical, political, and economic processes, my analysis will demonstrate that any attempt to account for the construction of gender-related linguistic categories by gender alone runs the risk of reproducing the universal, essential conceptualization of gender. The book is not only about Japanese language but develops arguments with significant implications for researchers studying gender and language beyond Japanese. To that end, I will discuss the implications of the analysis in each chapter, attempting to frame them within a general discussion of language and gender. Analyzing the genealogy of women’s language, moreover, does not mean that the book is only about the past, simply describing the value and function assigned



Introduction

to women’s language in each period. The value and function assigned to women’s language in one period were preserved and a new value and function were layered in the next period. The result is the multilayered values and functions of women’s language today. Returning to the past tells us why there are the norms of feminine speech today, why Japanese people know specific features associated with femininity, and why women’s language is praised as a tradition of Japanese language. This book, therefore, is not merely about the past but about how the past informs the present state of women’s language. I do not claim, however, to present the complete genealogy of Japanese women’s language. No book can analyze the infinite number of discourses produced concerning Japanese women’s speech. Rather, the book will demonstrate that the historical-discourse approach is valid in analyzing the relationship between language and gender, by showing that approach as having more explanatory adequacy than the previous one. Japanese women’s language To show why I found the historical-discourse approach necessary to investigate the relationships between language and gender, I will start by observing that the notion of Japanese women’s language has three important aspects – the norms of feminine speech, the knowledge concerning what linguistic features are associated with femininity, and the value of the tradition of Japanese language – and arguing that the previous approach to this subject cannot give adequate explanations to why and how the notion of Japanese women’s language has these aspects. What constitutes women’s language has been one of the major questions in language and gender studies. Women’s language is the very site where gender, language, and power intersect in a complex manner. As any research is carried out based on a specific conceptualization of the research objective, how to conceptualize women’s language strongly affects the framework, research method, and interpretation of the data. Previous studies on Japanese women’s language have also been carried out based on a specific conceptualization of women’s language. In the following discussion, I call the previous approach the essentialist-evolutionary approach, since it assumes that women’s language has naturally evolved because Japanese women have always spoken differently from men, reflecting their essential feminine nature. In this approach, women’s linguistic practice is directly related to the notion of women’s language and language is conceptualized as “an organic substance that naturally changes and grows in a lapse of time” (Sakai 1996: 169). This approach is characterized by two further arguments. First, the “origin” of women’s language is discussed under the assumption that women’s linguistic practices in the past have naturally resulted in the present notion of women’s language

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(Ide & Terada 1998; Ide 2003). They consider the origins to be nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech) spoken by women working in the imperial court in the fourteenth century, and yuujogo (play-women’s speech) in the seventeenth century. They claim that these special ways of speaking spread among ordinary women, evolving into women’s language. The prevalence of court-women’s speech, they argue, is confirmed by women’s conduct books (etiquette manuals), written in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, which defined court-women’s speech as the speech norm for women. The definition in those conduct books, however, does not prove that Japanese women then actually used court-women’s speech. As we will see in Chapter 2, funny stories and dramatic plays of the same period described many merchant and servant women who hated using court-women’s speech; not all women were willing to speak it. Court-women’s speech may have actually spread among ordinary women in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. However, ordinary women did not naturally use it, but were motivated to use it by the normative value assigned to it by conduct books. As long as women’s practice is directly related to women’s language, the effect of the normative discourse such as conduct books on women’s practice cannot be captured. Second, this approach considers linguistic gender differences to be a fact observed in local linguistic practice. The accumulation of gender differences found in empirical studies of linguistic practice, it assumes, ultimately delineates the whole picture of women’s language. Studies of local interactions in Japanese have revealed, however, that women’s speech constantly changes and varies, according to age (Okamoto & Sato 1992), family relation and generation (Kobayashi 1993), education and occupation (Takasaki 1993), differences in everyday experience (Takano 2000), and region of residence (Sunaoshi 2004).11 Studies on queer-identified speakers (Abe 2010) and the ideological connection between politeness and women (Okamoto 2004) have also shown that the dominant values and functions 11. Many studies have also demonstrated that Japanese women do not speak what is called women’s language. The actual speech of Japanese women often lacks the so-called feminine sentence-final particles. Concerning the use of wa, a particle defined as a typical feature of women’s language in the dictionary definition, Ozaki Yoshimitsu (1997) found 15 instances of wayo, 11 instances of wane, only one instance of dawane, and no instance of dawayo in the 11,421 utterances of women’s natural conversation in the workplace collected in 1993. There is a discrepancy between the belief that Japanese women speak women’s language and the actual speech of Japanese women. The discrepancy often brings a surprising experience to non-Japanese speakers who visit Japan after having learned that in Japan women speak women’s language. Asahi shimbun, one of the three leading national newspapers, reports on June 12th, 2012, an episode that, when a Chinese woman learned Japanese at Beijing Foreign Language University, she was taught that there is a distinction between women’s language and men’s language in Japanese. After she came to Japan, however, she was confused to find no difference between the linguistic practices of Japanese women and men.



Introduction

of the linguistic features, norms, and categories, including those of women’s language, can be articulated in infinite forms in specific local interactions. Female speakers do not always use language to express their femininity nor does their use of women’s language necessarily construct the polite, indirect, and feminine identity of the speaker.12 Those studies have demonstrated that women’s linguistic practices are far too diverse to naturally form a single category of women’s language, explicitly refuting the assumption that the notion of women’s language has directly evolved from women’s linguistic practice. Homogeneous “linguistic gender differences” cannot be extracted from heterogeneous linguistic practice. Rather, linguistic gender differences are products of past language and gender-difference studies. It is the very labels, such as “women’s language” or “linguistic gender differences,” that represent heterogeneous women’s speech as if female speakers have something in common, linguistically reproducing the myth of “innate femininity.” Women’s language as the norm The essentialist-evolutionary approach, furthermore, cannot account for the crucial aspects of women’s language. I will mention just three of them. First, the essentialist-evolutionary approach cannot capture the normative aspect of women’s language. Any language community has certain norms concerning appropriate use of language. Some of the norms are applied to all speakers of the community, while others are concerned with a particular group of speakers. In Japan, there are norms of language use applied to speakers irrespective of gender. In addition, there is a set of norms applied only to female speakers, and women’s language is considered as the ideal style of speaking following the norms of feminine speech. The norms of feminine speech are a widely recognized hegemonic ideology in Japan, requiring women to speak politely, indirectly, and, on certain occasions, even not speaking. The norms of feminine speech are naturalized as a kind of common sense that mothers even write letters to newspapers after listening to their daughters’ vulgar speech. In 1988, a 41-year-old housewife wrote a letter titled, “My daughter said ‘Fuzakerunayoo (Go to hell),’” and said: “I was very shocked to hear such vulgar and rough language from my own daughter” (Asahi shimbun, March 23, 1988). Still, in 2006, a 37-year-old housewife wrote another letter titled, “Why does my daughter use dirty speech,” describing the confusion she felt on hearing her daughter say, “Urusee (Shut your trap)!” and wondered, “what is happening in this 12. Analyses of conversations in Japanese comics have demonstrated that female characters use or change to women’s language when they make direct orders, aggressive assertions, and express evil intentions (Chinami 2010; Takahashi 2009). In these comics, women’s language is used to construct an aggressive, strong or even snobbish identity of the speaker.

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Gender, language and ideology

society?” (Asahi shimbun, July 1, 2006). Responding to the 2006 letter, a 29-yearold female worker wrote, “Parents should scold their children’s dirty speech,” before wondering “what is happening in this society?” (Asahi shimbun, July 4, 2006). The hegemonic status of the norms of feminine speech is further demonstrated by the fact that etiquette manuals of feminine speech are constantly on bestseller lists. The following is the result of searching books on amazon.com by josei (woman) and hanashikata (way of speaking) in June 2008. Although 73 books, all etiquette manuals of feminine speech, are listed, I translate the titles of the first seven books: (1) a. Josei wa hanashikata de kyuu wari kawaru [Women Can Change 90% by Changing Their Way of Speaking] b. Zettai shiawase ni nareru hanashikata no himitsu: Anata o kaeru “kotoba no purezento” [The Secrets of Speech That Bring Absolute Happiness: “Gifts of Language” That Change You] c. Josei no utsukushii hanashikata to kaiwa jutsu: Kookan o motareru kotoba no manaa [Woman’s Beautiful Way of Speaking and Conversation Techniques: Language Manners That Make a Favorable Impression] d. Soomei na josei no hanashikata [How a Wise Woman Should Speak] e. “Hinkaku aru otona” ni naru tameno aisareru Nihongo [Japanese Language to be Loved: How to Become “an Elegant Adult”] f. Ereganto na manaa to hanashikata: Miryokuteki na josei ni naru 77 no ressun [Elegant Manner and Way of Speaking: Seventy-seven Lessons to Become a Charming Woman] g. Bijin no hanashikata: Sono hitokoto de anata wa aisareru [How a Beauty Speaks: Just One Word, Then You Will Be Loved] They all emphasize that a woman can improve her attractiveness by changing her way of speaking, and by speaking feminine women’s language, she can be elegant, wise, beautiful, happy, and loved. Woman’s value and femininity are strongly connected to her way of speaking.13 At the same time, these books testify that 13. By listing the titles of etiquette manuals, I imply neither that all Japanese women buy such etiquette manuals nor believe in or follow the norms included there. Rather, the very prevalence of these titles of etiquette manuals in bookstores, on the Internet, in advertisements on trains, and in newspapers and magazines is effective enough to connect femininity with women’s way of speaking for most Japanese.



Introduction

feminine speech is the norm women need to learn by reading them. There are of course many etiquette manuals for male speakers. They mostly give lessons, however, about how to talk to your boss or to your subordinate at work or how to increase your sales by speaking efficiently to your clients, and no book claims that a male speaker can be attractive and loved by changing his way of speaking. If women’s language naturally emerged from women’s femininity, as the essentialist-​ ­evolutionary approach claims, then, all women should naturally use feminine speech and no etiquette manual of feminine speech would be necessary. Women’s language as knowledge The second problem of the essentialist-evolutionary approach is that it cannot account for the fact that most Japanese learn women’s language as knowledge from conversations in media. Most people living in Japan use their regional varieties in their everyday interactions. But women’s language is a standard variety. This means that most Japanese do not have a chance of listening to standard women’s language spoken by the women around them. But they all know what kind of speech is women’s language. Why? That is because Japanese speakers acquire knowledge of women’s language by listening to female characters speaking in films, radio and TV dramas, or reading comics and novels. They learn what linguistic and stylistic features can be used to construct particular feminine identities from those conversations. Women’s language is not a style of speech used by actual women as the essentialist-evolutionary approach claims; rather, it is knowledge speakers acquire by listening to or reading conversations in the various forms of media. As the use of particular features by female characters in the media is repeatedly reproduced and widely consumed by a large audience, those features become associated with particular feminine identities. In Japanese, the construction of indexicality through the language use of media characters is not confined to women’s language. Most Japanese know, for instance, how aliens talk and what they say when them come to the Earth. They are supposed to say, “Wareware wa uchuujin da (We are aliens from outer space),” with a flat intonation in a shrill, mechanical voice. They speak in Japanese. The Japanese have that knowledge not because their alien friends repeatedly say so, but because they listened to aliens repeatedly speak in Japanese in the media. Japanese have the knowledge of how a particular group uses language, even though the group does not exist, because they often acquire the knowledge concerning the speech of a particular group from conversations in the media. Accordingly, I argue that most Japanese learn women’s language as knowledge from the media. Women’s language as knowledge is most typically demonstrated in the translation of non-Japanese literary works (Nakamura 2007b). The Japanese translation of

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Gender, language and ideology

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), first published in 1957, has been hugely popular and an adaptation has been repeatedly played on stage from 1966 to 2011. In the novel, Scarlett O’Hara speaks typical Japanese women’s language throughout. “It’s no use. I won’t eat it” (Mitchell 1936: 77), for instance, is translated with typical feminine sentence-final particles, wa and noyo, as “Iranai wa. Hoshiku nai noyo” (Mitchell 1957[1936]: 87–88). One may argue that the use of typical women’s language reflects the 1950s, when the work was translated. Yet, this tendency of translating the speech of a non-Japanese heroine into women’s language also occurs in recent works. The following is the Japanese translation of Hermione Granger, when she first appears in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: (2) a. “Maa, anmari umaku ikanakattawane. Watashi mo renshuu no tsumori de kantan na jumon o tameshite mita koto ga arukedo, minna umaku ittawa. Watashi no kazoku ni mahoozoku wa daremo inaino. Dakara, tegami o moratta toki, odoroitawa.” (Rowling 1999[1997]: 158) b. “Well, it’s not very good, is it? I’ve tried a few simple spells just for practice and it’s all worked for me. Nobody in my family’s magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter ....” (Rowling 1997: 117)

Her speech is translated into typical women’s language with feminine-final particles such as wane, wa, and no. Hermione, at this time, is 11 years old. I don’t know any Japanese 11-year-old girl who talks like this. This is the kind of women’s language we rarely hear from Japanese women, especially from girls. Hermione’s speech is translated into typical women’s language that most Japanese girls of her age do not use. And this is not confined to literary works. Angelina Jolie, in her interview with a Japanese newspaper, speaks women’s language in the Japanese translation, with feminine final forms, wa and yo. (3) a. “Eiga o mita Braddo ga, ‘okaa-san ni niteru ne,’ to itte kureta nowa ureshikattawa.” ‘I was happy when Brad [Pitt], on seeing the film, said, “You look like your mother.”’

b. “Mamagyoo ni tenshoku yo.” ‘I will concentrate on mothering.’

(Asahi shimbun, Feb. 20, 2009)

The article emphasizes that, in spite of hardships and scandals in the past, her strong will to pursue her belief makes her shine like nobody else. This description of her independent character, however, does not fit her women’s language. From Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind to Angelina Jolie in her interview with a Japanese newspaper, the speech of non-Japanese women has been translated into feminine women’s language. Paradoxically, it is the translated speech of



Introduction

non-Japanese women that has preserved the tradition of Japanese women’s language (Nakamura 2013). Long before the term “globalization” was introduced, the translated speech of non-Japanese women in media has been playing a crucial role in maintaining Japanese women’s language. This happens exactly because the belief that women speak women’s language moves the translator to use her knowledge of women’s language in the translation process. A well-known translator, Ooshima Kaori, confesses that: I sometimes translate even the same words differently depending on whether they are spoken by a man or a woman. Although I do not think that my translation is controlled by the so-called women’s language, I realize that I restrict my own choice of words since I am unconsciously influenced by the norms of women’s language internalized in myself. (Ooshima 1990: 43)

What she calls “the norms of women’s language internalized in myself ” corresponds with what I call the knowledge of women’s language. She states that, as women are supposed to speak women’s language, she unconsciously uses her knowledge of women’s language in the translation process.14 The translated speech of non-Japanese women tends to become stereotypical women’s language, exactly because the translator uses the knowledge of women’s language in translating women’s speech. Such knowledge includes phonological, morphological, syntactic, stylistic and paralinguistic features indexically associated with gender, such as tone of voice, interjections, sentence-final particles, personal pronouns and vocabulary. Exactly what linguistic features constitute such knowledge differs depending on the person. Since the distinction between women’s and men’s languages is socially salient in Japan, however, almost all Japanese speakers can give stereotypical contrasting examples of feminine and masculine linguistic features. A high-pitched voice is linked to femininity, while a low-pitched voice connotes masculinity. The interjections ara and maa are regarded as feminine, and oi and kora as masculine. The sentence-final particles, (da)wa, ne, yo, and kashira are called feminine forms, and ze and zo masculine forms. The first-person pronoun, atashi, is commonly regarded as a feminine pronoun, while boku and ore, and the second-person pronouns, omae and 14. Japanese translators’ use of the knowledge of women’s language, however, is largely influenced by the race and social class of the original speaker as well as by gender. In fact, in Gone with the Wind, and in many other literary works, the speech of black women and men was often translated into a pseudo-Toohoku dialect, the speech of the northern part of Japan’s mainland (Hiramoto 2009; Inoue 2003). Until recently, the use of women’s language was confined to middleclass white female speakers. Japanese translators’ choice of linguistic variety is not solely based on gender but also the race and social class of the original speaker, (re)producing and reinforcing in Japan racial, economic, and gendered prejudice of the society in which the original text was produced (Nakamura 2013).

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kimi, are considered as masculine pronouns.15 Onaka suita is a female way of saying, “hungry;” the male version is hara hetta. Thus most Japanese speakers will assume that the sentence Atashi onaka suita wa (I’m hungry) is being spoken by a woman and Ore hara hetta zo (I’m hungry) by a man. Japanese speakers, in other words, have the knowledge of linguistic, stylistic and paralinguistic features constituting women’s and men’s languages, although they do not necessarily use those features in their own speech. For many women, therefore, women’s language is not the language in which they express their own identities and experiences; rather it is merely the knowledge they glean by listening to how male commentators describe it and to how female characters speak it in the media. We need a framework that explicates the formation process of women’s language as knowledge, rather than directly relating women’s linguistic practices with women’s language. Women’s language as value The third problem with the essentialist-evolutionary approach is that it cannot explain why the notion of women’s language is assigned more social meanings and value than gender alone. It is widely believed, for instance, that women’s language has a long history peculiar to the Japanese language. As seen in the dictionary definition, the vast majority of Japanese scholars invariably emphasize that Japanese women have spoken a distinctive speech since ancient times, making women’s language a tradition of Japanese. This belief is supported by another belief that women in the past were speaking feminine language. Every time I argue that women’s actual practices are too diverse to form a single notion of women’s language, many Japanese respond, “Yes, women today do not speak women’s language anymore, but women in the past were speaking feminine language and their speech became women’s language.” It is impossible to obtain recorded data of the speech of women in the past. Throughout Japanese history, however, we can find documents criticizing certain women for not speaking in a feminine manner. This indirectly shows that there were always some women who did not use language in what was considered the feminine way. In what most literary critics regard as the world’s first novel, Genji monogatari [The Tale of Genji], there is a scene of young men talking about a daughter of a learned scholar who uses many kango (lit. Chinese words, Japanese 15. In Japanese, there are many sentence-final particles and personal pronouns and the choice of these features has more to do with the relational and affective stance between the speakers or toward the topic of the conversation than with the propositional content of the conversation. As the use of a first-person pronoun is not grammatically obligatory and the use of a second-person pronoun is considered rude under certain circumstances, many speakers even choose not to use them.



Introduction

words written in Chinese characters) in her speech and saying, “Where could you find such a woman? Better to have a quiet evening with a witch” (Murasaki 1976[1003–1008]: 36).16 Even when using Chinese words was considered the ultimate unfeminine behavior, some women in fact used them. In one of the conduct books (etiquette manuals) written in the early fourteenth century, Menoto no sooshi [The Book of the Nursemaid], there appears my favorite lesson on women’s speech, “Any handsome mouth looks grotesque when extended freely with laughter, showing the hole of the throat, widening of the tongue, and dripping saliva from the sides of the mouth” (Hanawa 1932b: 230). This too realistic lesson had to be included in the conduct book, we can safely assume, exactly because many women in the fourteenth century laughed freely, showing the hole of their throats, widening their tongues, and dripping saliva from the sides of their mouths, against the norm of feminine speech at the time. Kobayashi Chigusa (1996: 298) documents that in a traditional Kyoogen play in the fourteenth century, entitled Renjaku, a female merchant, when introducing herself to the audience, says, “Oryara shimasu (I am),” which is the most polite and elegant 16. In an English translation of The Tale of Genji, the daughter explained why the young man had not seen her for a long time as follows: “I have been indisposed with a malady known as coryza. Discommoded to an uncommon degree, I have been imbibing of a steeped potion from bulbaceous herbs. Because of the noisome order, I will not find it possible to admit of greater propinquity. If you have certain random matters for my attention, perhaps you can deposit; the relevant materials where you are.” (Murasaki 1976[1003–1008]: 35–36) I n the Japanese text, the underlined words are written in Chinese characters. At the time The Tale of Genji was written, the same thing could be referred to either by kango (lit. Chinese words, Japanese words written in Chinese characters) or wago (Japanese words), and women were prohibited from using Chinese words. During this period, people acquired public and academic knowledge from kanseki (Chinese books written solely by Chinese characters), so that kanji (Chinese characters) and kanseki were considered the most important things to learn in the education of men. Kujoo Dono Ikai [The Family Precepts of Master Kujoo] (960) emphasizes that “When the boys grow up, teach them Chinese texts first, then teach them penmanship, and after that allow them to learn music and dance” (cited in Yoshizawa 1934: 31). In contrast, “it was an era when the value of learning kangaku (learning traditional Chinese books) and kanji was not regarded as appropriate for women’s education” (Yoshizawa 1934: 17). Right after the above citation in The Tale of Genji, a guard officer claims: “A reasonably alert woman does not need to be a scholar to see and hear a great many things. The very worst are the ones who scribble off Chinese characters at such a rate that they fill a good half of letters where they are most out of place, letters to other women.” (Murasaki 1976[1003–1008]: 36)  e prohibition of women’s use of kanji (Chinese characters) and kango (Chinese words) thus Th prevented women from getting knowledge from kanseki and kangaku.

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women’s language, but yells, “Yai, kokonamono. Sokonoke. (Hey you! Move.),” at the man who took her place in the market. Even a woman in the fourteenth century used a direct, strong manner of speech when necessary. These examples indicate that the speech of past women also changed and varied and they did not always speak in a feminine manner. Why, then, is it believed that women in the past were speaking feminine women’s language? One factor related to the construction of this belief is readers’ letters to newspapers. Many Japanese newspapers have a readers’ column and among their favorite topics is the corruption of the Japanese language. Readers complain, often citing women’s use of non-feminine language as a key example of that corruption. One peculiar characteristic of these letters is that they present women’s use of non-feminine language as a recent change. Thus, almost all these letters start with the word, saikin (recently). A 22-year-old student writes: “Recently, it seems noteworthy that the speech of young women, including myself, has gotten worse” (Asahi shimbun, March 11, 1999). Interestingly, such criticism of recent corruption in women’s speech can be found since the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1905, Ootsuki Fumihiko, a linguist known for compilation of the first modern Japanese dictionary, states that: “It is disgusting to hear a phrase popular among female students ima (now), such as yokutte yo (all right). Before the Meiji Restoration, the wives of shooguns, feudal lords, and Tokugawa retainers all used elegant language” (Ootsuki 1905: 17). Although he uses ima (now) instead of saikin (recently), he criticizes the speech of “recent” female students. Japanese people have complained about the “recent” corruption of women’s speech for over one hundred years. It is a total contradiction that any “recent” change would have occurred for one hundred years. Moreover, if complaining about women’s unfeminine speech has not corrected their speech for over one hundred years, one might reasonably conclude that it is no use writing such letters to newspapers. Nevertheless, talking about the “recent” corruption of women’s speech has another important function, to create the myth that women in the past indeed spoke feminine women’s language. Criticizing recent women’s speech as unfeminine implicitly claims that, though recent women speak in an unfeminine manner, women in the past indeed used feminine language. In the above citation by Ootsuki, in fact, by criticizing the speech of “recent” female students, he emphasized the elegance of women’s speech before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. What the writer of a letter to newspapers had witnessed was the practice of a woman who chose to use unfeminine speech considering situational and interpersonal factors. It is an example of women’s diverse linguistic practice. “Recent” discourse, however, interprets it from a historical viewpoint, converting “synchronic diversity … into historical corruption” (Inoue 2006: 169). These letters thus play an important role in maintaining the myth that women in the past used feminine language and, also, the belief that



Introduction

such feminine speech of past women became women’s language, constructing women’s language as a Japanese tradition. In this section, we have seen that the notion of Japanese women’s language has three major aspects: the norms of feminine speech, the knowledge concerning linguistic features associated with femininity, and the value of the tradition of Japanese language. The notion of Japanese women’s language has been assigned more meanings and values than the aggregate of gender differences claimed in the essentialist-evolutionary approach. In constructing and maintaining the norms, knowledge and values of women’s language, etiquette books, conversation in the media, and readers’ letters to newspapers have respectively played crucial roles. Note that, while I cite the three aspects to clarify my argument, they are closely interconnected. The norms of feminine speech, for instance, both require women to use linguistic features associated with femininity and are legitimated as a way to preserve the tradition of Japanese women’s language. Women’s language in previous studies To analyze these norms, knowledge, and values of Japanese women’s language, I will propose the historical-discourse approach to investigate women’s language as an ideological construct. The necessity of conceptualizing the notion of women’s language as an ideological construct has been widely pointed out in studies of gender and English language. I will briefly describe the development of such studies, focusing on how the researchers came to consider women’s language as an ideological construct. Research approaches in early studies are classified into three major models: the deficient model, the dominance model, and the difference model (Cameron 1995). The deficient model was the label given to the study of Robin Lakoff (1975), who argued that women’s language both reflected and perpetuated their subordinate social position. The dominance model (Zimmerman & West 1975; Fishman 1983), by analyzing male-female conversation, claimed that men dominated women in conversation by interrupting and not responding to them. The difference model (Maltz & Borker 1982; Tannen 1990) argued that women and men followed different rules when they talked, which they acquired in gender distinctive sub-­ cultures in childhood. Interestingly, all three models faced the same problem – namely, the heterogeneity of women’s linguistic practices. Many studies have shown that there was considerable diversity among women’s speech depending on changing occupational opportunities (Nichols 1983), the density of social networks (Milroy 1980; Thomas 1988), different social aspirations (Gal 1978; Holmquist 1985), and adolescent

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group affiliation (Eckert 1989). They have shown that our linguistic interactions constantly change and vary according to several factors. If women’s linguistic practices differ and change so widely, it becomes impossible to talk about linguistic gender differences. If there is a large variety in linguistic behavior among women, the research objective of analyzing how women and men speak differently becomes meaningless. Patricia Nichols (1983: 54) has contended as early as 1983 that: “’Women’s language’ is as much a myth as ‘private language.’” Notice that this is the same problem I have previously pointed out when I discussed the essentialist-evolutionary approach to the Japanese women’s language. Underlying the problem is the presupposition that the speaker’s gender preexists the language. A woman, before conducting any linguistic practice, already possesses female gender and uses language according to her gender. In this view, women’s language is an aggregate of linguistic interactions by those who are already women. Gender, in this framework, is conceptualized as one’s attribute; one possesses gender or belongs to gender. Moreover, gender in these approaches is strictly binary: there are only two kinds of gender, female and male. As gender determines one’s practice, both the observed linguistic gender differences and the characteristics of women’s language are accounted for by the fact that the speaker is a woman. Such conceptualization of gender is now called essentialism. Post-structural feminism in the 1990s, by contrast, has considered gender not as an “essential” attribute, but as an accomplishment performed by an agent. Judith Butler (1990: 25) has argued that “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” Gender does not pre-exist nor determine practice, but emerges and is expressed by the speaker’s practice. This theoretical development has radically reversed the relationship between gender and linguistic practice. While gender was the cause of one’s practice in the previous models (a woman speaks politely because she is a woman), gender became the effect of practice (one speaks politely to construct a particular identity). Gender changed from something one has to something one does. Some researchers started using “gender identities” instead of “gender” in order to manifest the further paradigm shifts of the concept. The term “gender identities,” as its plural form indicates, does not postulate the male-female binary, but presupposes a variety of identities within gender. Gender identity of a high school girl, for instance, can be very different from gender identity of a middle-aged female professor. Furthermore, gender, in this framework, constitutes only one aspect of one’s identity, which is intertwined with other aspects such as age, ethnicity, occupation, and status. This theoretical development has brought three crucial changes to language and gender studies. First, the research objective shifts from the discovery of linguistic gender differences to the analysis of how gender identities are constructed



Introduction

through individual linguistic practices. If gender identities are being enacted by practice, intertwining with other factors in a complex manner, we need to analyze a linguistic interaction in a specific situation. Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992) emphasized the need to focus on individual interactions in a specific “community of practice,” instead of generalizing the research results of particular women’s practice as the characteristics of all women. To enrich the analyses of complex relationships between linguistic practices and socio-cultural factors, more research on women other than white, heterosexual, English-speaking, middleclass women is required. Second, the conceptualization of gender not as the cause but as the effect of practice not only reversed the relationship between gender and practice but also has emphasized the agency of a speaker. If one’s practice is not determined by the preexisting gender, the speaker is given the agency to choose and express a variety of gender identities using different linguistic resources according to a different situation. Women are redefined as efficient speakers who actively construct a variety of identities, rather than as victims of male power forced to be silent. Third, research focus has shifted from normative interactions expected of gender assigned to a speaker to deviant practices that may resist, subvert, or contest the existing power order. The post-structural notion of gender as performativity has made it possible to imagine the transformation of gender asymmetry by subversive practices. According to Butler (1990: 141), “The possibilities of gender transformation are to be found precisely … in the possibility of a failure to repeat a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phatasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction.” More attention is paid to what Mary Bucholtz (1999) has called bad examples that break the rules and bad subjects who transgress preexisting identities, including linguistic practices of lesbian, gay, transsexual, and transgendered speakers. Responding to the theoretical development, language and gender researchers since the 90s have concentrated on analyses of local, deviant practices (Benor, Rose, Sharma, Sweetland & Zhang 2002; Bucholtz, Liang, & Sutton 1999; Hall & Bucholtz 1995). Two major findings of these studies are heterogeneity of linguistic interactions and the agency of a speaker to perform resisting, subversive, and contesting practice. Kira Hall (1995) has demonstrated that “fantasy-line workers” working for telephone sex lines in San Francisco effectively utilize the so-called “powerless women’s language” to gain economic power. In the stage performance analyzed in Rusty Barrett (1999), African American drag queens appropriate women’s language to parody and critique white stereotypes, including the myth of the black male rapist. These studies have demonstrated that people sometimes utilize women’s language to transgress binary gender categories. It has been claimed that these subversive performances show the possibility to transform the existing

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power order. Since then, the analyses of local linguistic practices have been a major approach in the field of gender-and-English-language studies. Nevertheless, these findings lead us to two questions. First, why do subversive performances often remain ephemeral, leaving the prevailing power order largely untouched (Kotthoff & Wodak 1997: xi)? Susan Philips (2003: 263) has contended that: “The kinds of resistance described did not lead to any transformation of women’s situations.” No matter how many women use vulgar forms, how many men speak women’s language, and how many girls and boys communicate exactly in the same manner, these practices are ignored as deviation, exception, or marginal, keeping the belief that women’s and men’s linguistic practices differ reflecting their innate differences. “To focus only on the situations where gender is malleable diverts focus from continuing patterns of exclusion, subordination, normalization, and discrimination” (McElhinny 2003: 31). To reveal how subversive practices are rendered deviant, exceptional, and marginal, we need to go beyond local linguistic practice and analyze broader ideological frameworks in institutional and societal levels, which make us believe that certain speech styles are natural to women so that other styles are deviations and exceptions of women’s natural speaking styles. Second, the kind of agency assumed in the performativity approach does not consider norms and constraints imposed on an individual speaker. Any speaker needs to refer to the knowledge of normative, standard language usage considered suitable and appropriate to the occasion, purpose, and participant relationships expected of a particular interaction. In addition, there are also particular styles of speaking considered appropriate to a certain group of speakers. For female speakers, at least in Japan, polite and indirect ways of speaking have been deemed suitable. These norms have a profound effect on our evaluation and interpretation of the linguistic practices of others and our own linguistic choices. We produce our own linguistic practices, and judge the behavior of others, in light of these gendered norms attached to speech. The same utterance can be evaluated and interpreted differently depending on the speaker’s gender. Those women who do not talk in a feminine manner and men who speak like women are socially sanctioned. In this sense, no speaker is a free agent who can always perform subversive practices. Miyako Inoue (2006: 73) has argued that the liberal notion of linguistic subject formation, “The figure of the lucid subject who is autonomous and self-consolidating, who … speaks for herself/himself … and constructs (and even “shifts” and “negotiates”) his or her identities is problematic.” To capture these norms and constraints assigned to a particular group of speakers, we need again to go beyond local interactions and examine the norms, beliefs, and stereotypes about language use maintained in a society. How should we understand these norms and constraints concerning language use sustained on a societal level? What is women’s language to do with them? One



Introduction

answer to these questions can be found by investigating what Susan Gal (1995) has called “symbolic domination,” the cultural constructions of language, gender, and power that shape women’s and men’s ideas and ideals about their own linguistic practices. Gal has argued that the categories of women’s speech, men’s speech, and prestigious or powerful speech are not just indexically derived from the identities of speakers, but are culturally constructed within social groups. Among a large variety of speech styles used in a society, what counts as opposite or different is culturally defined. As a large variety of speech styles is used among women and among men, it is impossible to neatly divide these heterogeneous styles into women’s language and men’s language. Rather, “It is the broader symbolic opposition itself that makes the linguistic variants meaningful” (Gal 1995: 173). It is the ideological opposition between women’s language and men’s language itself that defines women’s and men’s speech as different and that helps researchers discover “linguistic gender differences.” Gal’s argument enables us to see the category of women’s language not as just the sum total of linguistic features whose frequency of use distinguishes women from men, but as an ideological-symbolic construct, a discursive construct. Cameron (1997: 28) contends that: “‘Women’s language’ as a category is no longer seen to be derived indexically from the social identity of those who use it (‘women’), but has become an ‘ideological-symbolic’ construct which is potentially constitutive of that identity” (emphasis original). It is not only women’s language that has been conceptualized as an ideological construct distinctive from practice. The difference between what is called gay speech and different gay ways of speaking has been accounted for by the difference between ideology and practice. Andrew Wong et al., (2002: 4) state, “The ‘gay speech’ that many have endeavored to identify is an ideological construct that symbolizes the imagined ‘gay community, and the linguistic features of this ideological construct in turn provide some of the resources that are used in the construction of different gay styles.”17 Accordingly, researchers have argued that standard language is not a specific style of speech actually used by a group of speakers but an ideological construct of a normative speech style. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy (Milroy & Milroy 1985: 23), for instance, define standard language as “a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent,” making the distinction between “abstract norms” and “actual 17. Although I do not include Japanese gay speech in my analysis, it seems highly reasonable to consider their speech style as an ideological construct. The speech style utilized by Japanese gay men and M-F transgendered, transsexual individuals is widely recognized as onee kotoba (lit. elder sister speech). Abe (2010), in the first comprehensive work on the speech of Japanese gay men and lesbians, points out that their linguistic practice changes depending on several situational, relational and social factors, demonstrating that the practice of gay men is far too diverse and creative to be simply labeled onee kotoba.

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usage.” Japanese linguists have also analyzed the notions of Japanese national language, standard Japanese (Komori 2000; Lee 1996; Osa 1998; Yasuda 1997) and Japanese honorifics (Yamashita 2001) as ideological constructs. Researchers emphasize the importance of distinguishing between “ideology – the representations of social types and their ways of speaking and writing which circulate in a given society – and practice – what we observe when we investigate the behavior of real people in real situations” (Cameron & Kulick 2003: 135 emphasis original, also Bucholtz & Hall 1995: 5) and the need “to explore the ideological processes through which certain linguistic features become markers of particular social groups” (Wong et al., 2002: 3). Many linguists have pointed out, in other words, the importance of considering linguistic notions, such as women’s language, gay speech, national language and standard language, as ideological constructs distinctive from linguistic practice of the groups of people assumed to use those varieties. Exactly how we should reformulate the notion of women’s language as an ideological construct and how we can examine “the ideological processes” through which such notion has been constructed, however, have not been proposed. I will argue in this book that one way of exploring the ideological processes of constructing both the notion of women’s language and the links between feminine linguistic features and female identities is to conduct the historical-discourse analysis of women’s language.18 Historical-discourse approach In this section, I will describe the theoretical framework, the methodology, and the data of the historical discourse approach used in this book. I propose this approach to properly investigate the genealogy of women’s language by conceptualizing women’s language as an ideological construct historically formed by metalinguistic discourse and media conversation (Nakamura 2014b). Women’s language as an ideological construct What it means to consider women’s language as an ideological construct can be manifested by the findings and discussions in the studies concerning “language ideologies” (Kroskrity ed. 2000; Schieffelin et al. 1998). The notion of language ideologies usually refers to general beliefs about language, talk, and communication prevalent in a given society, and researchers of language ideologies do not 18. I will refer to three semiotic processes identified by Gal and Irvine (1995), iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure, of linguistic boundary construction in later chapters.



Introduction

often analyze linguistic varieties, such as women’s language, as language ideologies. Michael Silverstein (1979: 193) defines language ideologies as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by uses as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.” What is called a language ideology in Silverstein’s analysis (1985) of the change that occurred to the English pronominal system in the seventeenth century, therefore, is concerned with the emerging perspective to value the “Plain Style of English” as a means to represent “truth” in its opposition to the traditional authority represented by classical languages such as Latin, Greek and Hebrew. 19According to this definition, I should consider as a language ideology the belief about Japanese women’s speech that “women’s linguistic practice naturally formed the notion of women’s language.” This belief rationalizes the construct of Japanese women’s language, along with accompanying beliefs such as, “women and men speak differently,” “women use language to express their femininity” and “women’s speech shares common characteristics.” Enumerating these beliefs about women’s speech, however, tells us nothing new about women’s language, exactly because the notion of women’s language and these beliefs perfectly rationalize and legitimate each other. Women’s language is what women speak and women speak women’s language because they are women. A way out of the closed circularity is to reformulate the notion of women’s language itself as an ideological construct, rather than a linguistic variety (if we understand the phrase, linguistic variety, as referring to a common speech style actually used by a group of speakers), and examine its historical formation. The phrase, Japanese women’s language, is not a label referring to a linguistic variety spoken by women (practice) but an umbrella term containing a whole set of norms, knowledge, and values concerning Japanese women’s speech (ideology). Speakers use the norms, knowledge, and values of women’s language as linguistic resource, as argued in detail in note 20, which simultaneously provides resources for and imposes restrictions on linguistic practices. To define women’s language as an ideological construct, in other words, is to reinterpret the phrase, women’s language, as referring to a set of norms, knowledge, and values concerning the relationships between women and language. 19. Silverstein (1985) argues that two factors are decisive in the shift observed in English second-person pronouns, from thou/thee/thine (T) to ye/you/your(s) (Y). The first factor was the emergence of a language ideology that valued the “Plain Style of English.” In the seventeenth century, various sects of Puritanism furthered the cause of “plain English” as a means of working against established religious authority and a transparent window to “truth.” The second factor was Quaker adaptation of language ideology to the English pronominal system. Quaker refused to use Y forms for deference to the addressee, rationalizing that such usage was “the very opposite of the civil equality of all people before God” (Silverstein 1985: 249). As Quakers insisted on use of T forms for all second-person singular address, others had to avoid it, lest they be mistaken for members of Quakers. And the use of T forms ran its course by 1700.

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Throughout the book, I refer to women’s language as an ideological construct interchangeably as “the ideology of women’s language” or simply as “women’s language.” In generally referring to linguistic varieties and their associations with particular features as ideological constructs, I use “linguistic ideologies.” Another definition of “language ideologies” gives us informative insights into our exploration of women’s language as an ideological construct. Judith Irvine (1989: 255) defines language ideologies as: “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests.” This definition contains four assertions concerning the notion. First, language ideologies are not actual speech but ideas concerning language use. Accordingly, I will analyze Japanese women’s language not as women’s actual speech but as the norms, knowledge and values concerning women’s speech. Second, language ideologies constitute a system, their boundaries and values assigned in their relationships to each other. My analysis here will show that the ideology of Japanese women’s language is constructed in its relationship with the other linguistic ideologies of Japanese, such as men’s language, Japanese national language, standard Japanese, regional dialects and honorific language. Third, they are culturally constructed, and the system of language ideologies differs and varies according to different political, economic and academic situations of different times and places. My analysis will also reveal exactly how women’s language has been constructed in its changing relationships to the other linguistic ideologies of Japanese in the shifting historical, political, and economic processes. Fourth, they form relationships hierarchically ordered by moral and political values, such as good/bad and correct/incorrect. The prevailing view in Japan considers Japanese women’s language also as elegant, refined and feminine speech, possessing a positive value of the tradition of Japanese language. The theoretical implications to reformulate Japanese women’s language as an ideological construct can be further clarified by the four characteristics of language ideologies described in Paul Kroskrity (2000). First, language ideologies represent the perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interest of a specific social or cultural group (Kroskrity 2000: 8). Language ideologies are not merely abstract concepts but have political functions to legitimate the domination of a specific group, exerting a material effect on the lives of the dominated groups. This is why the researchers of language ideologies have selected the term “ideologies,” rather than the terms “concept, knowledge, or notion.” To regard women’s language as an ideological construct means to examine women’s language as a political category that controls and dominates women through language. Second, language ideologies are profitably conceived as multiple because of the multiplicity of meaningful social divisions (class, gender, clan, elites, generations,



Introduction

and so on) within sociocultural groups that have the potential to produce divergent perspectives expressed as indices of group membership (Kroskrity 2000: 12). The multiplicity of social divisions implies that the notion of gender itself intersects with other divisions in a complex manner. The interrelationships between gender and other divisions further transform in shifting political and economic situations in a particular historical juncture. To study women’s language as an ideological construct requires examining the construction and transformation of women’s language in socio-historical changes. Third, members may display varying degrees of awareness of local language ideologies (Kroskrity 2000: 18). As Japanese women’s language is constructed within standard Japanese, for instance, the values assigned to women’s language may differ depending on whether the speaker speaks a standard variety or not and on whether the standard variety is considered appropriate to use or not in a particular situation. Inoue (2006) has demonstrated that the value of Japanese women’s language among women working in the same company in Tokyo differs widely depending on where she has grown up and her career formation. Finally, members’ language ideologies mediate between social structures and forms of talk (Kroskrity 2000: 21). In other words, language ideologies mediate between identities of a particular group with particular linguistic features. At the center of women’s language lies the indexicality associating particular linguistic features with a particular identity category of woman. Heretofore, scholars and other observers in Japan have interpreted these associations to have been established by the frequent use of these features by women. They claimed that, as women used some features statistically more frequently than men, those features naturally formed women’s language. Nevertheless, empirical studies of linguistic interactions have revealed that pragmatic meanings of individual linguistic features vary depending on situational factors. Speakers use so-called feminine and masculine features to negotiate a wide range of affective and epistemic meanings often unrelated to gender (Miyazaki 2004; SturtzSreetharan 2009; Sunaoshi 2004). It is impossible to find a one-to-one correspondence between a linguistic feature and a social identity in linguistic practice. To rectify the discrepancy of the same features both related and unrelated to gender, the conceptualization of women’s language and men’s language as ideological constructs suggests that the association between feminine/masculine features and feminine/masculine identities is ideologically mediated. The ideological opposition between women’s language and men’s language makes the distinction between feminine and masculine features meaningful in certain situations. Kathryn Woolard (1998: 18) points out that “simply using language in particular ways is not what forms social groups, identities, or relations (nor does the group relation automatically give rise to linguistic distinction); rather, ideological interpretations of such uses of language always mediate

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these effects.” In the following chapters, I will describe exactly what kind of ideological processes have constructed the indexical relationships between particular linguistic features and femininity. The historical-discourse approach thus claims to distinguish practice from ideology, that is, to distinguish women’s linguistic practice from the ideology of women’s language. I refer to the former interchangeably as “women’s speech, women’s (local or linguistic) practice, or women’s (local or linguistic) interaction,” and the latter as “women’s language or the ideology of women’s language.” As we have already seen, linguistic practice changes and varies according to many factors. By distinguishing women’s linguistic practice from women’s language, the heterogeneity of women’s practice becomes, to my mind, a default state, while the ideology of women’s language is an idea consisting of the norms, knowledge and values concerning women’s speech. By the norms of women’s language, I refer to preferred feminine speech patterns, typically recognized as polite, soft and indirect ways of speaking considered appropriate as well as normative for female speakers. The knowledge of women’s language includes particular phonological, morphological, syntactic, stylistic and paralinguistic features indexically associated with particular feminine identities. Although potentially associated with femininity, those features are redefined as knowledge that anyone, both women and men, can use as linguistic resources in performing particular identity in their respective practices. The typical example of the values assigned to Japanese women’s language is that of a tradition of the Japanese language. I explicitly distinguish those norms, knowledge and values of women’s language from women’s actual speech and focus on analyzing the former. This does not mean, however, that the ideology of women’s language has nothing to do with women’s linguistic practice. By distinguishing practice from ideology, it becomes possible to consider the ideology of women’s language as linguistic resource that simultaneously provides resources for and imposes restrictions on linguistic practices and to examine when and how the norms, knowledge and values of women’s language impact our linguistic practice (Nakamura 2004).20 The distinction 20. Although this book does not directly contribute to the analysis of linguistic practice in local situations, I have proposed to consider the norms, knowledge and values of women’s language as linguistic resource that simultaneously provides resources for and imposes restrictions on linguistic practices (Nakamura 2004). Motschenbacher (2007: 270) proposes a very similar view to consider genderlect (the term coined by combining “gender” with “dialect”) as “resources for gendered identity performances which can be exploited strategically or used as a form of ritualised practice.” The conception of the norms, knowledge and values of women’s language as linguistic resource enables us to ask new questions concerning deviant practice. Instead of criticizing a woman’s use of men’s language as unfeminine and deviant, we can ask for what effect and purpose the woman uses men’s language in that particular situation. The perspective also



Introduction

enables us to ask new questions, such as in what situations women follow the norms of feminine speech, when and how women and men use the knowledge of women’s language, and how the values of women’s language influence people’s evaluation of women’s practice. The diversity of practices can be reinterpreted as diverse responses of speakers to the resource provided by and the restrictions imposed by the ideology of women’s language as well as to many other factors. Empirical studies of women’s linguistic practice, in their attempts to account for the diversity of practices, need to take into consideration not only the situational factors of individual interactions but also the social and ideological factors such as the norms, knowledge and values expected of women’s speech in the community. In showing that the social and ideological factors relevant to an individual interaction are not merely the belief of an individual researcher but the historically constructed norm, knowledge and value shared in the community, the historical-discourse analysis simultaneously complements studies of local linguistic practice. Discourse as data If women’s linguistic practice has not naturally evolved into the notion of women’s language, what has constructed women’s language? The historical-discourse approach assumes that the construction of the ideology of women’s language has arisen from discourse rather than through repeated use by women. We have already seen that etiquette manuals of feminine speech play an important role in maintaining the norms of women’s language. Conversations in the media and translated works effectively reproduce the knowledge of women’s language. Readers’ letters to newspapers play a major role in preserving the belief that women in the past used feminine language. These etiquette manuals, conversations in the media, and readers’ letters constitute what I call “discourse.” Following Michel Foucault’s definition of discourse as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1981[1972]: 49), it becomes possible to consider women’s language as being constructed by these discourses. The essentialist-evolutionary approach, as pointed out earlier, focuses on the analysis of women’s local linguistic practices as discourses that formed the notion of women’s language. The historical-discourse approach, by contrast, considers that discourses such as reveals an interesting tendency that restriction imposed by a linguistic resource enables creative linguistic practices. The features of Japanese women’s language are associated with particular identity categories, typically that of a grown-up, heterosexual, and middleclass woman. That is why young girls (Okamoto & Sato 1992; Miyazaki 2004) and lesbians (Maree 2007) often avoid speaking women’s language, innovating new usages. At the end of Chapter 1, I will cite an example in which the norms of feminine speech function as both restrictions on and resource for women’s practice.

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etiquette manuals, readers’ letters to newspapers and media conversations have constructed women’s language. I call these discourses “metalinguistic practices.” Recent work in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology on language ideologies has been concerned with the ways our understanding of language is shaped by metalinguistic practice (Blommaert 1999; Kroskrity 2000; Schieffelin, et al. 1998). Talk about local practice has been variously termed as metapragmatics (Silverstein 1979), metadiscursive practices (Bauman & Briggs 2000), metalanguage (Jaworski, et al. 2004), or metadiscourse (Hyland 2005), depending on which aspect of the process the researcher wants to emphasize. Here I use the term “metalinguistic practices” to emphasize the importance of locating them in a specific political process. Although the term “(linguistic) practice” commonly refers to the use of language in interactional contexts, it can also apply to metadiscursive practice, “discourse to represent and regulate other discourses” (Bauman & Briggs 2000: 142). For instance, most people have traditionally regarded grammar books as describing the way a language is spoken. However, grammar books in fact mainly delineate one variety of language as standard and play crucial roles in forming its normative value, giving great privilege to those who speak it. The redefinition of grammar books as practice, therefore, enables us to highlight who conducted these practices in what political process and why. It relocates academic publications in what Michael Silverstein (1998: 136) has called ideological sites, “institutional sites of social practice as both object and modality of ideological expression.” Metalinguistic practices have been divided into two types, explicit metapragmatics and implicit metapragmatics. Kathryn Woolard (1998: 9) distinguishes explicit metapragimatics, explicit talk about language, and implicit metapragmatics, linguistic signaling that is part of the stream of language use in process and that simultaneously indicates how to interpret that language-in-use, such as contextualization cues. I argue, however, that the distinction between local practices and both fictional and non-fictional practices in the media is more crucial in analyzing the ideology of women’s language, since I deny the view that only women’s local linguistic practices have constructed the ideology of women’s language. Therefore, although I do not deny that people’s attitudes towards women’s language can be discovered in women’s local practices, I do not include local practices as data in this book. Instead, I claim that two types of discourse play major roles in the construction of the ideology of women’s language: explicit commentary on women’s speech produced mainly by intellectuals and language usage in the media. The former category includes etiquette books, school textbooks, dictionaries, grammar books and commentaries by intellectuals. By evaluating, criticizing, and giving norms for women’s speech, they construct women’s speech as a socially important topic and categorize heterogeneous women’s speech into homogeneous



Introduction

women’s language. The latter category includes conversations in novels, movies, TV dramas, comics, TV games, advertisements, and folktales (Sutton 1999), and Japanese translation of these media (Inoue 2003; Reynolds 2001). The book, therefore, does not answer questions such as how women and men use language differently, whether women’s speech is politer than men’s, or whether women speak more than men, so as to find linguistic gender differences by conducting empirical studies on linguistic interactions between women and men. Those research objectives, widely considered valid in the past, become meaningless once we accept that the linguistic practices of Japanese women are too diverse to be categorized in the single notion of women’s language. Both quality and quantity of metalinguistic practice are relevant to its effect on the production of women’s language. Not all practices equally have an effect on the creation of women’s language. Academic metalinguistic practices are assigned the privilege to define what linguistic features should and should not be included in women’s language. The development of mass media enables an enormous amount of circulation and consumption of particular discourses, while ignoring others. Metalinguistic practices conducted through these privileged channels produce, reproduce, and, sometimes, transform the ideology of women’s language. Thus, the data of my analysis in this study will consist of the metalinguistic discourses of those who have enjoyed academic and political privilege and the wider circulations of their statements: Japanese linguists, language-policy makers, novel writers, educators, and politicians. Historical perspective Its historical perspective distinguishes the historical-discourse approach to women’s language from the previous approach. By “historical perspective,” however, I do not mean to suggest that a particular ancient language usage is the “origin” of women’s language, assuming the direct evolution from women’s speech to the ideology of women’s language. Nor does the term suggest treating written materials of the past as directly representing women’s actual speech of the period, ignoring the fact that they are metalinguistic comments. Rather, historical perspective is insightful because it makes explicit why a particular discourse became possible, acceptable, and meaningful in what political, economic, and academic processes, while other discourses were excluded. In the case of women’s language, I claim that a political and economic need to distinguish people by gender and to form the marked identity category of woman at a particular historical juncture made discourses about women’s speech meaningful, and those metalinguistic discourses produced the ideology of women’s language. As Miyako Inoue (2006: 16) has emphasized, what is important is not so much the content of what is said about

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women’s speech, “but the sheer fact that it is said, or can be said in certain contexts by certain agents, and the fact that what is said is intelligibly repeatable in other domains of the society.” Historical study also needs to pay attention to what technological and industrial development made it possible for a particular discourse to be circulated and duplicated. By revealing what social processes made whose discourse possible and meaningful in the construction of women’s language, historical studies are able to undermine the naturalized legitimacy granted to the ideology of women’s language. The historical-discourse approach deconstructs and denaturalizes the value and affect assigned to women’s language by describing the exact historical process of the value assignment. In the field of gender and English language, even after the perspective to define women’s language as an ideological construct has been proposed, the historicaldiscourse analysis of women’s language has never become a major approach. The main reason is, I presume, that the notion of English women’s language itself is not as hegemonic and salient as in Japanese language. In the field of gender and Japanese language, by contrast, the theoretical development has been expanded with the groundbreaking work by Miyako Inoue (2006). Because of its hegemonic, normative status and rich meaning, Japanese women’s language has provided one of the most interesting data sets for an ideological approach to language and gender studies. Inoue has made great theoretical contribution to that field, arguing that “Japanese women’s language” is not a natural outcome of women’s speech originated at some ancient time, but emerged in a new discursive space opened up by Japan’s modernization process in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. In this discursive space, both gender and language became problematized as targets of national and capitalist interest. On the one hand, Japan’s nation-state formation developed modern legal and social systems, from which the new category of “modern Japanese women” emerged. On the other hand, the language standardization movement enhanced the rise of the novel, which, along with the development of publication capitalism, adopted “schoolgirl speech” to create the language of “modern Japanese women.” Women’s language, Inoue demonstrates, was never an accurate representation of the speech of any group of women, but an ideological construct enabled in the modern discursive space. Instigated by Inoue’s work, several studies have been conducted to examine the genealogy of Japanese women’s language (Endo 1997; Nakamura 2001, 2007a, 2012; Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith 2004; Washi 2004; and the articles in Gender and Language 2[1] special issue on Japanese women and language 2008). This book, while attempting to develop the theoretical agenda proposed by Inoue (2006), differs from it in three ways. First, though Inoue argues that Japanese women’s language was established in Japan’s modernization period, I will demonstrate, by analyzing discourse in the premodern era, that Japanese women’s speech



Introduction

had already been objectified and normalized much earlier than the modern period. Part 1 will show that the norms of feminine speech and the association between court-women’s speech and femininity were constructed in the premodern period. This indicates that an attempt to determine when Japanese women’s language was established comes to a different conclusion according to how the researcher conceptualizes the notion of women’s language. What Inoue calls “Japanese women’s language” does not include the premodern norms of feminine speech. I will not try to define, therefore, when the ideology of women’s language was established, because what we now call women’s language differs from women’s language in different periods. Rather than attempting to determine when Japanese women’s language was established, I intend to examine the processes in which the norms, knowledge, and values of women’s language have been constructed, transformed and layered, responding to different political conditions of different historical periods. Second, the conceptualization of women’s language in the book is wider in including the norms and values as well as the knowledge of women’s language. Inoue mostly conceptualizes the notion of women’s language as a set of linguistic and stylistic features indexically associated with femininity, what I refer to as the knowledge of women’s language. This book shows, by considering the norms and values as important aspects of women’s language as well, that the historical-discourse approach is effective in analyzing the process by which the ideology of women’s language obtains a particular normative function and affective value. Third, Inoue argues, based on postcolonial theories, that Japanese women’s language is “vicarious language that universally represents and speaks for the voice of Japanese women that is not theirs” (2006: 4). This is an important argument enabling new questions concerning the linguistic identity construction of Japanese women who are non-standard speakers. Since Japanese women’s language is a standard variety, as she correctly points out, female non-standard speakers experience stronger “vicariousness” than standard speakers. Compared to the difficulty and hardship found in the linguistic identity construction of postcolonial women, however, Japanese women are given much more freedom to speak as they like. As Inoue’s own analysis demonstrates, female non-standard speakers use women’s language, if they wish. To investigate the identity construction of Japanese women, it is necessary to analyze the data of discourse in detail before directly applying postcolonial theories to Japanese women. From Chapters 7 to 10, I analyze discourse produced during the periods of Japan’s colonization of East Asia in WWII and the U.S. occupation of Japan after WWII, attempting to show exactly what effect the colonization and the occupation had on the relationship between women and language in the specifically Japanese situation. I do not intend, however, to make a complete inventory of discourse on Japanese women’s speech. The discourses analyzed constitute only a portion of discourses produced in each historical period; with page limitations, I could not cite all

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the discourse data I have uncovered. Rather than attempting to cite as many discourses as possible, I include the discourse data relevant to Japan’s major political and historical junctures. By analyzing the shifting relationships between language and women from the thirteenth century to the middle of the twentieth and describing the comprehensive genealogy of Japanese women’s language in that timeframe, I will construct a solid basis for further analysis. Most of the data, as a result, consist of academic discourses, demonstrating their crucial role in constructing the ideology of women’s language. Academic discourses, though often stated in scientific, objective, and apolitical styles, clearly wield a political function in tacitly supporting existing power relationships. I will demonstrate that academic discourses not only are given an authoritative privilege, but also have constituted a dense network by referring to each other. I hope further research will analyze non-academic, subcultural and popular discourses to improve, reform, and reformulate my analysis. In my translations of the discourse data, I have chosen to keep the original expressions and styles to the extent possible, even if that results in awkward reading in English, because I am convinced that the social, affective nuances expressed by the original discourses are crucial in conducting discourse analysis. I hope readers will enjoy the experience of reading “the Foreign as Foreign” (Berman 2004[1985]: 277).21 In citing the discourse data, I prefer using the present tense, with some exceptions when the present tense feels awkward in the translation. Organization of the book The book is divided into four parts, sequenced chronologically. In Part 1, I analyze discourses about women’s speech in Japan’s premodern period from the thirteenth 21. In translation studies, foreignization translation has been advocated to avoid the ethnocentricity in Anglo-American translation. A nineteenth-century theologian and translator, Friedrich Schleiermacher (2004[1813]: 49) states that, as a translator is required to respond to the opposite needs of writer and reader, there are only two possibilities, alienating and naturalizing: “[e]ither the translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him; or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer toward him [sic].” While the two methods of translation, alienating and naturalizing, have remained a major theme of translation studies, many translation scholars have advocated alienating translation. The largest reason for supporting alienating translation is that naturalizing translation negates, acclimatizes and erases the foreignizing essence of the original text. Berman (2004[1985]: 277) argues that “the properly ethical aim of the translating act” is “receiving the Foreign as Foreign” (emphasis original). Accordingly, Venuti (1995: 15) points out the ethnocentricity in AngloAmerican “domestication” translation, and proposes to carry out “foreignization” translation, giving “an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.”



Introduction

to the end of the nineteenth centuries, aiming to describe how the norms of feminine speech were created in Japan. Chapter 1 shows that conduct books (etiquette manuals), discussing how women should speak for hundreds of years, constructed the norms of feminine speech, a metalinguistic tradition still observed in etiquette manuals today. In Chapter 2, I will examine the discourses of media and conduct books concerning court-women’s speech from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and delineate the process by which court-women’s speech was gradually transformed from upper-class speech into the norms of feminine speech. The discourse of conduct books, I will demonstrate, exploited court-women’s speech, the creative speech of women working in the imperial court in the fourteenth century, to reinforce the norms of feminine speech from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This gives one answer, I will argue, to the question asked above, why subversive performances often remain ephemeral, leaving the prevailing power order largely untouched. In Part 2, I analyze discourses in Japan’s modernization period from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, demonstrating that gender played a crucial role in the process by which nationalization and standardization reinforced each other to construct modern linguistic ideologies in Japan. In Chapter 3, I investigate the discourses produced by linguists and intellectuals in the debates concerning the establishment of Japanese national language, and show that the ideology of national language, in fact, was originally conceptualized as men’s national language, assuming male citizens as primary speakers. The association between national language and masculinity, I will argue, accounts for the differences between the contemporary notions of women’s language and men’s language. Chapter 4 analyzes conduct books (etiquette manuals) and school moral textbooks, and examines how intellectuals rationalized reproducing the norms of feminine speech originated in conduct books in the premodern period, despite the radical social change of Japan’s modernization. My analysis will show that, Japanese intellectuals, by reframing premodern norms within modern political ideologies, transformed the premoden norms of ideal feminine speech into the modern norms for female citizens of the modern nation state. Chapter 5 investigates the construction process of schoolgirl speech by analyzing conversations in novels and comics and comments by intellectuals concerning the speech of female students, the newly emerging, educated, young women. The investigation into schoolgirl speech is particularly important in the analysis of the genealogy of Japanese women’s language, since the sentence-final forms characterizing schoolgirl speech constitute what we now call Japanese women’s language. The analysis demonstrates that fictional conversations in novels played a major role in constructing associations between the sentence-final forms and the identity of schoolgirl. A particular speech style created by some of the female students, as a

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result, was categorized into schoolgirl speech, characterized by sexuality. The writers of novels, I will show, exploit the creative speech of female students to transform educated, young women into sex objects for men. Chapter 6 examines grammar books and school language readers published to prescribe Japanese national language and shows that linguists excluded linguistic features associated with women from Japanese national language. I will conclude Part 2 at the end of Chapter 6 and argue that the linguistic ideologies in Japan’s modernization period were asymmetrically distinguished by gender. In Part 3, I analyze discourses produced during the war period from 1914 to the end of WWII in 1945 and show that it was under colonialism and national mobilization when the ideology of a gendered Japanese national language, the belief that women and men speak differently in Japan, was established. Chapter 7 demonstrates that linguists defined women’s language as an imperial tradition originating with the emperor system, when it became necessary to prove the superiority of the Japanese language to legitimate colonization of East Asian countries by teaching Japanese language. I will argue that it was during the war period in the middle of the twentieth century when Japanese women’s language was invented as tradition. Chapter 8 analyzes grammar books and school language readers and shows that linguists, by emphasizing the importance of linguistic gender differences and incorporating linguistic features associated with women into the national language, created the ideology of a gendered Japanese national language. Linguists incorporated into national language only those feminine linguistic features which corresponded with the definition of standard Japanese, resulting in today’s explicit distinction between women’s language and men’s language only in standard Japanese. In Part 4, I analyze discourses during the U.S. Occupation from 1945 to 1952 and explore how and why the ideology of women’s language and the belief in women’s language as a tradition of the Japanese language survived under the gender-equality policy of the Occupation. Chapter 9 points out that, while some intellectuals criticized women’s language as an obstacle for gender equality, linguists, by redefining women’s language as speech based on women’s “innate femininity,” separated women’s language from social inequality. Paradoxically, because the Occupation authorities promoted gender equality, Japanese linguists invented the new definition of women’s language based on women’s nature. Chapter 10 shows that linguists stopped mentioning the emperor in their postwar discussions of women’s language, thereby depoliticizing it, while school readers and grammar books continued to teach a gendered Japanese language. Naturalized and depoliticized, women’s language ostensibly became a tradition of the Japanese language that Japanese women have been speaking based on their natural femininity, the argument still prevalent today.

part 1

Women’s speech as the object of regulation The premodern period

The purpose of Part 1 is to investigate how the norms of feminine speech, one of the three aspects of today’s notion of Japanese women’s language, were constructed by examining the discourses of conduct books (etiquette manuals) from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, the premodern period. Chapter 1 analyzes the norms that premodern conduct books gave concerning women’s ways of speaking and the changes observed in how those norms were presented in the conduct books. Chapter 2, focusing on nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech), considered an early example of Japanese women’s language (as in the Japanese dictionary definition in the Introduction), analyzes discourses in the media and the conduct books from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries to describe how differently those discourses used court-women’s speech. Before I delve into the discourse analysis of conduct books, I would like to preface my arguments in Part 1, with a very brief sketch of Japan’s history from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries. Beginning with the import of Buddhist scriptures and documents in the fifth and sixth centuries and, later, with the import and full-scale adaptation of Confucianism as Japan’s prevailing socio-political philosophy by the seventeenth century, Chinese culture and language profoundly influenced Japan’s scholars and intellectuals; learning kanji (Chinese characters) became one of the most important endeavors for male intellectuals. At some point in the eighth to ninth centuries, the Japanese devised two simpler kinds of phonetic writing, hiragana and katakana, by reforming the shapes of Chinese characters. The Japanese language, therefore, has three official writing systems, kanji, hiragana and katakana (Roman letters are also used today). As indicated in the Introduction, women were prohibited from using, speaking and learning Chinese characters and words and from reading Chinese books. Japan’s Middle Ages is generally divided into the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and the Muromachi period (1336–1573), featuring government dominated by samurai (warriors) families. After the Sengoku period (Period of Warring State), 1493–1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu established his feudal government at Edo (the old name for Tokyo) in 1603 and the Feudal Ages (the Edo period) began and continued until 1867. The premodern period ended when the Tokugawa shogunate resigned in 1867.

chapter 1

The norms of feminine speech Too many words mean speaking too much. [If a woman speaks] too much and nags, that makes trouble for the father-son, brothers, and relatives, and brings discord to the family. An ancient proverb says: “A woman’s long tongue is the origin of trouble.” It means that women’s talk brings trouble to the country. Also, Shoo sho [an authoritative book of Confucianism in China] says: “It goes ill in the house where the hen sings.” As the singing hen destroys the family, a woman speaking like a man brings the family trouble. Most family trouble is caused by women. A woman’s trouble always comes out of her mouth. Restrain yourself from speaking. Kaibara Ekiken (1710) Wazoku dooshi kun [Lessons for Japanese Children] In 1710, a well-known Confucian scholar, Kaibara Ekiken, in the chapter on educating women of his conduct book, Wazoku dooshi kun [Lessons for Japanese Children], warned women not to speak, because a woman’s talk brings discord to her family and trouble to the country (Kaibara 1977: 14). By “conduct book,” I refer to a group of books, called jokun sho (woman’s conduct book) or joshiyoo oorai (textbook for women), compiled in enormous numbers to educate women in the premodern and the early modern periods, from the twelfth to twentieth centuries.1 The norms of women’s speech today, as I have shown by the list of etiquette manuals in the Introduction, are strongly associated with femininity. Polite, soft, 1. Jokun sho (conduct books) cover a wider range of topics than etiquette manuals, from morality, citations from Buddhist and Confucian scriptures, and life stories of heroic women to norms of calligraphy and letter writing and knowledge about the chief events of the year, geography, history and industry, as well as etiquette in social life. Ishikawa Matsutaroo (1973: 18) categorizes conduct books from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries into four groups; the moral type, the epistolary type, the social type, and the knowledge type. The moral type is the oldest type and consists of the largest number of conduct books, those giving moral and disciplinary lessons women should keep in mind. Lessons on women’s speech are often included in such books. The epistolary type consists of model sentences in letters and model forms of official documents and contracts, as well as etiquette in socializing with others. The social type teaches about customs, cultures (e.g. how to write poems), common sense, and the chief events of the year (e.g. how to celebrate New Year’s Day). The knowledge type gives information on various topics such as geography, history and industry.

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and indirect speech today functions as the norm of women’s speech because it is considered to be feminine speech. The citation by Kaibara Ekiken shows, however, that it was deemed necessary in the eighteenth century to control women’s speech, not because women were expected to express their femininity when talking, but because, in Confucian teaching, women’s talk was regarded as a dangerous act that would bring trouble to their families and country. This chapter, therefore, has two purposes. First, by going back to women’s conduct books in the premodern period, I will explore why and how women’s speech became the object of regulation, control and domination. Second, by analyzing the changes in how the norms of women’s speech are presented in conduct books, I will attempt to show how those norms which originally emerged to control women’s dangerous talk came to be associated with femininity, and what the association with femininity implies about the ideological domination of women’s speech. Women’s conduct books Women’s relation to language had been problematized long before the modern period. Abundant comment about women’s speech occurred in conduct books for women, which were prevalent from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. Ishikawa Matsutaroo (1973: 12), who, with his father Ishikawa Ken, compiled 44 books in which they included the major textbooks used in the history of education in Japan, states that, since the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, “as Buddhism and Confucianism took root in Japan, their andro-centric view of predomination of men over women immediately reigned supreme in women’s education in Japan.” In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, an enormous number of women’s conduct books were published based on these doctrines. The establishment of this genre resulted in the belief that women and men needed different forms of discipline. The books gave instructions on various aspects of women’s lives. On language use, while the books also referred to appropriate ways of speaking, the basic norm remained the same for hundreds of years: women should not speak. As conduct books produced the normative discourse of how and how much women should talk and what they should talk about for hundreds of years, women’s speech became an object of regulation, control, and normalization. It became natural to comment on, evaluate, and criticize women’s speech, focusing more on women’s ways of talking than on what they said. The Kamakura and Muromachi periods (1185–1573) During the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, as Confucian conduct books for women flowed into Japan from China, some high-class Japanese women began writing



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

their own conduct books for their daughters preparing for marriage. These early conduct books already contained lessons on speech. For example, the writer of Niwa no oshie [The Lessons of the Garden] (1283), also known as Uba no fumi [A Letter from the Nursemaid], states that women should speak ambiguously, not express emotions, and not speak carelessly:2

(1) And even when some good things happen, do not say you are happy or that it is good…. Concerning your mind, your life, and others, speak ambiguously and do not show your emotion. Keep everything in your mind. It is bad to speak carelessly. (Hanawa 1932b: 208)

The book also repeats that women should not use Chinese characters: “Chinese characters should not be used by women. But because they are used in the titles of songs, not knowing them is troublesome” (Hanawa 1932b: 214). Chinese characters at the time were used in public and academic contexts. Women could learn them but should not use them (cf. Introduction, note 16). Menoto no sooshi [The Book of the Nursemaid] (late Kamakura 1192–1333) was a conduct book for the women working in the imperial court. The author advises women to speak in a small voice and warns them not to speak roughly:

(2) When [your daughter] is about ten years old, make sure she stays deep inside of the house and away from others. Bring her up [as a person] with a stable mind who speaks in a small voice. Do not let her do whatever she wants, speak roughly, or lounge near the porch. (Hanawa 1932b: 236)

The writer of Mi no katami [Half of the Body] (Muromachi 1392–1573) also remonstrates against speaking with the mouth wide open:

(3) No. 6 The mouth, whether it be wide or narrow, should speak in a small voice. However good looking a mouth, it becomes ugly if it drips saliva from the sides and laughs at funny things while wide open, with the tip of the tongue in motion and the hole of the throat visible. However bad looking a mouth, it will look good if it speaks slowly and in a low voice.  (Hanawa 1932b: 254) Figure 1.1 shows the page on which the above citation (3) is written. (Japanese is written vertically and read from right to left.)

2. As the editors and authors of conduct books are unknown, with few exceptions, I refer to the books by their titles. There are many versions of the same conduct books because early conduct books were hand copied and later revised for wider readers. It is impossible to obtain and check all versions, so I cite discourses from the versions that have been reprinted.

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Figure 1.1  Mi no katami [Half of the Body] (Muromachi 1392–1573) (Digital Document of Japan National Diet Library).

Ishikawa Matsutaroo (1973: 15) points out the differences between Menoto no sooshi and Mi no katami, saying that while Menoto no sooshi is based on the carefree characteristics of the Middle Ages, Mi no katami presents the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism and is characterized by more andro-centric descriptions. Their discourses on language use, however, do not show much difference; they prevent women from opening their mouths and speaking. The Edo period (1603–1868) Women’s conduct books in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, written for the writers’ daughters and granddaughters preparing for marriage, were circulated only among the upper classes. In contrast, Edo period conduct books were published and duplicated in enormous numbers, extending their influence beyond social-class boundaries. The carefree view of women in the Middle Ages and the andro-centric view of Buddhism and Confucianism gradually merged into the



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

feudal family system (Ishikawa 1973: 15). Thus the roles of yome (son’s wife) and tsuma (wife), required to maintain the family, were framed in the form of concrete manners and etiquette. In contrast to earlier conduct books focusing on preparation for marriage, Edo conduct books emphasized the role of the son’s wife and taught women to obey their husbands and their husbands’ parents. Central to these books were the Confucian lesson of shi koo (lit. four behaviors, four important things women have to learn): fu-toku (female-virtue), fu-gen (female-­language), fu-yoo (female-appearance), and fu-koo (female-skills). Fu-toku refers to the moral virtues women should strictly attain and maintain. Fu-gen refers to the speech women should use in their daily lives. Fu-yoo refers to the appearance appropriate for women. Fu-koo is concerned with techniques in calligraphy, Japanese songs, and sewing.3 It is worth noting that women’s speech was considered to constitute one of the four principle aspects for women in the feudal system. Examples of early conduct books are Jokun sho [Women’s Disciplinary Excerpts] (1642) and Katakoto [The Other Language] (1650). The second chapter of Jokun sho, is titled Go shoo san shoo (Five troubles and three obediences), a wellknown Buddhist lesson, meaning, as a woman was born with five troubles and cannot therefore enter Nirvana, she should obey three men; her father, her husband, and her son. In the second chapter, there are descriptions of bad and good speech. Bad speech includes forgetting that “the mouth is the origin of trouble,” laughing freely, speaking ill of someone, and spreading rumors:

(4) If you laugh at things that are not funny, if you speak ill of someone because the person does not agree with you, if you spread rumors, if you speak and laugh about something of which you are not supposed to speak, and if it is heard, you will destroy yourself. The mouth is the origin of trouble. The tongue is the root of trouble. This is the simple truth.  (Ishikawa 1973: 86) Good speech is to speak in a clear, small voice and not to speak too much. Notice here that good speech defines a good woman. How she uses language determines her value as a woman:

(5) When you speak, your voice and words should be clear. Such a woman is a good woman…. Do not let your voice be heard beyond the walls…. Do not praise others too much nor speak ill of others. Do not speak too much.  (Ishikawa 1973: 75)

3. The notion of shi koo (four behaviors) comes from Jo sei [Women Sincerity] written by the Chinese woman, Soo Taika.

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44 Gender, language and ideology

Katakoto (1650) says that children, young men, and women should speak softly, avoid difficult or argumentative language, and use the Japanese readings of words:

(6) The words of children, young men, and women should be in a soft, small voice. They should be in a low, small, and weak voice. Difficult, rough words are not suitable. Chinese words should be pronounced in their Japanese readings. (Shiraki 1976: 17)

Chinese characters have two ways of reading in Japanese, on yomi (sound reading) and kun yomi (Japanese reading). The terms used for academic, legal, and political knowledge are usually read in on yomi. The Japanese indigenous terms and those used in everyday life are often read in kun yomi. “Chinese words should be pronounced in their Japanese readings” in Katakoto, in other words, prohibit children, young men, and women from acquiring knowledge or showing intelligence in their speech. In the middle of the Edo period (Genroku years 1688–1703), many kinds of choohoo ki, encyclopedias explaining everyday knowledge in divided sections, appeared. One of the most widely read choohooki for women was Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692), written by Namura Joohaku. Nagatomo Chiyoji (1993: 386), who edited the reprint of Onna choohooki, assumes that its popularity was due to the new style of editing the same norms and knowledge in previous encyclopedias (choohooki) for women “in educational stories complied in a smaller size book with many illustrations” (Chapter 2, Figure 2.1). On women’s speech, Onna choohooki gives four major lessons, from (7a) to (7d), by presenting explicit norms and prohibitions with lists of concrete words. (7) a. The prohibition against speaking too much The section, “What Women Should and Should Not Do,” advises women against “speaking too much, being undutiful to their mothersin-law, indulging in sex, smoking, and gossiping” (Namura 1993[1692, 1693]: 21). Note that “speaking too much” is prohibited as a bad behavior comparable to “being undutiful to their mothers-in-law” and “indulging in sex.” b. The segregation of women’s and men’s speech Women should not be brought up near men. Those who are brought up among men will have a man’s heart and learn men’s speech. It is harsh and unpleasant to listen to women who use men’s language. Women’s speech should be ambiguous and soft. It is bad to use difficult words and try to appear sophisticated. Add o and moji to every word to make it soft. (Namura 1993[1692, 1693]: 24–25)



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

The last sentence, “add o and moji to every word,” refers to nyooboo kotoba (courtwomen’s speech), characterized by the addition of the polite prefix o- as in o-gushi (hair) and the polite suffix -moji as in so-moji (you). Here, the speech used by court women since the fourteenth century is redefined as the norm for all women. (I will discuss court-women’s speech in detail in Chapter 2.) c. The negative value accorded use of Chinese words Onna choohooki, like previous conduct books, prohibits the use of Chinese words, the language of knowledge (cf. Introduction, note 16). I will cite the first three sentences, in which the underlined words are the Chinese words and the others are the Japanese words: It is bad to say kerai (servant) or genin, when you should say uchi no mono or shita shita. It sounds hard if you say naigi (landlady) or naishitsu, when you should say oku-sama or ouchi-sama. It is coarse to say teishu (husband) or otoko, when you should say tono or gotei.  (Namura 1993[1692, 1693]: 25–26) Note that the evaluative expressions, “bad,” “hard,” and “coarse” used in the above examples, put an extremely negative value on the use of Chinese words by women. d. The list of prohibited words Onna choohooki also presents a list of words women are not allowed to use, such as nikui yatsu (disgusting guy), shikato (certainly), hidoi (cruel), kebiru (vulgar), yaku (jealous), and ikiji (pride), and concludes: “A good woman should not say a single word on the list.”  (Namura 1993[1692,1693]: 27) There were, of course, norms on men’s speech. However, while women, from the beginning, were not allowed the right to speak, men’s conduct books simply gave instructions concerning how to use language. In Nan choohooki [Men’s Encyclopedia] (1693), written by the same author of Onna choohooki, for example, there is no chapter corresponding to “On Women’s Language Use” in Onna choohooki. Nan choohooki has the chapter, “Words Used by Feudal Lords.” This chapter simply gives a list of words, such as “sankin means to go to Edo city,” telling that the word refers to the alternate-year residence of a feudal lord in Edo (Namura 1993[1692, 1693]: 231). Toward the end of the Edo period, as Japanese society saw a high cultural development, more educational places, called terakoya (lit. temple schools, private elementary schools for children of commoners), were established. According to Ishikawa Matsutaroo (1973: 17–18), there were 13,816 terakoya (8,636 for both girls and boys and 5,180 for boys) and 740,892 children (592,754 boys and 148,138 girls) went to terakoya during the period from 1804 to 1829. The city of Edo had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. As more women began to learn

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reading and writing, a large number of women’s conduct books circulated as reading-writing textbooks. There were 377 conduct books from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, with the peak at the middle of the nineteenth century (Ishikawa 1973: 46). The development of printing technology enabled the production of many prints of the books and enhanced their circulation. Previous books were quoted extensively and the same discourses were duplicated. They urged conscientious reflection on women’s speech, developing in great detail that women were neither to speak nor laugh nor to open their mouths. As women learned reading and writing by copying these books, learning how to read and write meant absorbing the norms and values given to speech in these books. More than three hundred kinds of conduct books of the period can be divided into four groups. I will cite one example for each group to demonstrate that all of them give very similar lessons concerning speech. The first group is called Onna imagawa [Women’s Manners by the Imagawa Family] group. The original book of this group is considered to be Onna imagawa nishiki no kodakara [Women’s Imagawa Brocade Treasure of Children] (1737), which was reprinted 38 times by 1883. Regarding speech, it repeats fu-gen (female-language) and counsels against speaking too much:

(8) There are four behaviors for women…. The second, fu-gen, is women’s language. Women should not speak too much, should use words selectively, should not say what should not be said, should say only what should be said, should say nothing that is unnecessary, and should be careful not (Ishikawa 1973: 199–200) to have a reputation for being talkative.

The second is Onna jitsugo kyoo [Women’s Practical Language Lessons] group. The original book of this group is thought to be Onna jitsugo kyoo/Onna dooshi kyoo [Women’s Practical Language Lessons/Lessons for Female Children] (1695). It also advises against speaking too much and recommends speaking in a small voice: (9) A talkative woman has no elegance. She is like a flattering harlot. Do not let your words be heard beyond the threshold. Be careful even when you think you are being quiet. Speak quietly when you speak. Do not let your lips open.  (Ishikawa 1973: 251–252) The third is Kana kyookun [Lessons of Language] group. The original of this group is said to be Kana kyookun. The seventh lesson says, “In public … both men and women should not speak too much. The mouth is the origin of trouble. The tongue is the root of trouble” (Hanawa 1925a: 17). Totsugi bunshoo [A Primer on Marriage] (1841), which belongs to this group, also counsels against speaking too much, laughing loudly, and speaking freely:



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

(10) No. 7 Among people, behave cheerfully. But it is disgraceful to speak too much and to laugh loudly. Speaking too much is bad for both men and women. The mouth is the origin of trouble. The tongue is the root of trou(Ishikawa 1973: 297–298) ble. Restrain yourself from speaking. The fourth is Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning] group. This group is based on Joshi o oshiyuru hoo [How to Educate Women], the fifth chapter of Wazoku dooshi kun [Lessons for Japanese Children] (1710) by Kaibara Ekiken. Kaibara was an egalitarian who believed in equality. In the first section of Joshi o oshiyuru hoo, he says: “The people of the land, like myself, are all children of the land, that is they are my brothers” (Kaibara 1977: 312). Nevertheless, in this chapter, he simply explains the typical Confucian lessons for women we have seen, such as shi koo (four behaviors) and san jyuu (three obediences), as well as shitsu kyo (seven leaves), seven conditions in which a man should divorce a wife; the wife who does not obey his parents, bears no child, commits adultery, is jealous, becomes sick, talks too much, and steals.4 Notice that talking too much is one of the seven conditions in which a man should divorce his wife. On speech as well, he repeats the Confucian fu-gen (female-language) edicts, contradicting egalitarianism: (11) There are four behaviors for women…. The second is female-language…. Female language means a good language. [It means] not to lie, to use words selectively, not to use rough words unsuitable for women, and to say what needs to be said, and not say unnecessary things, so that others will not hate what you say. (Kaibara 1977: 10) Also, as shown in the statement cited at the beginning of this Chapter, Kaibara warns women not to speak, because a woman’s talk brings discord to her family and trouble to the country. Kaibara, in spite of his egalitarianism, simply repeated the Confucian view that prohibited women from speaking. Ishikawa (1977: 4) correctly points out that Kaibara does not realize the essential contradiction of advocating egalitarianism, while repeating andro-centric lessons. The original work of the Onna daigaku group is considered to be Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1716, the editor unknown). Although it is said to be based on Joshi o oshiyuru hoo, according to Ishikawa (1977) who compared the two texts in detail, Onna daigaku takara bunko differs from it in two major respects. First, “Onna daigaku takara bunko picks up the norms of Joshi o oshiyuru hoo based on fu-toku (female-virtue) and simply 4. Go shoo san shoo (Five troubles and three obediences) is a Buddhist lesson for women. Confucianism also tells women to follow san jyuu (three obediences), which has the same meaning as san shoo. The phrase san jyuu is written in the same Chinese characters as san shoo but pronounced differently.

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enumerates them in nineteen lessons. As a result, Onna daigaku takara bunko completely diminished the egalitarianism of Joshi o oshiyuru hoo” (Ishikawa 1977: 29). This erased the contradiction between egalitarianism and the andro-centrism found in Joshi o oshiyuru hoo, but retained andro-centrism in the forms of everyday manners and etiquette. On women’s speech, Onna daigaku takara bunko repeats that women’s talk brings trouble to the family: (12) a. A woman has seven leaves, seven bad deeds…. A woman of too many words and too much talk will break with relatives and bring trouble to the family, so she should leave [one should divorce a talkative wife]. b. [A woman] should refrain from speaking. Do not speak ill of others. Do not lie. When you hear someone speaking ill of others, restrain yourself from speaking and do not say it. Speaking ill of others will create a break with relatives and bring trouble to the family.(Ishikawa 1973: 307, 309)

Figure 1.2  Kaibara Ekiken (1710) Joshi o oshiyuru hoo [How to Educate Women] (Ishikawa 1977: 2).

Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech 49



Figure 1.3  Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1716) (Ishikawa 1977: 43–44).

The second major difference is concerned with the form of Onna daigaku takara bunko. For the purpose of using it for the reading-writing textbook, Onna daigaku takara bunko are written in larger characters, puts readings (furigana) to most of the kanji (Chinese characters) and contains many illustrations. Compare the first two pages of Joshi o oshiyuru hoo (1710) (Figure 1.2) with how the norm of (13) cited above is presented in Onna daigaku takara bunko (Figure 1.3). While the norms are simply written in words in Joshi o oshiyuru hoo, Onna daigaku takara bunko uses larger sizes of characters, puts readings (small phonetic characters on the right sides of Chinese characters) showing how to read each kanji, with a drawing at the top of the left page. These revisions were made, Ishikawa (1977: 29) presumes, to make it appropriate as a reading-writing textbook and accessible and easy to understand for wider female learners. The norms in the four groups of conduct books, as I will show in Chapter 4, were inherited by the moral textbooks in the modern period, exerting an enormous influence on women’s education in Japan. Association with femininity In the premodern period, therefore, it was deemed necessary to police, censor, and control women’s speech because women’s speech was regarded as a dangerous act that could destroy the proper order among relatives, family, and even within the country. The norms of feminine speech today, in contrast, are legitimated, because women are expected to express femininity in their speech. How have the norms of women’s speech, which were meant to control dangerous women’s talk, become

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associated with femininity? Related to this question were two changes observed already in the eighteenth century in the way conduct books presented the norms of women’s speech. First, conduct books in the eighteenth century modified the discourse in gradually deleting overtly andro-centric statements and, instead, presenting the norms as a matter of common sense. During this period, as I have pointed out, more women started learning reading and writing, and easy-to-read versions of conduct books were produced for children and women who were not upper class. In the case of the Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning] group, Ishikawa (1977: 283–293) lists 42 different versions of conduct books in this group compiled during the Edo period, and many more in the modern period. The newly edited conduct books differed from the earlier ones in that, while the content was the same, they presented the lessons in more casual ways; “they summarized the norms in easier and shorter ways to make them appropriate for the reading-writing textbooks” (Ishikawa 1973: 20). Many of them itemized concrete descriptions of behavior with pictures and personal stories. As shown in Figure 1.1, conduct books in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries simply wrote the norms in words. An early example of the use of pictures is Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia], written in 1692 (Chapter 2, Figure 2.1). This shift, as we have just seen, can be most vividly demonstrated in the comparison between Joshi o oshiyuru hoo (1710) (Figure 1.2) and Onna daigaku takara bunko (1716) (Figure 1.3). In the process of making conduct books accessible and appropriate as reading-writing textbooks, the andro-centric ideology became invisible, and each norm was presented as a simple lesson. Second, at the same time as the first change occurred, the norms in conduct books became imbued with the notions of hin (elegance), tsutsushimi (prudence, discretion) and its verbal form, tsutsushimu or imashimu (be careful and restrain yourself). As we have seen, Onna jitsugo kyoo [Women’s Practical Language Lessons] (1695) says in (9), “A talkative woman has no elegance” (Ishikawa 1973: 251–252). Here, “being talkative or not” is directly related to “having elegance or not,” making talkativeness a determinant of a woman’s femininity. The notion of tsutsushimi (prudence) first appeared in the phrase “the discretion and prudence of language” in Fujin yashinaigusa [Book to Educate Women] in 1689 (Tanaka & Tanaka 1971: 111). The expression tsutsushimi, since then, repeatedly appeared in the phrase, kotoba o tsutsushimu or imashimu (restrain yourself from speaking). The phrase, as shown in the last line of the citation at the beginning of this Chapter, appears in Joshi o oshiyuru hoo [How to Educate Women] in 1710, is recycled in Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1716) in (12b), and Totsugi bunshoo [A Primer on Marriage] (1841) in (10), as well as in “Language shows your nature, so be careful and restrain yourself from speaking” (Ishikawa 1977: 65) in Shinsen onna yamato daigaku [Newly-Selected



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

Women’s Japanese Learning] (1785). It also remained in use for centuries, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 4, in the modern conduct books. The phrase “restrain yourself from speaking,” by defining the prohibition of speaking as reflecting a woman’s elegance and discretion, constructed the ideology that a truly elegant and prudent woman is willing to be silent, rather than waiting to be told to shut her mouth. Before, women were told not to speak because women’s talk brought trouble. Now, women are told not to speak because a speaking woman is not elegant. These two changes, I argue, function to increase the power of the norms. Norman Fairclough (1989) points out that the most effective form of domination requires naturalization of an ideology, rendering it common sense knowledge, concealing its political function to bring benefit to a particular group, so that the dominated are willing to follow the ideology. The shift observed in the ways the norms were presented in conduct books is a more effective form of domination in that it conceals the andro-centric politics of “women should not speak” and, at the same time, is able to encourage women themselves to do their best not to speak. The shift made it possible to ideologically control women, by making “women should not speak” apolitical common sense. The andro-centric norms of women’s speech, by being associated with the preferred feminine characteristics such as elegance and discretion, were naturalized as simple common sense women were expected to follow. This argument implies that the etiquette manuals for women today also naturalize their norms by imbuing them with femininity. Although today’s etiquette manuals use the terms “elegant, wise, beautiful, happy, and loved” instead of “elegance, prudence and discretion,” today’s norms of feminine speech are also presented with ideal feminine features, encouraging women themselves to do their best to follow these norms. The andro-centric norms given to control, censor and regulate women’s free speech has been naturalized by being associated with the preferred female characteristics of the time. Conclusion The discourse of conduct books, by continuously giving norms to women’s speech, constructed the norms of feminine speech. By the norms of feminine speech, I refer to a set of rules concerning how much, about what, and how women should talk, defining a style of speaking considered ideal for women at each historical juncture. The premodern norms of feminine speech were mainly characterized by greater concern with whether women should talk at all, than with how they should speak. The prohibition of too much talk seems to allow women to speak as long as they do not speak too much. Since there is no specific quantity mentioned, however, any woman’s talk can be “too much.” The prohibition of too much talk is the

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prohibition of talking. As Dale Spender (1985: 42) points out, “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence” (emphasis original). The prohibitions against using Chinese words, speaking in a loud voice, and laughing loudly also restricted women from acquiring knowledge, stating opinions, and expressing emotion by the free use of language respectively. The premodern norms of feminine speech emerged out of the andro-centric ideology to dominate women by prohibiting them from opening their mouths. The main rationalization given to the prohibition of speaking was the Confucian teaching that a woman’s talk brings trouble, destroys the family, or even the country. Women’s speech came to form not only a socially meaningful category attracting people’s attention but also a dangerous category requiring constant vigilance to police, censor, and control. This perspective to frame women’s speech as an object of evaluation and criticism has survived the emergence of Japan’s nation state and its modernization, as we will see in Chapter 4, and wars in the early twentieth century, and has been inherited by today’s etiquette manuals, as seen in the Introduction. Although what constitutes feminine speech in each period differs, women’s way of talking has attracted the interest and curiosity of Japanese people for a surprisingly long period of time, maintaining and preserving the perspective of conceptualizing women’s speech as the object of regulation, control and domination. To capture the continuity of normative discourses from the premodern to the modern period, I call the norms of women’s speech in both premodern conduct books and today’s etiquette manuals by the same phrase “the norms of feminine speech.” Conduct books of the premodern period, while they did not use the term “femininity,” cited the preferred feminine characteristics of the time, such as elegance, prudence and discretion. It is the long history of normative discourses that has constructed the norms of feminine speech. The discourse of premodern conduct books not only constructed the norms of feminine speech but also a premodern ideology of ideal feminine speech. By that, I mean the ideologically-constructed representation of women’s ideal linguistic practices in the premodern period, which followed the norms of feminine speech, such as not speaking too much, not using Chinese words, not speaking in a loud voice and not laughing loudly. The discourses of conduct books, by giving norms to women’s speech for hundreds of years, simultaneously defined what the ideal feminine speech should be. Thus the ideology of feminine speech was characterized by its normative function, representing an ideal, model speech which female speakers were supposed to learn and aim for. Just as the premodern norms of feminine speech survived radical social changes from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the premodern ideology of feminine speech, as I will demonstrate in Chapters 4 and 8, was preserved through the modern period (Chapter 4)



Chapter 1.  The norms of feminine speech

and gradually incorporated into the notion of women’s language during WWII (Chapter 8). The premodern ideology of feminine speech, in other words, would ultimately constitute the normative aspect of women’s language, one of the three major aspects of women’s language today. In investigating the relationships between women and language in the premodern period, therefore, it is crucial to distinguish the premodern norms of feminine speech, the premodern ideology of feminine speech and the actual linguistic practice of premodern women. The norms of feminine speech are rules constructed by normative discourse and should be strictly distinguished from women’s actual speech. The norms of feminine speech, however, have an enormous effect on women’s linguistic practice, policing, censoring, and controlling women’s speech. First, the norms of feminine speech focus on how much and how women talk rather than what they say, forcing women’s awareness of how much and how they speak when they make linguistic choices. Second, the norms of feminine speech enable Japanese people to comment, evaluate, and criticize a woman’s speech based on whether her way of talking is right or wrong, good or bad. A woman in any case, when she speaks, needs to bear in mind the possibility that she will be criticized for speaking too much, incorrectly, or badly. Third, it becomes legitimate to apply the same set of norms to women’s speech no matter what their situation. In local interactions, women sometimes need to deviate from the norms. The norms of feminine speech, however, legitimate the acts of applying the same constraints on all women’s linguistic acts in any situation. Fourth, in addition to general norms of speech, a special norm can be imposed on women’s speech. The general norms apply to any speaker irrespective of gender. The norms of feminine speech, by contrast, are applied only to women’s speech. Any woman aiming to perform the same task as a man in her linguistic interaction needs to consider the special constraints on women in addition to the general constraints. The norms of feminine speech still restrict women’s free expression today, evaluating women’s speech solely based on how she speaks rather than what she says. In November 2009, a government committee started screening ministries’ budget requests. An Upper House female member of the committee, Renhoo, had several fierce, face-to-face battles with bureaucrats and gained public attention. On the last day of the committee’s deliberation, a 70-year-old male rock musician, Uchida Yuuya, appeared in the budget-screening room. People were surprised to find him in this most unexpected place. Why did he come? He answered a newspaper reporter: “The screening itself really shows democracy in action, but watching Renhoo on TV, I got angry at her rude way of speaking. That’s why I came here today.” But, when asked about Renhoo on that very day, he said, “Today, she was feminine. Her voice got hoarse and I felt pity for her.” (Asahi shimbun, Nov. 28, 2009)

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The rock musician came all the way to the budget-screening room because he got angry at her way of speaking, not at what she said. And he felt pity for her on the day, not because she stopped attacking bureaucrats, but because her way of speaking sounded feminine. Women’s speech, this indicates, is often evaluated based on the norms of feminine speech, whether she sounds polite, soft, or indirect. At the same time, this example shows that the norms become a resource for a woman to emerge as an elegant, nice lady whenever she wants to. It is very possible that Renhoo learned that there was some criticism against her way of speaking on previous days and changed it to a more feminine style on the day the rock musician visited. The norms of feminine speech, therefore, cannot always control women’s linguistic acts. Women have a choice not to speak too much, anticipating criticism against talking too much or trying to look elegant, or to speak freely and be ready for the blame of being inelegant. The norms of feminine speech, because they are abstract rules, can be reformed by women’s creative uses of language. That is why it was necessary for the etiquette-manual discourse to continuously repeat the norms for hundreds of years. The next chapter looks at “court-women’s speech” as an example of such creative use of language by women and their relationship to the norms of feminine speech.

chapter 2

Normalization of court-women’s speech Add o and moji to every word to make it soft. Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692) One of the best-seller conduct books for women in the seventeenth century, Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692), tells women to add a prefix o and a suffix moji to every word (Namura 1993[1692]: 25). The two affixes, o and moji, came from nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech), which courtly ladies serving in the imperial palace invented in the fourteenth century. It is not only Onna choohooki that referred to court-women’s speech. Many other conduct books from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries also referred to it. As we have seen in the Introduction, moreover, court-women’s speech is still considered an early example of Japanese women’s language in today’s many dictionary definitions. What was court-women’s speech and what did it have to do with the norms of feminine speech given in the conduct books? Following a close look at the origin and development of court-women’s speech, I have two key purposes in this chapter. The first is to analyze the discourses of the media and the conduct books from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and to describe how differently those discourses used court-women’s speech. I will demonstrate that conduct-book discourse during the period reinforced the norms of feminine speech by defining court-women’s speech as the ideal speech of women. The second purpose of this chapter is to argue, based on that analysis, that the linguistic innovation of court women was exploited to reinforce the gendered norms of feminine speech, which functioned to control, regulate and dominate women’s speech. I will conclude the chapter by discussing what the argument implies about the question I posed in the Introduction – i.e., why subversive performances often remain ephemeral, leaving the prevailing power order largely untouched. Court-women’s speech Court-women’s speech (nyooboo kotoba) refers to a style of speaking invented by nyooboo (court women), women serving in the imperial palace since the

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fourteenth century. Central to court-women’s speech is a set of vocabularies to refer to domestic items such as food, kitchen utensils and clothes. Court women created court-women’s speech by transforming the ordinary words. According to Sugimoto Tsutomu (1998: 113–114), a specialist in the history of Japanese language, their ways of creating court-women’s speech can be classified into two major sets of operations. The first set is concerned with the form of words, consisting of three major operations. First, they abbreviated the last syllables of general terms and added moji (letter). So, ika (squid) became i-moji and sonata (you) became so-moji. Second, they simply abbreviated the last syllables and transformed manjuu (bun) into man. Third, they repeated the initial syllables, so that koo no mono (pickle) became koo-koo. The second set of operations is based on how court women sensed the referents, which can also be grouped into three types. First, based on the sense of touch, mizu (water) became o-hiyashi or o-hiya, in which o is an honorific prefix and hiya means cool. Second, based on the shape, tai (sea bream) became o-hira, in which hira means thin. Third, based on the sense of color, azuki (red adzuki bean) became o-aka, in which aka means red. These two sets of operations, one based on word forms and the other based on the human senses, testify to the linguistic creativity of court women. Because of its creative word formation, court-women’s speech has attracted Japanese people for a long time and some of them are still in use. Concerning why court women created the special speech, several reasons have been suggested. Some researchers claim that, since most words of court-women’s speech were those for food, court women tried to avoid directly referring to food and invented court-women’s speech as indirect expressions appropriate for a highclass place such as the imperial palace. Others claim that court-women’s speech was created as jargon, as the secret speech understood only among court women. Still others argue that it was invented as the common speech among court women, who came from different regions to work in the palace and spoke different regional speech, to communicate smoothly (Sugimoto 1998: 20–21). The emergence of court-women’s speech, in other words, has been mostly accounted for by the nature of their job as court women rather than by their gender. It is not known exactly when court women started speaking court-women’s speech. Sugimoto (1998: 17) assumes that they already used court-women’s speech at the end of the fourteenth century, because the court-women’s words, kukon (liquor) and matsu (mushrooms), already appeared in Towazugatari [The Confessions of Lady Nijoo], the journal by the court woman known as Lady Nijoo, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The first reference to the peculiar vocabulary of court women is found in Ama no mokuzu [Seaweed of a Mermaid] (1420):



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech



(1) In the imperial court, all foods are called by different names. It is confusing for those who do not know them. Meshi (rice) is kugo. Sake (liquor) is kukon. Mochi (rice cake) is kachin. Miso (bean paste) is mushi. Shio (salt) is shiromono. Toofu (tofu) is kabe. Soomen (noodles) are hoso mono. Matsutake (mushrooms) are matsu. Koi (carp) is ko-moji. Funa (crucian) is fu-moji. Tsugumi (thrush) is tsu-moji. Note that thrush is not eaten. Tsuku tsuku shi (horsetail) is tsuku. Warabi (bracken) is wara. Negi (onion) is utsuho. These different names are used. Nowadays, the women in the shogun’s palace use these names, too. (Hanawa 1932c: 108–109)

It introduces these words rather critically by saying, “It is confusing for those who do not know them.” The last line, “Nowadays, the women in the shogun’s palace use these names, too,” shows that court-women’s speech spread from the imperial court to the shogun’s palace in the fifteenth century. The name, nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech), first appears in Oo jooroo onna no koto [The Names of the Great Court Women] (Ashikaga Period 1436–1490). This book cites the different names of 115 words, as the following excerpt shows: (2)

ii (rice); o-daikugo or o-naka In the Court, any offering is called kugo. sushi (sushi); su-moji tako (octopus); ta-moji ika (squid); i-moji sake (liquor); kukon toofu (tofu); shiromono or kabe miso (bean paste); mushi (Hanawa 1932a: 21–24)

As we have seen in Ama no mokuzu, court-women’s speech was not originally evaluated as elegant speech. Tayasu (Tokugawa) Munetake, the first head of the Tayasu branch of the Tokugawa clan and a philologist, in Kusa musubi [The Grass Tie] (1771), accuses court women of destroying the beauty of traditional words, demonstrating that court-women’s speech was still criticized even at the end of the eighteenth century:

(3) It is in the ordinary course of worldly things that language changes. But nothing is more absurd than women’s speech [court-women’s speech]. They [court women] change beautiful, traditional names to absurd names. Some change the traditional names to Chinese names. It is acceptable to change bad names. But it is very unpleasant to see new names even worse than the original ones. (Kunita 1964: 693–694)

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From the symbol of upper class to the norm of women Speech of the upper class In spite of these criticisms, court-women’s speech was transmitted from the imperial court to the shogun’s palace and to the mansions of samurai (warrior). Through the daughters of merchants who served at warriors’ mansions, court-women’s speech further spread to common women and men during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As it became known to ordinary people, it was given names such as jochuu kotoba (women’s speech), moji kotoba (moji speech), gosho kotoba (palace speech), yashiki kotoba (mansion speech), asobase kotoba (idle speech) and yamato kotoba (Japanese speech). Notice that the name nyooboo kotoba was not used from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Soon this manner of speech began to appear in media such as shoowa shuu (funny stories) and kokkei bon (dramatic comic novels). What did court-women’s speech symbolize in the media of the Edo period? One of the light novels, Seken musume katagi [The Nature of Common Young Women] (1716), tells the story of a woman who became the wife of a merchant after serving at a samurai’s mansion. (4) She used [palace speech] shoomei for oil light, and omura or oboso for cheap sardines…. All her mannerisms were elegant and she called the bean paste sasajin. So even the apprentices and the children of the house started imitating her, and their speech improved. Her husband felt ashamed of his speech and spent his days without saying much.  (Ejima 1990[1716]: 138–139)

Hence, as the apprentices and the children imitated the wife’s speech, “their speech improved.” Her speech is described here as the good speech of the upper class, which not only women but also merchants, apprentices, and children wanted to imitate. Shikitei Samba is one of the greatest writers of the Edo period. In his dramatic comic novel, Shijuuhachi kuse [Forty-Eight Habits] (1811), consider the scene of a merchant’s wife talking to two young women, O-fuyu (Dear-Winter) and O-aki (Dear-Autumn), who had come back from serving apprenticeships over the past year at warriors’ mansions. So the wife tries to talk to them in yashiki kotoba (mansion speech). The story is in the form of a monologue by the merchant’s wife, and the underlined words are spoken in mansion speech:

(5) Hey, hey, O-fuyu. Put that spoon by the napkin bar. Put the rice scoop on the pot shelf. Hang the pestle on the o-ku-moji. What? You say o-ku-moji means pickle? Oh my. Sushi becomes su-moji and shooga (ginger) becomes shoga-moji. So I thought kugi (nail) was ku-moji. I thought for the things



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

without the different names, you simply attach an o (prefix) and say moji, moji. Dumpling is ishiishi. Spoon is kogarashi, or is it yamaarashi (mountain storm)? Serving at the mansions must be troublesome. You have to memorize those different names…. Hey, O-aki and O-fuyu. You got too used to such speech to correct them. But you will start using the town speech again in half a year or so. (Shikitei 1982[1811]: 310–311) The wife knows that the two young women acquired mansion speech while working in the samurai mansions. However, in contrast to the husband in Seken musume katagi, who “felt ashamed of his speech and spent his days without saying much,” she unabashedly reveals that she cannot use mansion speech by saying, “I thought of things without different names, you simply attach an o (prefix) and say moji, moji.” Her act of adding moji to any word at all makes fun of the usage. “Serving at the mansions must be troublesome. You have to memorize those different names,” indicates that, in her mind, ordinary town people do not need to use mansion speech because life in the mansions is a different world. In saying, “But you will start using town words again in half a year or so,” she even shows pride in her own town speech. In this excerpt, mansion speech, that is court-women’s speech, is simply presented as the speech of the upper class. It was not the speech the town women needed to use merely because they were women. Another dramatic comic novel by Shikitei Samba, Ukiyo buro [Baths of the Floating World] (1809–1812), describes a conversation among three young women in a bath. O-hatsu (Dear-First-Time) and O-same (Dear-Last-Time) have served in samurai mansions. O-musu (Dear-Sultry-One) has no such experience: (The court-women’s speech is underlined.)

(6) O-hatsu: Isn’t she truly admirable? We could not do as she does even if we had a hundred [servings] of uchimaki (rice) at once. O-musu: Well. You speak in a roundabout way. Say “a hundred [servings] of kome (rice) at once.” O-hatsu: Oh, O-musu. Well, why not? (laugh)…. O-musu: I am a well-known tomboy…. That is why I am an o-sha-moji. O-same: Oh my. O-sha-moji means a rice scoop. (laugh) O-musu: Is that so, O-same? I thought o-sha-moji meant o-sha-beri (talkative). Since they say su-moji for sushi and sa-moji for sakana (side dish), it should be OK to say o-sha-moji for o-sha-beri. O-hatsu: Isn’t that funny? (laugh) O-same: You will learn these words, O-musu, if you start serving at a mansion. O-hatsu: That’s right. If you go to serve at a mansion, everything is referred to in yamato kotoba (Japanese speech) and you will be elegant….

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O-musu: Look! O-hatsu is so o-sha-re (smart). O-hatsu: You might call that o-sha-moji, O-musu. (laugh) O-same: (laugh)…. O-musu: Oh, it’s too difficult! A tomboy like me could never serve at a (Shikitei 1957[1809–1812]: 225–228) mansion….

In this conversation, both O-hatsu and O-same use the speech they acquired at the mansions. For O-musu, who makes fun of their speech, they simply say, “You will learn these words if you start serving at a mansion.” Here, the use of “Japanese speech” symbolizes their experience of working with the upper class. Yet, “Japanese speech” is also presented as speech not necessary for the townspeople, when O-musu says, “Oh, it’s too difficult! A tomboy like me could never serve at a mansion.” There was a clear distinction between the world of mansions and the world of the town and a girl in town like O-musu did not think of learning courtwomen’s speech as long as she stays in town. Furthermore, even O-hatsu makes fun of the speech when she says, “You would call it o-sha-moji,” which is what O-musu probably would say. And they laugh together. Both O-hatsu and O-same, this shows, understand the absurdity of looking classy by adding moji to a word. The townspeople have pride in their own speech and, again, court-women’s speech is used to symbolize the upper social class. Shikitei Samba symbolizes the difference between mansion life and town life with court-women’s speech and town speech. The merchants’ daughters who served at mansions played the role of bridging the two different worlds. Their use of courtwomen’s speech in town emphasizes the differences between the two worlds and, at the same time, reveals the absurdity of displaying one’s social class by using a different speech. Court-women’s speech, in his works, symbolizes the upper-class world of mansions as clearly distinguished from the world of townspeople. The grief of the two servant women, O-maru (Dear-Shapely-One) and O-kabe (Dear-Square-One), in Ukiyo buro is directly caused by this association between court-women’s speech and the upper class.

(7) O-maru: What a stupid custom! They say this and that, making up all kinds of crazy words like o-gushi [for hair]. Those Asobase words (idle speech words) are shabby. Say it plainly, “hair.” I hate those words. Because a servant has no choice, I say o-maesama (you), o-jibutsu-sama (Buddha), sayoo (yes), and shikaraba (then). But we don’t need them in a poor family. I would be miserable if I couldn’t use my own words even in the bath…. O-kabe: It’s more than I can bear. In the house, I have to say anata (you), doo asobase (do this), and koo asobase (do that). I seriously hate it. (Shikitei 1957[1809–1812]: 160–161)



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

Court-women’s speech, in this conversation, is called asobase speech (idle speech), which lacks the term “women.” In O-maru’s words, “we don’t need them in a poor family,” the world of mansions and the world of a poor family are explicitly segregated by speech. They “hate” speaking those words because “a servant has no choice” but to use the speech of the world not her own. Here again, court-women’s speech is presented as the speech of the upper-class mansion world. And the servant women hate using it even if they are women. The media discourse, therefore, presented court-women’s speech as a symbol of the upper social class, i.e., the world of samurai mansions. For the writers of funny stories and dramatic comic novels, it was a good tool for linguistically distinguishing mansion world and town world. The Edo media used court-women’s speech as the speech of the courtly class rather than that of town women. That fact denies the later interpretation that court-women’s speech was created out of woman’s innate desire to speak in an indirect, feminine way. Nagao Masanori, who wrote a whole book on women’s language in 1943, states that: “[Court-women’s speech was used] largely because of woman’s innate nature to avoid directly referring to things or openly expressing emotion and to say and think indirectly, keeping most of her thoughts deep in her own mind” (Nagao 1943: 32). If women started using court-women’s speech because their innate nature told them to speak in an indirect way, as he argues, how then can we explain that the servant women hated using it? It is more reasonable to assume that, for servant women in the early nineteenth century, court-women’s speech was a linguistic skill required to attain employment at samurai mansions. Men’s use of court-women’s speech The association of court-women’s speech with the upper class also finds support in that not only women but also men started using it to present themselves as upper class. In addition to the example of Seken musume katagi [The Nature of Common Young Women] (1716) above, other texts also show men’s use of such speech. In a traditional Kyoogen play, entitled Ohiyashi (a court-women’s word for water), a male servant is making fun of the male master for using court-women’s speech: (The court-women’s speech is underlined.) (8)

Master: Servant: Master: Servant: Master:

Hey, musube (bring) me some ohiyashi (water). What are you talking about? I say, musube me some ohiyashi from that waterfall. Oh, you mean to bring some water from that fall. That’s right.

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Servant: Then, simply say, “Bring some water.” Why do you say musube some ohiyashi? (laugh) Master: You don’t know anything. The court women in the imperial court say, musube some ohiyashi. They don’t say, “bring some water.” You should follow them. Servant: I know the upper-class women, children, and young men say, musube some ohiyashi. But to hear it from your big mouth…. (laugh) (Nonomura & Ando 1974: 72) In this conversation, neither the master nor the servant thinks it strange for men to use court-women’s speech. The master suggests that the male servant use it: “You should follow them.” Similarly, the servant does not laugh at the master because he is a man. He laughs because the speech does not fit his “big mouth,” i.e., because court-women’s speech does not suit his social class. In another funny story, Seisuishoo [Sobriety, Drunkenness, and Laughter] (1628), both Oda Nobunaga (feudal warlord 1534–1582) and a male servant use court-women’s speech:

(9) One day, the Lord Nobunaga passed near Toofukuji Temple. He was sleeping on a horse. When Numa no Tooroku (the name of his servant) woke him up, he asked, “Where are we?” “Rokujoo (Sixth Street) is on your right, and to the front is Toofukuji Temple,” he answered. Then, Nobunaga said, “Oh, it is shira kabe (toofu).” (Anrakuan 1964[1628]: 247)

The answer of Nobunaga is funny because he makes a pun on the name of the temple, Toofukuji, and the court-women’s word shira kabe (white wall) for toofu. (10) A man had just started serving in a mansion, and he thoughtlessly puts o (the prefix of court-women’s speech) on any word. The master scolded him, “Don’t put o in front of everything. It’s harsh on the ear.” Later, the man was serving his master a meal and noticed some rice on his beard and said, “There are dai-tsubu (some rice) on your togai (jaw).”  (Anrakuan 1964[1628]: 30) The joke here is that the servant began deleting the prefix of court-women’s speech, o, from all words, even those for which it was not a prefix but a part of the word, such as odai, a court-women’s word for rice and otogai (jaw). Nichiren, a Buddhist monk (1222–1282), and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a feudal warlord (1538–1598), also used court-women’s speech in their letters. In a letter of 1281, Nichiren used a court-women’s word, mi-moji, for miso (bean paste) (Kunita 1964: 11). Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in a letter to his mother, used so-moji, another court-women’s word for sonata (you) (Aida 1949: 540).. In an epistolary novel, Usuyuki monogatari [The Tale of Light Snow], a man also uses so-moji in his



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

letter to a woman (Kinsei bungaku shoshi kenkyukai 1973: 42). Kunita Yuriko (1977: 14) assumes that “… the speech used among court women gradually became known to women in the warrior class and, further, began to be used by the warriors themselves.” Men used court-women’s speech because it was considered the speech of the upper class, rather than the speech of women. Prohibition on men’s use In the same period, nevertheless, there appeared discourses that prohibited men from using court-women’s speech. In another story in Seisuishoo (1628), a warrior used the court-women’s speech okabe (toofu) and na (vegetable), so the master scolded him saying that: “Such speech is for the court women to use” (Anrakuan 1964[1628]: 77–78). Similarly, Nyooboo hippoo [How Women Should Write] (year unknown) warns men not to use court-women’s speech, even when they write letters to court women: (11) When a man writes a letter to a court woman … he should not use courtwomen’s speech. The ignorant use it, saying [they do so because] the letter is addressed to a court woman. It is very strange. (Hanawa 1925b: 443) Another normative discourse, Shoreishuu [Collection of Manners] (1669), also prohibits men from using court-women’s speech in letters: (12) When you give a present to a court woman, it is bad to use court-women’s speech, such as o-hira, for tai (sea bream) in the letter [you send along with the present]. You should use tai. (Sugimoto 1998: 54) Kagomimi [Basket Ears] (1687) also warns that it is disgusting to hear the nicely dressed-up warriors and merchants speak “women’s speech”: (13) Among the kinds of speech, [we can distinguish] women’s speech. It is disgusting to see a nicely dressed warrior or merchant speak women’s speech without making this [gender] distinction. They are often observed saying o-naka for hara (stomach), hi-moji for hidarui (hungry), ka-moji for kami (hair), o-tsuke for shiru (soup), o-kowa for koo-han (rice), akano-meshi for seki-han (red-rice), yogoshi for aemono (seasoned dishes), kinako for mame no ko (bean powder) and so on. Watch your speech.  (Mutoo & Oka 1976: 230) The words listed indicate that what is called “women’s speech” here is court-women’s speech. By deleting “court,” the term related to social class, the phrase “women’s speech” highlights the gender distinction. The emphasis on female gender, then, legitimates prohibiting men to use the speech. “They are often observed” shows, on the other hand, that many men, both warriors and merchants, were using it.

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On this remark in Kagomimi (1687), Kiyuu shooran [Glimpses of Edo Ludic Life] (1830) points out that, though men’s use of court-women’s speech is not appropriate, people are so used to it that it doesn’t bother them: (14) Kagomimi said that warriors used disgusting speech…. It is unsuitable and effeminate for a man with a beard to use such speech. But, since our ears are used to hearing a man using the speech, it is not as disgusting as it once was. (Kitamura 1970[1830]: 424) During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, therefore, court-women’s speech, the symbol of the upper class, gradually spread among males as well. At the same time, there also appeared discourses that regarded it as “women’s speech,” as in Kagomimi [Basket Ears] (1687), and prohibited men from using it. There was a slight shift in the symbolic meaning of court-women’s speech, from class-related to gender-related speech. The normalization of court-women’s speech Along with this change, since the seventeenth century, normative discourses appeared that collected and listed court-women’s speech. In contrast to the media discourse, in which court-women’s speech symbolized higher social class, such books redefined it as the norm for all women. The normative discourse on courtwomen’s speech can be divided into two major groups. The first group contains two Japanese-Portuguese dictionaries compiled by the Jesuit Missionary Group (Nihon Iezusukai), Nichi-ho jisho [Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary] (1603–1604) and Nihon daibunten [Great Japanese Language Dictionary] (1604–1608). The second group includes an enormous number of women’s conduct books. The first group of dictionaries described court-women’s speech as the speech used not only by court women but by all women. Of the 25,967 words in the Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary, 110 are designated as “words for women” (palaura de mulheres). They include general terms used by women as well as court-women’s speech. Some examples follow: (15) Murasaqi (murasaki). Ivaxi. Sardine. A word for women. Cucon (kukon). Liquor. A word for women. Ixij (ishii). G  ood or good taste. This word, in this sense, is usually used by women. Voman (o-man). B  un. Same as man-juu. It is a woman’s word and the original, correct word is man.  (Nihon Iezusukai 1980[1603–1604]) It defines court-women’s speech as “words for women,” rather than words of upper class or court women. Moreover, as the explanation of o-man shows, “words for



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

women” were considered as “not original, not correct” words. Based on the Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, João Rodriguez, compiled the Great Japanese Language Dictionary. Court-women’s speech is referred to in the section on how Japanese women write letters: (16) On Women’s Letters In the letters addressed from women to men … [the words created by] the first character of the word combined with the suffix moji are used to express the original words. For example, fu-moji means fumi (letter), so-moji means sonata (you), and pa-moji means padre (Jesuit missionary). Other than these words, there are peculiar words which are used only among women, or spoken by a woman to a man. For example, kukon means sake (liquor), hiyashi means mizu (water), murasaki means iwashi (sardine), and kachin means mochi (rice cake).  (Rodriguez 1955[1604–1608]: 724) Again, all words listed in this excerpt are court-women’s speech, but they are explained as words all women use to write letters. It is worth noting here that women applied the operation of word formation to create court-women’s speech to foreign words, such as Portuguese padre, and invented pa-moji by abbreviating the last syllable dre and adding moji. This testifies an amazing linguistic creativity of the Japanese women in the seventeenth century. The second group of conduct books listed them as the words all women should use. The first example of conduct books, Fujin yashinaigusa [Book to Educate Women] (1689), lists 121 words classified into five groups, calling them as yamato kotoba (Japanese speech) and jochuu kotoba (women’s speech). The name yamato kotoba, though it literally means Japanese speech, was the name strongly associated with women. As we have seen in the Introduction, women were prohibited from using kango (Chinese words) and taught to use wago (Japanese words, the Japanese reading of the term wago is yamato kotoba) since the eleventh century (cf. Introduction, note 16). The five classifications were used as the framework for later conduct books and, as we will see in Table 2.1, later conduct books also called court-women’s speech either as yamato kotoba or jochuu kotoba. The five groups and some of the words listed for each group are shown as follows: (17) a. Yamato kotoba (Japanese speech) for cloth and tool Say go-fuku for kosode (wadded silk garment). b. Food Say uchimachi for kome (rice), gugo for meshi (cooked rice), mushi for miso (bean paste), kukon or sasa for sake (liquor), and man for manjuu (bun).

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c. Vegetable Say nasu for nasubi (egg plant). d. Fish Say o-mura for iwashi (sardine). e. Tools Say sha-moji for shakushi (rice scoop).  (Tanaka & Tanaka 1971: 111–112) Although Fujin yashinaigusa named them jochuu kotoba (women’s speech) and yamato kotoba (Japanese speech), most of them are what we now call court-­ women’s speech. The use of the terms jochuu kotoba and yamato kotoba instead of the terms used in the media discourse, such as moji kotoba (moji speech), gosho kotoba (palace speech), asobase kotoba (idle speech), and yashiki kotoba (mansion speech), emphasizes the association between these words with female gender rather than with the upper social class. Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692) inherited much from Fujin yashinaigusa. As I cited at the beginning of this chapter, it presents court-women’s speech as the norm of women by saying: “Add o and moji to every word to make it soft” (Namura 1993[1692]: 25) and lists words women should use, which mostly belong to court-women’s speech, as the following excerpt shows: (18) a. Women’s soft speech Say osanai for kodomo (child), omutsukaru for naku (to cry), oshizumari for neru (to sleep) and o-gushi sumasu for kami arau (to wash hair). b. Yamato kotoba (Japanese speech): Cloth, food, vegetable, fish, and tools. Say uchimaki for kome (rice), mushi for miso (bean paste), kukon for sake (liquor), man for manjuu (bun), kachin for mochi (rice cake), ishiishi for dango (rice ball), o-kabe for toofu (toofu), o-den for dengaku (toofu coated with bean paste), and kinako for mame-no-ko (bean powder). (Namura 1993[1692]: 27–39) Notice Onna choohooki also calls what we now call court-women’s speech as yamato kotoba (Japanese speech), representing it as an appropriate speech for women. In addition to the list, as pointed out in Chapter 1, Onna choohooki, characterized by the use of many illustrations, instructs what each word refers to by writing the word at the side of a picture of the referent in illustrations, as shown in Figure 2.1. Following the two books, many conduct books from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries listed court-women’s speech as the speech women should use. Table 2.1 shows the titles and publication years of 13 conduct books listing what we now call court-women’s speech, the names used to refer to the speech, and the number of qualifying words. Although Table 2.1 includes only a few conduct books produced during the period, it demonstrates that they listed a large number of



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

Words in the illustration indicate clockwise from top right, kosode (wadded silk garment), omoji (kimono sash), yoru no mono (night cloth), wata (cotton), ohiya (water), sekimori (bamboo basket), kogarashi (wooden pestle), shamoji (rice scoop), uguisu (wooden spatula), surusuru (dried cuttlefish), mushi (bean paste), uchimaki (rice), kukon (liquor), zoro (noodles), yakibuki (gibel), tamoji (octopus), karamono (radish), kuro (cooking pan), kuro (iron pot), ozooshi (paper), kugo (cooked rice), and kachoo (mosquito net). Figure 2.1  Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692) (Namura 1993[1692]: 35).

Table 2.1  Women’s conduct books which list court-women’s speech.

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

  (4)

  (5)

Titles [Translations] (Years published)

Names for the words (Translations)

Nyooboo shitsukesho [Women’s Manner Book] (the Muromachi period, 1392–1573) Fujin yashinaigusa [Book to Educate Women] (1689)

nyoboo kata no kotoba (words of court women)

107

yamato kotoba (Japanese speech)

121

Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia] (1692) Jochuu kotoba [Women’s Words] (1692) Jochuu kotoba zukai [Women’s Language Use] (unknown)

women’s soft language use yamato kotoba (Japanese speech) jochuu kotoba (women’s speech) jochuu kotoba zukai (women’s language use)

Number of words listed

34 108

303

153

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68 Gender, language and ideology

  (6)

  (7)

  (8)

  (9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

Titles [Translations] (Years published)

Names for the words (Translations)

Jochuu kotoba [Women’s Words] (1712) Shoreisoo [Book of Etiquette and Manners] (1722) Onna imagawa baika bunko [Women’s Imagawa Apricot Blossom Library] (1776) Onna terako choohooki [Young Women’s Encyclopedia] (1806) Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1831) Onna manzai takara bunko [Women’s Humorous Language Treasure Library] (1837) Onna shorei ayanishiki [Women’s Precious Brocade Book of Manners] (1841) Jokyoo taizen hime bunko [The Complete Women’s Teaching Library] (unknown)

jochuu kotoba (women’s speech)

325

onna kotoba (women’s speech)

333

jochuu kotoba (women’s speech)

87

jochuu kotoba zukai (women’s language use)

71

yamato kotoba (Japanese speech)

57

jochuu yamato kotoba (women’s Japanese speech)

71

yamato kotoba (Japanese speech)

62

jochuu kotoba (women’s speech)

67

Notes: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13)

Nyooboo shitsukesho (Kunita 1964: 455–464) Fujin yashinaigusa (Kunita 1977: 565–571) Onna choohooki (Namura 1993[1692, 1693]: 27–39) Jochuu kotoba (Kunita 1977: 579–601) Jochuu kotoba zukai (Kunita 1964: 527–537) Jochuu kotoba (Kunita 1964: 549–585) Shoreisoo (Kunita 1964: 591–610) Onna imagawa baika bunko (Sugimoto 1998: 41) Onna terako choohooki (Kunita 1977: 689–695) Onna daigaku takara bunko (Sugimoto 1998: 69–70) Onna manzai takara bunko (Sugimoto 1998: 96–97) Onna shorei ayanishiki (Sugimoto 1998: 41) Jokyoo taizen hime bunko (Sugimoto 1998: 41)

Number of words listed

Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech 69



court-women’s words as the words women should use. Table 2.1 also demonstrates one interesting tendency concerning what to call court-women’s speech. I include (1) Nyooboo shitsukesho [Women’s Manner Book], written in the Muromachi period (1392–1573), to show that the term “court women” was used to indicate that group of words until the sixteenth century. From the terms used to refer to the words in the conduct books from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries (2 to 13), however, the term “court women” disappeared, replaced either by yamato kotoba (Japanese speech) (2, 3, 10, and 12) or by jochuu kotoba (women’s speech) (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 13). The name yamato kotoba, as we have seen, was closely associated with women. The names used to refer to the words, yamato kotoba and jochuu kotoba, redefined the words as those appropriate for all women rather than only for the upper class of court women. Court-women’s speech also appeared in conduct books teaching appropriate ways of writing letters with sample sentences that women could use in letters. In the how-to-write-letter books as well, court-women’s speech, such as kukon (liquor), ome-moji (to see), and fu-moji (letter), were used in sample sentences, as shown in Table 2.2. Table 2.2  Court-women’s speech in sample sentences in letter books.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Titles [Translations] (Years published)

Sample sentence

Onna bunko taka makie [Women’s Library for Refined Letters] (1721) Onna bundai ayabukuro [Precious-Woven Container of Women’s Letters] (1744) Joyoo bunshoo itoguruma [Loom of Women’s Writings] (1772) Onna moroyoo bunshoo [Women’s Writings for Various Uses] (1799) Onnayoo bunshoo takara kagami [Women’s Treasure Mirror of Writings] (1840)

Thank you very much for giving me a rare kukon (liquor).

Notes: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

You should say ome-moji (see you) and thank you. As you allowed me, the other day for the first time, I was able to ome-moji (see you) for such a long time. It was my great pleasure. You thought of me, gave a letter to me and told me that you would ome-moji (see me). I read the letter again and again. I read your fu-moji (letter) with pleasure.

Onna bunko taka makie (Ishikawa 1973: 445) Onna bundai ayabukuro (Ishikawa 1973: 496) Joyoo bunshoo itoguruma (Ishikawa 1973: 469) Onna moroyoo bunshoo (Ishikawa 1973: 524) Onnayoo bunshoo takara kagami (Ishikawa 1973: 575)

70 Gender, language and ideology

Conclusion From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, therefore, in contrast to the media discourse in which court-women’s speech symbolized higher social class, the dictionaries and conduct books redefined it as speech all women should use. Courtwomen’s speech was not considered the elegant, normative speech of women at the end of the eighteenth century, as we have seen in Kusa musubi [The Grass Tie] (1771). Nor was it originally the goal of all women, as shown by the town women and servant women in Ukiyo buro [Baths of the Floating World] (1809–1812) by Shikitei Samba, who were not willing to use court-women’s speech. Rather, courtwomen’s speech became the ideal, normative speech style of women, because the range of metalinguistic practices, such as dictionary and conduct book discourses, gave court-women’s speech the normative value of use for all women. These metalinguistic practices became possible, meaningful and acceptable when the norms of feminine speech were expected to linguistically control, dominate and regulate the speech not only of upper-class women but also of all women from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the period when more common women began to learn reading and writing, as seen in Chapter 1. As a result, the linguistic norm of the upper class was applied beyond class boundaries, to merchant and servant women. The connection between court-women’s speech and the female gender catalyzed the process for framing court-women’s speech into the norms of feminine speech. Associated with the concrete vocabulary of court-women’s speech, the norms of feminine speech became clearer, more rigid and easier to recognize. Court-women’s speech, originally created by women, was transformed into the norms used to dominate women’s speech. This is a case in which women’s linguistic innovation, albeit confined to a specific historical contingency, was recycled to reinforce the dominant norms of feminine speech. I will demonstrate in Chapter 5 that a very similar process was observed in schoolgirl speech during the modern period. The redefinition of court-women’s speech from symbol of the upper class to the norms of women’s speech dramatically demonstrates the powerful force of metalinguistic practice to assign a value to a particular local linguistic practice. The association between court-women’s speech and female gender was created because metalinguistic practices of the writers of dictionaries and conduct books defined the linguistic practice of court women as the norms of feminine speech. This indicates that metalinguistic practice has the power and privilege to define, redefine and assign values to individual linguistic practice. This gives one answer to the question I posed in the Introduction, why subversive performances often remain ephemeral, leaving the prevailing power order largely untouched. However creatively women use language, their linguistic innovation will not directly subvert the existing power order. The dominant gender ideology has the potential to effectively



Chapter 2.  Normalization of court-women’s speech

exploit the creative linguistic practices of a group of women for the purpose of maintaining the existing power order of male domination. To answer why women’s subversive performances often remain ephemeral, therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to metalinguistic practice and analyze how metalinguistic practice defines, redefines and assigns values to women’s local linguistic practices. Finally, I will discuss two implications of the analysis for previous studies of court-women’s speech. First, it denies the rationalization that court-women’s speech became prevalent among common women, merely because common women naturally started speaking the elegant court-women’s speech. Previous studies often assumed that court-women’s speech, “as it had the value and nuance of elegant speech which the so-called upper-class women were expected to use … was gradually incorporated into the vocabulary and expressions of the speech of common women” (Sugimoto 1998: 45), without showing exactly how “the value and nuance of elegant words” were assigned to court-women’s speech. It is reasonable to assume that common women and men in the eighteenth century tried to imitate court-women’s speech, as seen in the women, merchants, apprentices, and children in Seken musume katagi [The Nature of Common Young Women] (1716), and the male servant and male master in a Kyoogen play, Ohiyashi [Water]. The imitation of court-women’s speech, however, was not confined to women. Reading “since our ears are used to hearing a man using the [court-women’s] speech” in Kiyuu shooran [Glimpses of Edo Ludic Life] (1830), we may even presume that not only women but also men played some role in spreading court-women’s speech to common people. The utterances of the merchant’s wife in Shijuuhachi kuse [FortyEight Habits] (Shikitei 1811) and the three young women and two servant women in Ukiyo buro [Baths of the Floating World] (Shikitei 1809–1812) show, furthermore, that court-women’s speech was not considered the norms of feminine speech for all women at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To account for how court-women’s speech became prevalent among common people, therefore, we need to investigate what happened to court-women’s speech from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, exactly the period when an enormous number of conduct books listed court-women’s speech as the norm of feminine speech. The reason why court-women’s speech became prevalent among common women involves the range of dictionary and conduct book discourses that defined court-women’s speech as the norm for all women. Previous studies of court-women’s speech have completely neglected the normalization power of conduct-book discourses. Second, my analysis strongly implies that it is not sufficient to re-evaluate and celebrate the creativity of court-women’s speech, claiming that the creativity made it prevalent among common people. Jugaku Akiko, a pioneer of studying Japanese language from a feminist point of view, states:

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It [court-women’s speech] symbolized a particular world full of pride. The function was one of transcending rather than defending. It is because of this creativity that court-women’s speech descended onto the common world as a kind of norm. (Jugaku 1982: 205)

I do not deny the creativity of court-women’s speech. As pointed out in the discussion of pa-moji (created by adding moji to the Portuguese padre) in the Great Japanese Language Dictionary (Rodriguez 1604–1608), the linguistic creativity of court women to coin words is worth praising. My analysis has demonstrated, however, that women’s creative linguistic practice was easily exploited to reinforce the norms of feminine speech, which functioned to dominate women’s linguistic practices. Simple praise of the creativity of court-women’s speech conceals the process in which their creativity was recycled for the purpose of controlling, regulating and dominating women’s speech. The emphasis on the creativity of court women’s linguistic practice also conceals that the normalization of court-women’s speech denied the linguistic creativity of other women. It was not only court women who performed creative linguistic acts but also merchant and servant women who did so in their own ways. To reveal the process by which women’s linguistic creativity is exploited to sustain the gendered power order, it is crucial again to analyze in detail how metalinguistic practice defines, redefines, and assigns values to women’s creative local practices. Part 1 has demonstrated that the perspective to conceptualize women’s speech as the object of regulation, control and domination has been constructed by the long history of normative discourses since the conduct books in the premodern period. Part 2 describes shifting relationships between gender and Japanese language in the dynamic social and political changes of Japan’s early modern period.

part 2

Gender and national language Nation-state building in the early modern period

The purpose of Part 2 is to investigate the role gender played in the formation process of the Japanese national language and the Japanese nation state during the Japan’s early modernization, from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the so-called Meiji (1868–1912) and Taishoo (1912–1926) periods. I will examine the relationship between gender and Japanese national language (Chapter 3), the norms of feminine speech in the modern period (Chapter 4), the construction of schoolgirl speech (Chapter 5), and the gendering process of Japanese national language by the discourses of grammar books and school readers (Chapter 6). To provide the background information undergirding my arguments in Part 2, I will briefly describe the political context of Japan’s nationstate building at the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on the political ideology of state-as-patriarchal family, gendered nationalization and the ideology of ryoosai kenbo (good-wife-wise-mother). So many social and political changes occurred during the period that I will describe several other key historical incidents and political processes necessary to understand my argument in each chapter. During the Edo period (1603–1868), the Tokugawa shogunate enforced a foreign-relations policy, promulgated in 1639, prohibiting foreigners from entering and Japanese from leaving the country, with few exceptions. This policy continued until 1867, when the 15th shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, resigned and the Emperor Meiji restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868. Responding to the requests to start trade with Western countries, after almost two hundred years of seclusion, the Meiji government opened the country. Witnessing the scientific and technological developments of other modern nations, the Meiji government faced the need to build a modern nation state. To that end, it was necessary to galvanize people, nearly all belonging to regional clans, to be “citizens” of one country who would be workers and soldiers of the state. That process, generally termed “nationalization,” was enhanced, in the case of Japan in the late nineteenth century, by kazoku kokka kan (the ideology of state-as-family), an ideology calculated to “connect the notion of family with the notion of state,” and to “encourage and legitimate people’s loyalty to the emperor and the state” (Muta 1996: 81). In 1879, Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education) set “humanity, justice, loyalty,

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and filial piety” as the principal goals of education (Mitsui 1977: 175). Kyooiku chokugo (The Imperial Rescript on Education) in 1890 defined people as “descendants and subjects of the Imperial Ancestors” (Mitsui 1977: 197). The next year, Inoue Tetsujiro, the first professor of philosophy at the Imperial University, in his Chokugo engi (Commentary on the Imperial Rescript) declared that “the state is an expansion of the family” (Ishida 1992[1954]: 6). The Great Japan Imperial Constitution (Dai Nihon teikoku kempoo) (1889) established the family as a patriarchy, based on the absolute power of the father, transforming the private sphere of the family into a minimum constituent of the state. Wakakuwa Midori (2000[1995]: 46–47) points out that the constitution, by connecting the seemingly biological notion of family to the state, “made it possible to believe that the cultural construct of the state was its natural formation,” correctly claiming that the biological basis of family itself is a culturally constructed belief. By creating continuity between the imperial state and the patriarchal family, believed by most Japanese scholars and politicians of that time to be based on biological ties, the ideology of state-asfamily ensured that people became loyal citizens, the children of the emperor. The ideology of state-as-patriarchal family gendered the process of nationalization. By the term, “gendered,” I mean the process of social categorization that regards such social categories as female citizens and male citizens not as being equal but in an asymmetrical power relation. Indeed, Japan’s nationalization process in the late nineteenth century positioned female citizens as inferior to male citizens. While male citizens were expected to play the roles of worker and soldier, the roles of female citizens were confined to wife and mother (Wakakuwa 2001: 67). The Conscription Act in 1873 was applied only to men over twenty years old. As Ueno Chizuko (1998: 34) points out, “It was then when the ‘nation’ was divided into ‘those who had the honor to die for the state’ and ‘those who did not,’ and only the former were given membership in the ‘nation.’” The Great Japan Imperial Constitution (1889), while giving the father absolute power over property, inheritance, divorce, and children’s marriages, defined female citizens as hooteki munooryokusha (legal incompetents) without the right to vote and to possess property. “Women should be at home, as wives who regenerate male labor, and mothers who reproduce excellent citizens” (Wakakuwa 2001: 67). The gendered nationalization promoted nation-state building by locating “women as secondary, marked, and exceptional citizens who never compete with the primary, unmarked, legitimate male citizens” (Kanai 1997: 312). The ideal modern female citizen in the process of gendered nationalization was a good wife and a wise mother. According to Koyama Shizuko, historian of Japanese history and women’s education, the good-wife-wise-mother was not the same old Confucian notion but “the key concept in the process of synthesizing women into citizens of the modern state” (Koyama 1991: 58). To strengthen



Part 2.  The early modern period

national power and promote modernization, women were required to contribute to the state as female citizens. Industrial development in the newly emerging capitalist society in Japan divided workplace, where men were expected to do their proper work, from residence, where women were expected to do theirs. Along with the gender-based division of workplace from residence in the development of a modern capitalist society, new abilities were required for women to manage households and produce efficient male workers and soldiers. Thus the ideal female citizen in Japan’s modern state became a good wife capable of managing the household and providing appropriate support for her husband, and a wise mother who could educate and produce excellent future workers and soldiers. The ideology of good-wife-wise-mother was promoted as the ideal behind educating and developing modern female citizen. From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, therefore, the political ideology of state-as-patriarchal family, distinctively marked by the gendered nationalization, and the ideology of good-wife-wisemother played crucial roles in the process of Japan’s nation-state building.

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Construction of a national language for men



The standard language should be the language of a metropolis, not some provincial location. A major metropolis is either Tokyo or Kyoto. The speech of Kyoto, though good for women, can sound weak coming from men. Tokyo speech has vigor and people in the provinces tend to imitate it. So a standard language can be established by setting Tokyo speech as the base …. Ootsuki Fumihiko (1905) in his speech at Ueno Women’s School1

Ootsuki Fumihiko, a linguist known for his grammar of Japanese language, called Ootsuki grammar, gave a speech at Ueno Women’s School in 1905. It was in the period of Japan’s nation-state building when the lack of an official Japanese national language came to be considered a problem. To establish an official Japanese national language, political leaders and intellectuals focused increasingly on which variety of spoken Japanese should be chosen as the standard for the national language. Here, Ootsuki argues that the Tokyo variety should be the standard language, because “The speech of Kyoto, though good for women, can sound weak coming from men” (Ootsuki 1905: 17). This clearly indicates that Ootsuki believed that the national language should be appropriate for the use of male citizens, simply assuming that the speakers of the national language must be male citizens. No one has pointed out, however, any such gender bias in the debate concerning the Japanese national language at the beginning of the twentieth century. What effect did such an argument make on the construction processes of the Japanese national language? The establishment of a single standard language has been central to the creation of a homogeneous national identity. National languages have not developed purely because of geographical and historical contingencies, but through the nationalistic ideology of one language, one nation, and one state (Woolard 1998: 17). Florian Coulmas (1988: 2) has argued that “The idea of a natural unity of nation, state and language has proved to be one of the most successful pieces of Western 1. In this excerpt, Ootsuki uses the phrases Tokyo go (lit. Tokyo language) and Kyoto go (lit. Kyoto language), referring to two varieties of Japanese language spoken in the Tokyo and Kyoto areas respectively. As the word go, however, lacks the connotation of the academic term “variety,” I translate them as “Tokyo speech” and “Kyoto speech.”

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political ideology since the French Revolution,” and it is even embraced by many postcolonial countries. The myth of people sharing the same language creates a state as “the imagined community” (Anderson 1983). Japanese national language and Japanese standard language have also been labeled as ideologies socially constructed to enhance nation-state building in the early twentieth century (Lee 1996; Osa 1998; Yasuda 1997). Begoña Echeverria (2003: 409) argues that since gender differences within nations also play crucial roles in nation-state building, we need to examine how nation, language, and gender relate to one another. The interplay of gender with standardization, however, has not been extensively discussed. Yet, the intimate connection between masculinity and nationalism has already been widely addressed. Cynthia Enloe (1990: 44) argues that “nationalism typically has sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope.” George Mosse (1996) considers nationalism a movement that began and evolved parallel to modern masculinity. Joane Nagel (1998) notes that modern nationalism resonates with hegemonic masculinity with its values of honor, bravery, and heterosexuality. These studies, however, do not refer to the relationship between masculinity and national languages. This chapter, therefore, examines how gender was related to the construction process of the ideology of Japanese national language from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Linguistic gender differences in the unification dispute In late-nineteenth century Japan, there were several writing styles, such as the Chinese style used exclusively by a small number of educated men, the Japanese style used mostly by upper-class women, and various spoken languages totally different from the written ones. To import and spread Western technology and knowledge, it was necessary to create an easier writing style all Japanese people could commonly use. Some Japanese intellectuals thus proposed to invent such a writing style based on speech, by unifying speech with writing, a movement known as genbun itchi (the unification of speech and writing). The argument for it gradually emerged as a way to promote the modernization of Japan. It was not only the practical purpose of importing and spreading knowledge that motivated the unification movement. Ueda Kazutoshi (1968[1894]: 110), professor at the Imperial University (from 1894 to 1926) who had just returned from studying in Germany, declared the close connection between “state” and “national language” in 1894, the year the Sino-Japanese war started: “Language indicates, for the people who speak it, spiritual compatriots, just as blood indicates physical compatriots. Therefore, the Japanese national language is the spiritual blood of the



Chapter 3.  A national language for men

Japanese people.” With this representation, Ueda persuasively proclaimed the need to establish a Japanese national language to unify the nation of Japan. His conceptualization of a national language as the spiritual blood of Japanese people, furthermore, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 7, made great impact on Japan’s colonization policy during WWII. In 1901, the Unification of Speech and Writing Section of the Imperial State Education Committee submitted to the House of Peers and the Lower House a petition to execute the unification of speech and writing. It states in part: “As the independence, prevalence, and development of a national language is the primary means to establish a unified state, to enhance the expansion of national power, and to accelerate the development of national destiny, we believe that written and spoken languages should be unified” (Teikoku kyooikukainai genbun itchikai 1964[1901]: 288). The creation of a national language by unifying speech and writing was considered an urgent issue to achieve national unity, power, and destiny. Responding to the petition, the Ministry of Education established Kokugo choosa iinkai (the National-Language Research Committee) in 1902 headed by Ueda, which led the later language policies. According to Lee Yeounsuk (1996: 86), “… the ideology of ‘national language’ was born out of the spiritual situation of the Meiji 20’s with the Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895) at its peak … the time of the creation of synthesized ‘citizens’ and the upsurge of the consciousness for ‘state’.” The ideology of hyoojungo (standard Japanese) was also created to embody the notion of kokugo (Japanese national language). In unifying speech and writing, one of the spoken varieties had to be chosen as the standard of the national language. If different spoken varieties were adopted, many people would not understand each other. To resolve this issue, Yamada Bimyoo (1964[1888]: 235), a writer and an advocate of the unification movement, proposed the Tokyo variant as the standard, “because Tokyo speech is fairly well understood in any area.” Ueda Kazutoshi (1964[1895]: 506) also claimed that the speech of “educated Tokyo residents” should be the standard: “I believe that Tokyo speech is qualified [to become the standard language]. The term ‘Tokyo speech,’ to some people, may indicate beranmee kotoba (a variant of Tokyo speech used in the downtown area). What I mean by Tokyo speech, however, is the speech spoken by educated Tokyo residents.” Notice that Ueda refers to “the speech of educated Tokyo residents” as if such speech had already been established. Many educated Tokyo residents at the end of the nineteenth century, however, came to Tokyo from all over the country and were speaking their regional varieties of Japanese (Tanaka 1983: 156). Ueda’s statement, in other words, enhanced the creation of the myth that such a phenomenon as the speech of educated Tokyo residents actually existed, which would represent the future form of a Japanese national language. Since then, the two phrases, hyoojungo (standard Japanese) and kokugo (Japanese national language), gradually

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came to indicate a concept of the same speech, not actually spoken by any Japanese but imagined to be the ideal, standard language.2 At the same time, the proposal to set the Tokyo variant, spoken by educated Tokyo residents, as the standard of a Japanese national language effectively created a negative notion of hoogen (dialect) as an object of descrimination.3 The speech spoken in areas outside Tokyo and variants spoken by those in the lower classes who were largely uneducated in those days were considered to be a hindrance to the formation of a nation state. The argument for unification emerged in the late nineteenth century and continued until the Showa period (1926–1989), along with kokugo kokuji mondai (the issues of national language and national characters). The disputes continued for eighty years, from a politician Maejima Hisoka’s Kanji onhaishi no gi [the Abolition of Chinese Characters] in 1866, until 1946, when the spoken style was adopted in Imperial edicts, public documents, and constitutions (Yamamoto 1965: 33). Many intellectuals, from linguists, journalists and writers to politicians, joined the dispute. Prominent was the role of novelists in experimenting with different ways of writing prose and conversations. The prime example was Futabatei Shimei’s novel Ukigumo [Floating Cloud] (1887–1891), which became known as the first novel written in the unification style. Linguists also had an eminent role in setting language policies on orthography and national language education, publishing school language textbooks and academic papers, and writing articles in newspapers on the issue.

2. I thus use the two phrases, hyoojungo (standard Japanese) and kokugo (Japanese national language), interchangeably, choosing the phrase that best fits the context of my argument. In translating the discourse, I use the phrase used in the original text. 3. It was through the standardization process when the Japanese regional speech was assigned the negative value of a non-standard dialect. One of the resolutions of the National-Language Research Committee in 1902 was to “Explore dialects and select a standard language” (Monbushoo kyokashokyoku kokugoka 1949: 59), which seemed to study regional variations first and choose one as appropriate for a standard language. The true intention of the resolution, however, was “to explore regional variants so that they can be destroyed” (Lee 1996: 144). The regional variation spoken in Okinawa, for instance, was severely damaged by the standard language policy. In 1880, Conversation Teaching Schools were set up in Okinawa, and “central language education” began. From 1907, the Label Punishment System started. A student who spoke a non-standard speech was given a wooden label and certain points were withdrawn from the behavior points of the student according to the number of the labels. “The children spent their days in fear, because many of them failed due to the lack of behavior points rather than their academic points” (Hokama 1981: 326). After a period in which there was a flurry of dialect research, the Label Punishment System revived and, in 1940 during the war years, the Movement to Encourage Standard Language became one of the policies of Okinawa prefecture (Hokama 1981: 311–342; See also Osa 1998: 147).



Chapter 3.  A national language for men

While I was reading those documents, I found two contradictions in the unification dispute. First, in spite of the long-term discussion on a national scale, there was virtually a complete absence of any argument concerning gender differences in language use. If indeed it was so important for nation-state formation to establish one national language, why did no one question the contradiction of asking women and men to use different speech? In setting standard Japanese, speech differences between different social classes and districts were extensively discussed. Shimano Seiichiroo, an advocate for the abolition of Chinese characters, points out the diversity of regional variations and objected to “the vulgar speech [of the Tokyo downtown area]” (Yamamoto 1965: 266). In the same year, an article in a political journal argued for adopting Tokyo speech as a standard but objected to some of its variants saying that: “Although Tokyo speech has a lively rhythm and power to impress people, I want to avoid the speech of Tokyo’s inferior society” (Yamamoto 1965: 246). Linguistic gender differences, however, did not come under consideration. The contradiction is further revealed in the prize essay, “How to unify men’s and women’s writing styles,” submitted to an essay contest by Nakagawa Kojuuroo and Masaki Seikichi in 1888. The essay contest was advertised by Mori Arinori, the Minister of Education, in the journal of the Great Japan Education Society, the predecessor group of the committee that submitted the petition to implement the unification of speech and writing to the House of Peers and the Lower House in 1901. The purpose of the contest thus was clearly the promotion of the unification. The essay first points out that women’s and men’s writing differs to the extent that they cannot understand each other and that this is caused by the different ways women and men are taught to write, women are taught wabun (lit. Japanese writing, a writing style mainly using Japanese phonetic hiragana) and men kanbun (lit. Chinese writing, a writing style using only Chinese characters) (Yamamoto 1965: 405). To unify women’s and men’s writing styles, therefore, they suggest “teaching writing not opposing their natures,” to teach them to write as they speak, based on the theory of the unification of speech and writing (Yamamoto 1965: 406). In other words, the essay claims that if women and men write as they speak, their writing would be the same, essentially presupposing that women’s and men’s speech are not different. The authors further make distinctions between difficult/ everyday words, correct language/slang, and dialects/correct language, and warn against using difficult words, slang, and dialects in schools. Nevertheless, they do not mention gender differences in speech, as though were none. One could easily conclude from this essay that in 1888 people did not generally believe that there were differences between women’s and men’s ways of speaking. However, this assumption was proved false in the essay written by a liberal democrat, Nakae

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Tokusuke, better known by his other name Nakae Choomin, in 1888, the same year their essay won the contest:

(1) In all the countries in the world, there is no language in which men’s everyday speech and women’s everyday speech are as different from each other as Japanese.  (Nakae 1888: 18)

Furthermore, in 1896, in an anonymous essay, Shinshi no kotoba [Gentleman’s Words], the writer points out that: “As women’s speech comes closer to men’s, the speech spoken by men is getting closer to women’s” (“Shinshi no kotoba” 1896: 148). These discourses indicate that, in the 1890s, Japanese people believed that there were linguistic gender differences. In their prize essay, however, Nakagawa and Masaki propose to teach female and male students to write as they speak to unify women’s and men’s writing styles, as if women’s and men’s speech were not different. The second contradiction is that many of the unification advocates were also the good-wife-wise-mother advocates. As we will see in detail in the next chapter, the norms of women’s speech in the good-wife-wise-mother education were almost the same as the norms in the conduct books in the premodern period. To agree with the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother is to expect women to speak following the norms in the conduct books, to expect speakers to use the national language differently according to gender. Nakagawa and Masaki, in fact, started a journal with the prize money from the essay contest and named it Iratsume, meaning “gentle, elegant, Japanese ladies” (Yamamoto 1965: 403). The two purposes of Iratsume were “first, to serve as a women’s magazine that discussed female education as a social issue and, second, to help spread the unification of speech and writing by way of novels” (Yamamoto 1965: 399). Here, they proclaim the unification along with the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother. Another example is a speech given by Ootsuki Fumihiko in 1905, the same speech I cite at the beginning of this chapter. In the speech, he summarized research on regional variations that had been carried out to unify different spoken varieties of Japanese all over the country. Here again, though he was giving a speech about the unification issue at a women’s secondary school, he did not mention gender differences. In his only reference to women’s speech, he simply criticized the speech of female students and repeated the norms of conduct books:

(2) It is disgusting to hear a phrase popular among female students now, such as yokutte yo (all right). Before the Meiji Restoration, the wives of shooguns, feudal lords, and Tokugawa retainers all used elegant speech. As a lady’s speech shows her dignity, women should restrain themselves from using such speech. (Ootsuki 1905: 17)



Chapter 3.  A national language for men

The advocates for one national language not only ignored linguistic gender differences but also expected women to speak differently from men. Meiji intellectuals present the contradiction of promoting Japan’s modernization by the unification theory, on the one hand, and expecting women to remain “gentle, elegant, Japanese ladies,” on the other. Why were they not aware of the contradiction? The creation of a men’s national language The answer might well be found in the discussion concerning the establishment of standard Japanese, which explicitly or implicitly suggested that standard Japanese should be appropriate for male citizens. Okano Hisatane, a linguist of Japanese variations, after pointing out that there are varieties of Tokyo speech according to the speaker’s gender and occupation, suggests that Tokyo speech be adopted as standard Japanese: “Among such different varieties of speech, the unification of speech and writing should choose as the standard language the speech that can be used in any part of Tokyo society. That is the speech of men in middleclass society” (Okano 1964[1902]: 510). This is not a new suggestion since, as noted, both Yamada Bimyoo (1888) and Ueda Kazutoshi (1895) had already proclaimed the speech spoken by educated Tokyo residents as standard Japanese. What is new about Okano’s argument is his explicit mention of “men.” Okano, I assume, who was well aware of language variations and gender differences in Tokyo speech, added that phrase even though other researchers apparently took it for granted and did not think it necessary to mention. Another document showing the connection between masculinity and standard Japanese is the speech, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, given by Ootsuki Fumihiko at Ueno Women’s School in 1905. Ootsuki makes a similar argument in his introduction that he wrote for the book by another linguist, Usuda Suekichi, in 1909:

(3) What should be the standard of the spoken language? We should not choose local varieties. Then, should it be Tokyo speech or Kyoto speech? Kyoto speech, as a language for men, sounds weak and has exaggerated intonation. It is not suitable for giving orders to soldiers, criminal examinations by a judge, or telephone conversation. It is not as direct and clear as Tokyo speech. (Ootsuki 1909: 1–2)

The movement to create one Japanese language for all citizens, in fact, was based on the taken-for-granted assumption that the speakers of the Japanese national language were male citizens. That is why it never occurred to many Japanese intellectuals at the time that there was a contradiction in suggesting the unification of

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speech and writing, while at the same time directing women to follow the same old norms of feminine speech. Conclusion The ideology of Japanese national language was, in fact, a “men’s national language” tailored for the primary, standard, male citizens. The lack of reference to gender differences in the unification dispute established the Japanese national language, as a matter of course, as men’s national language. As unification aimed to construct a national language for men, Meiji intellectuals did not consider it a problem to expect female citizens to speak differently from men. This accounts for why women’s and men’s languages are differently arranged in their relations to standard Japanese today. In the Introduction, I pointed out that, in contemporary Japanese society, female speakers are generally expected to speak women’s language, while male speakers are usually expected to speak standard Japanese rather than men’s language, and the use of men’s language is restricted to a special situation in which a physical, violent, aggressive type of masculinity is emphasized, and I asked why there were such different expectations in the uses of women’s and men’s languages. As the actual linguistic practice of Japanese people does not always follow these expectations, we should interpret the differences as those found in the different ideological relations between women’s and men’s languages to standard Japanese. If the ideology of standard Japanese was constructed implicitly associated with masculinity, as the analysis of this chapter shows, men’s language has to be associated with masculinity that is much stronger than the implicit masculinity in standard Japanese. This explains why using men’s language is expected in special situations in which masculinity is emphasized. Summarizing the ideological relationships between men’s standard Japanese, women’s language and men’s language, therefore, both women’s language and men’s language constitute subcategories of standard Japanese. As standard Japanese is implicitly masculinized, women’s language is recognized as a female version of standard Japanese. Thus female speakers and male speakers are usually expected to speak women’s language and standard Japanese respectively. Men’s language, in contrast, is considered as the speech associated with strong masculinity because standard Japanese is already implicitly masculinized. The masculinization of the Japanese national language was accomplished by not referring to linguistic gender differences (Nakamura 2008). Among the numerous documents produced during the unification debate from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, I found only three documents which stated that a Japanese national language should be created for the use of male speakers;



Chapter 3.  A national language for men

one by Okano Hisatane who claimed that “the speech of men in middleclass society” should be the standard of national language and two by Ootsuki Fumihiko who argued that Kyoto speech was not appropriate for the use of males speakers. By not explicitly stating that the primary, legitimate speakers of the national language were male citizens, the unification movement successfully naturalized the association between masculinity and the national language, to the extent that it was not necessary even to mention it. In analyzing what is not stated, the distinction between performance and performativity becomes crucial. Don Kulick (2003: 286) points out the importance of making the distinction and argues that “performativity theory insists that what is expressed or performed in any social context is importantly linked to that which is not expressed or cannot be performed.” The construction of a men’s national language was crucially connected to linguistic gender differences not explicitly expressed.4 The masculinization of the national language, therefore, achieved the taken-for-granted, unmarked, and normal status exactly because of not being explicitly stated.5 Any hegemonic ideology, at the same time, requires a negative counterpart to sustain its unmarked status. In the case of heterosexuality, David Halperin (1995: 44) has argued that: “Heterosexuality, then depends on homosexuality to lend it substance – and to enable it to acquire by default its status as a default, as a lack of difference or an absence of abnormality” (emphasis original). Heterosexuality can keep its unmarked, standard, and normal status, precisely because there is another type of sexuality always denied and referred to as marked, deviant, and abnormal, that is homosexuality. Similarly, to maintain the unmarked, standard, and normal status of a national language, it was necessary to create some linguistic ideology as the marked, nonstandard, and marginal counterpart. The unification discourses clearly created non-standard dialects and the speech of uneducated people to fulfill the role of the negative counterpart. If a national language was implicitly associated with masculinity, furthermore, there must have been some linguistic ideology distinguished from it by gender, the ideology linked to women as the 4. It has already been pointed out that such a lack of explicit statement is an effective strategy to implicitly constitute heterosexuality as normal, standard, and an unmarked form of sexuality. As Vincent, Kazama, and Kawaguchi (1997: 99) claim: “It is through the lack of explicit reference that heterosexuality can maintain the privileged status.” So, “To openly name heterosexuality, and to speak explicitly and at length about it, removes it from the realm of the taken-for-granted, subjecting it to the dangers of analysis – and the possibility of critique” (Katz 1995: 67). 5. It is worth noting here that, since the masculinization of the national language was so naturalized and rarely mentioned, it was often (mis)recognized as the national language for all citizens, including women, justifying teaching its grammar to both female and male students in schools. Note, however, that this contradicted the policy for women’s education, which included the instruction that women should speak differently from men.

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gendered negative counterpart of men’s national language. Since linguistic gender differences were not mentioned in the unification dispute, we need to consider other types of discourse to reveal such notion concerning women’s speech. The next chapter attempts to find it by analyzing the discourses of modern conduct books and school moral textbooks.

chapter 4

Modernization of the norms of feminine speech “Restrain yourself from speaking and do not speak too much” means to keep silent. A proverb says, “Verbosity deprives one of grace.” In the West, it is said that, “An empty barrel makes a loud noise.” The verbosity of a fool should be avoided at all cost. If this is so, ladies should be much more quiet and refined. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1899) Onna daigaku hyooron/Shin onna daigaku [Comments on Women’s Learning/New Women’s Learning] Fukuzawa Yukichi is founder of Keio University and one of the most famous Meiji intellectuals, as shown in his appearance on the Japanese 10,000 yen banknote since 1984. Fukuzawa was an avid supporter of education and well known for his democratic ideas, especially through his citation of The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, “all men are created equal,” at the beginning of one of his best sellers, Gakumon no susume [Encouragement of Learning] in 1872–1876. However, in the above citation from Onna daigaku hyooron/Shin onna daigaku [Comments on Women’s Learning/New Women’s Learning] that he wrote in 1899, he is simply repeating the old Confucian norms of feminine speech (Fukuzawa 1977[1899]: 228). As I will demonstrate throughout this chapter, furthermore, he was not the only one in the early modern period who reproduced the premodern norms of feminine speech by editing and writing women’s conduct books. How did those premodern norms of feminine speech survive the radical social changes during the early modernization of Japan? Among those changes were the ideas of democracy, human rights and gender equality imported from the West. After the Meiji government opened the country at the end of the nineteenth century, many such Western ideas, also including Western science, technology, fashion, hairstyles, and food, flew into Japan, stimulating the period called Bunmei kaika (Civilization and Enlightenment). The intellectual ferment of this period fostered the emergence in the 1880s of the socio-­political movement called Jiyuu minken undoo (The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement). The democratic impetus, trends and thinking from the 1910s to the 1920s was named Taishoo demokurashii (Taishoo democracy). The spread of democracy around the world, based on equality and human rights, enhanced the idea of equality between women and men and stimulated the emergence of women’s liberation movements.

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In 1911, Hiratsuka Raichoo, a writer and journalist, founded a Japanese feminist magazine, Seitoo [Bluestocking], with a group of women, declaring, in the first issue of the magazine, “In the beginning, woman was the sun.” The magazine also introduced to Japanese female readers the publications of Western feminist writers, such as those by a Swedish feminist, Ellen Key. The magazine both reflected and encouraged the burgeoning democratic movement in Japan, importing human rights and gender equality during the period. All this meant, of course, that some revisions to the modern conduct books for women would have to be made. This chapter thus has three purposes. First, I examine modern conduct books and analyze how different or similar the norms given in them were in comparison with the norms of feminine speech given in premodern conduct books. Second, by analyzing two categories of discourses – conduct books and school moral textbooks for women – which taught lessons on women’s speech in the early stages of modernization (1868–1925), I will investigate exactly how the old norms of feminine speech were still circulated, reproduced and legitimated during the radical social changes of Japan’s modernization. I have argued in Chapter 1 that the perspective of conceptualizing women’s speech in the premodern period as an object of regulation, control and domination has been inherited by a metalinguistic tradition observed in etiquette manuals today. I intend to verify my argument, by investigating the ways in which modern metalinguistic discourses maintain, preserve and legitimate the premodern norms of feminine speech against the upsurge in a modernizing Japan of democracy, human rights and gender equality. The investigation will also reveal what kinds of logic or rationalization were used to legitimize repeating the andro-centric ideology of premodern conduct books at a time when counter arguments, such as the idea of gender equality, appeared. Finally, in this chapter’s Conclusion, I will argue, answering the question posited at the end of Chapter 3, that, during Japan’s period of modernization, the modern norms of feminine speech played the key negative role sustaining an unmarked, standard and normal status of a men’s national language. Reproduction of the premodern norms of feminine speech The more than three hundred conduct books for women in eighteenth-century Japan, as noted in Chapter 1, were usually divided into four groups. According to Ishikawa (1977: 306), the fourth group, known as Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning], “continued to be reproduced, read and learned through the Meiji and Taishoo periods (1868–1926) until the end of WWII (1945).” Since the books of this group “were published one after another during the early modern period” (Ishikawa 1973: 28), it is safe to assume that not only upper-class women but also common women read them. Table 4.1 shows titles, publishing years and names of editors or

Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech 89



Table 4.1  Discourses on women’s speech in conduct books in the Meiji period (1868–1912). Titles [Translations] (Years published) Editor or author (1) Jokun [Women’s Discipline] (1874) Takata Giho (2) Kinsei onna daigaku [Modern Women’s Learning] (1874) Doi Kooka (3) Bunmeiron onna daigaku [Enlightened Women’s Learning] (1876) Doi Kooka

(4) Kaisei onna daigaku [Revised Women’s Learning] (1880) Seki Ashio (5) Shinsen zooho onna daigaku [Newly Selected and Enlarged Women’s Learning] (1880) Hagiwara Otohiko (6) Shinsen onna daigaku [Newly Selected Women’s Learning] (1882) Nishino Kokai Notes: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

The Discourse

As a woman is born to speak much, restrain yourself from speaking and do not say unnecessary things. Too many words make the family and relatives not get along well and bring troubles to friends. Women should be gentle and charming in all actions from greetings and speech to demeanor. Being unsociable and inhospitable is not suitable for women’s innate nature. Restrain yourself from speaking and do not speak too much. Do not blame things on others nor lie. When you hear someone complaining, keep it in your mind and do not tell anybody. If you talk about it, you will not be able to get along with relatives and it will bring trouble to your family. [Note] I do not abhor verbosity. I lament words used uselessly. Restrain yourself from speaking and do not speak too much. Do not lie, blame, nor backbite others. If you hear someone complaining, keep it in your mind and do not tell anybody. Verbosity and arrogant words can destroy your life. Restrain yourself from speaking and do not speak too much. Do not blame others nor lie. When you hear someone complaining, keep it in your mind and do not tell anybody. If you talk about it, relatives will not get along well. Female-language (fu-gen) means language manners, how women should speak. Good women’s language is gentle, elegant, and not offensive…. As a talkative lady is included in the seven types of women a man should divorce, do not open your mouth if not necessary…. Sacred people have also remonstrated against verbosity.

Jokun (1874) (Ishikawa 1977: 97). Kinsei onna daigaku (1874) (Ishikawa 1977: 111). Bunmeiron onna daigaku (1876) (Ishikawa 1977: 137). Kaisei onna daigaku (1880) (Ishikawa 1973: 343). Shinsen zooho onna daigaku (1880) (Ishikawa 1973: 331). Shinsen onna daigaku (1882) (Ishikawa 1973: 336–357).

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writers of the Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning] group of conduct books published in the late nineteenth century. The right-hand columns show the principal lessons of women’s speech given in each conduct book. Ishikawa Matsutaroo (1973: 27–28) categorizes the modern conduct books of the Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning] group into conservative books and innovative books, according to how much content they inherited from Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning] (1716), the original work of the Onna daigaku group. According to his classification, books (1), (2) and (3) in Table 4.1 are innovative books and (4), (5) and (6) are conservative books. The author of (1), Takata Giho, also known as Takada Yoshinami, was an educator. The author of both (2) and (3), Doi Kooka, was a journalist, writer and politician involved in the Jiyuu minken undoo (The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement) since 1881 (Ishikawa 1977: 319). Nevertheless, the discourses in the right-hand column of Table 4.1 show that the modern conduct books, both conservative and innovative, cited norms of speech very similar to those in the premodern books. Even the so-called “innovative” conduct books, (1) and (3), repeat the phrase, “Restrain yourself from speaking,” a familiar phrase appearing frequently in the premodern conduct books. In so reiterating premodern norms of feminine speech, modern conduct books provide solid evidence that, even with titles containing words like “modern, enlightened, revised, and newly selected,” they simply continued to frame women’s speech as the object of regulation, control and domination. Logic of the modern conduct books Considering that the democratic idea of gender equality was spreading in Japanese society at the end of the nineteenth century, however, it is difficult to assume that the premodern norms of feminine speech were straightforwardly accepted as the modern norms of women’s speech. Modern conduct books, therefore, must have used some kind of logic to make the premodern norms of feminine speech acceptable and reasonable in a modernized Japan. To reveal the approach of the modern conduct books, we need to analyze their discourses in more detail focusing on how they presented the idea of equal rights for both sexes. While taking widely different positions on equal rights, however, they continued imputing norms to women’s speech. Modern conduct books can be divided into three types, according to their arguments on equal rights for male and female: (1) Those claiming that equal rights for both sexes meant that women and men were equal but had different rights; (2) those claiming that women and men were equal as subjects of the emperor; and (3) those asking women to speak up when necessary.



Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech

A good example of the first type, Jokun [Women’s Discipline] (1874) in Table 4.1, starts with the statement that: “Women’s rights to independence and freedom mean that women grow up and eventually become members of another family, serve their parents-in-law, and manage and govern the household” (Ishikawa 1977: 77). It defines “women’s rights” as the rights to get married, serve their parents-in-law, and govern their families. On speech, as shown in Table 4.1 (1), it repeats the premodern norms of feminine speech. The only change is that the premodern “women should not speak” has been changed to “women are born talkative.” This change is important, because, as I argued in Chapter1, whether a woman is talkative or not is determined by social norms, gauged in comparison with silence. The talkativeness of women, in other words, is a matter determined by socially constructed gender norms. The statement, “women are born talkative” in (1), in contrast, transformed the talkativeness of women as a matter based on biological sex difference. The differences in speech determined by gender norms are redefined as sex-based differences. I refer here to the process in which socially constructed gender is redefined as based on the biological sex “essentialization of gender.”1 (2) Kinsei onna daigaku [Modern Women’s Learning] in Table 4.1 also shows the essentialization of gender in stating “women are innately gentle”: “… as women are innately gentle, they cannot, without men, protect their bodies nor wealth and they cannot pursue their mental joy. Thus, to reward men’s service and to thank men’s chivalry, women should give up some of their rights and concede 1. A major contribution of feminism to the idea of gender is to refute biological determinism by distinguishing sex (biological distinction) from gender (social roles); that is, to refute the belief that femininity and masculinity are innately determined, and to open the possibility of social change. Even after biological determinism was denied, however, there has been a strong tendency to believe in biological foundationalism – the belief that “distinctions of nature, at some basic level, ground or manifest themselves in human identity” (Nicholson 1994: 82); in short, one learns one’s femininity/masculinity based on one’s biological sex distinction. According to biological foundationalism, gender is understood to be one’s attribute, either biologically given or socially learned. Thus, one’s linguistic practice is based on the inner attribute and one speaks to mark the attribute already there. As I argued in Chapter 1, I call the view to consider gender an attribute prior to practice, essentialism. Against biological foundationalism, the development of sex science has demonstrated that biological sex itself is not binary (Fausto-Sterling 1992). It has been argued that the binary conceptualization of gender enables us to interpret non-binary sex as binary. “Gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pre-given sex (a juridical conception); gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1990: 7). A doctor can divide newborn babies into girl or boy exactly because gender is constituted in the binary. Essentialization refers to the process in which socially constructed gender is redefined as one’s attribute based on biological sex. The essentialization of gender often occurs when the legitimacy of the binary gender is questioned by a certain social change, as I will further demonstrate in Chapters 8, 9, and 10.

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them to men” (Ishikawa 1977: 109). (6) Shinsen onna daigaku [Newly Selected Women’s Learning] (1882) in Table 4.1 also emphasizes that women and men have different rights, defining male rights as “to work outside and make a plan for his wealth” and female rights as “to be at home helping her husband and managing the household” (Ishikawa 1973: 200). The first type of conduct book, therefore, by claiming that “equal rights for sexes” meant “women and men had different rights,” succeeded in transforming the premodern norms of women’s speech into modern norms, maintaining the gender distinction required for gendered nationalization during Japan’s nation-state building. Such books, as seen in (1) and (2) in Table 4.1, often essentialized gender by stating that “women are born talkative” or “women are innately gentle.” It is worth noting that the essentialization discourse continuously appeared when social change endangered the asymmetrical order of gender, as we also will see in Chapters 8, 9 and 10. In contrast to the first type, the second type of conduct book defines women as subjects of the emperor. (3) Bunmeiron onna daigaku [Enlightened Women’s Learning] (1876) in Table 4.1 defines “equal rights for sexes” as “equal rights of sexes as subjects of the emperor,” stating that: “Women in our Japanese Empire possess the same rights as men as citizens of the Japanese Empire, so they have the same responsibility to serve the Japanese Empire” (Ishikawa 1977: 136). In premodern conduct books, women were expected to serve their husbands. Now they were expected to serve the emperor alongside their husbands. Ishikawa (1977: 322) has correctly pointed out that Bunmeiron onna daigaku “incorporated the freedom and equality of men and women into the framework of the imperial stateas-family system.” Most Japanese had no idea what the concept of “citizen” meant. Bunmeiron onna daigaku taught that being a Japanese citizen meant being a servant of the Japanese emperor. By redefining women as female citizens, therefore, this book successfully rationalized and legitimated the metalinguistic practice of applying premodern norms to modern Japanese women. In this process of nationalizing women, the notion of “an educating mother” was introduced. According to Koyama Shizuko (1991: 33–34), the major difference between premodern and modern conduct books was that, while the premodern books “had regarded women as silly and required them to solely follow their husbands and parents-in-law,” the modern books “considered children’s education as an important role for women, especially from a nationalistic point of view, and required them to gain knowledge and study.” By “a nationalistic point of view,” Koyama refers to the political need of the Meiji government which, to enhance building the modern nation state, expected women to produce efficient male citizens, who would become workers, soldiers and tax payers. Women’s role, in Koyama’s words, was transformed from “the borrowed womb” to “an educating mother.” The wise, educating mother was naturally expected to set an example in



Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech

terms of speech. (2) Kinsei onna daigaku [Modern Women’s Learning] (1874) in Table 4.1 stated, “A mother should not joke nor speak carelessly. She must be the role model for children” (Ishikawa 1973: 397). Meiji onna imagawa [Women’s Disciplinary of the Imagawa Family in Meiji] (1880) remonstrates against “a mother who does not pay attention to being a model for children and who overlooks their incorrect language or behavior” (Ishikawa 1973: 226). As the nationalistic view of a wise, educating mother was introduced, the norms of modern conduct books became the responsibility of female citizens – i.e., what a wise Japanese mother should teach her children. To overlook the incorrect speech of children or to speak carelessly was no longer merely a source of trouble for the family as in premodern conduct books. It would destroy the nation.2 The third type of conduct book asked women to speak up when necessary. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), as the Meiji government recognized the importance of female citizens’ contributions to the state, the ideal of “wife” changed. In the premodern period, simple obedience was expected of “a good wife.” In modern times, “when the gender-differentiated roles of ‘a man works outside and a woman stays at home’ were established, a good wife was expected to skillfully carry out domestic labor sufficiently and manage the household” (Koyama 1991: 46), especially in households in which men went to workplaces outside their homes in the newly emerging modern capitalist society. These changes also influenced the norms of women’s speech. Some conduct books claimed that women should speak up when necessary. Fukuzawa Yukichi, in Onna daigaku hyooron/Shin onna daigaku [Comments on Women’s Learning/New Women’s Learning] (1899), as noted at the beginning of this chapter, repeats the premodern norms of feminine speech. He also claims, however, in the same book that “teaching [women] merely to maintain a taciturn silence has many problems.” He enumerates the situations in which women cannot use language properly, pointing out that some women cannot even give a proper greeting or describe her physical condition to a doctor, “bringing some difficulty or trouble to everyday interactions” 2. Why were Bunmeiron onna daigaku [Enlightened Women’s Learning] and Onna daigaku hyooron/Shin onna daigaku [Comments on Women’s Learning/New Women’s Learning], which had been originally written to criticize the premodern, undemocratic Onna daigaku, unable to liberate women’s speech? Muta Kazue (1996: 127) also addresses this question pointing out that “revolutionary thought [in Japan], which aimed to elevate woman’s position based on modernization and Westernization, tended to express loyalty to the state more eagerly and welcome the enclosure of women into the mother role.” This paradox happened, she continues, because “the so-called ‘modern’ [Western] thought they more or less adopted accompanied the new ideology of family which celebrated mother-wife roles and emphasized gender differences, and it fit the requirements of the modern state.” In other words, as the modern state controls “citizens” through the unit of “family,” the elevation of women’s positions was accomplished merely by the elevation of mother-wife positions.

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(Fukuzawa 1977[1899]: 228). So he argues that women should speak up when necessary. However, as his comment, “I do not positively prefer verbosity” shows, he does not encourage the free use of language by women (Fukuzawa 1977[1899]: 228–229). His disgust for women’s free speech is also seen in his attitude towards the speech of female students. As a democratic critic who had argued for the importance of education in Gakumon no susume [Encouragement of Learning], Fukuzawa proposes in his conduct book for women that they are to learn not only characters and letter writing but also physics, geography, history and foreign languages (Fukuzawa 1977[1899]: 229). Nevertheless, Fukuzawa, in the same conduct book, mostly abhorred the use of academic language and free discussion by female students: “It is an ignorant sin that women, as education has developed, have begun to speak in a manner that is unsuitable, and some even use bizarre words” (Fukuzawa 1977[1899]: 264). Fukuzawa was not the only one who claimed such a contradictory argument to encourage women to acquire knowledge, on one hand, and to prohibit them speaking out that knowledge, on the other. In fact, Nakae Choomin (Tokusuke), a theoretical leader of the liberal democratic movement in Japan, criticized the tendency to condemn women who carried out discussion using academic terms: “There is no logic in grieving over women’s lack of knowledge and asking them to study but simultaneously prohibiting them from speaking out a word or a phrase from their mouths” (Nakae 1888: 19). Then when did Fukuzawa expect women to speak up? He surely wanted women to be able to give a proper greeting or describe her physical condition to a doctor to avoid difficulty or trouble in everyday interactions. He expected Japanese modern women to speak up, in other words, when it became necessary for them to fulfill the daily, practical roles of a good wife and a wise mother. Fukuzawa’s encouragement for women to “speak up when necessary,” therefore, was confined to situations in which women were required to fulfill the daily role of a good-wife-wise-mother. What is more important about Fukuzawa’s conduct book is his criticism against the language use of Japanese women in his day. By enumerating the concrete problems of modern women’s actual speech, such as their inability to greet properly or describe their physical condition to a doctor and speaking in an unsuitable manner using bizarre words, Fukuzawa created a new belief about women’s speech: women cannot use language properly. That kind of critical discourse can be found in the books of many other writers in the early twentieth century. Yokoi Tokio (1986[1902]: 204), principal of a Christian school, Dooshisha, laments that, though women gossip and complain with other women, “When they meet with men, they keep silent.” Toogoo Masatake (1986[1908]: 18), a graduate of Dooshisha, also argues that, “If a wife does not respond or ask questions when her husband talks about his life and thinking, he feels it is not worth speaking and finally stops telling her anything. When a husband stops talking to his wife, it is all



Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech

the wife’s fault.” By criticizing the speech of women, Fukuzawa and many of his contemporaries constructed a new belief that “women cannot use language properly.” These critical discourses against women’s actual speech emerged at a time when the writers of conduct books were required to deal with the upsurge of democracy and gender equality, women were expected to manage their households sufficiently while their husbands were at work, and women redefined as female citizens were required to produce competent male citizens. The emergence of the new discourse criticizing women’s actual speech, in other words, was the result of the dilemma faced by those modern Japanese intellectuals who pontificated both that the simple enforcement of silence on women was not acceptable and that women’s free use of language had to be regulated. To resolve the dilemma, Japanese intellectuals like Fukuzawa chose to encourage women to speak up in situations requiring women to fulfill the daily role of good-wife-wise-mother, the choice between the two extremes of silence and verbosity. By declaring such antipathy towards women speaking, such as female students indulging in free discussion, Fukuzawa denied total freedom in women’s talk. By implying that women were not eligible to employ the right to speak granted them in modern Japanese society, the discourses asserting that women were incapable of using language properly functioned to legitimate the practice of continuously mandating norms for women’s speech. The new belief about women’s actual speech, that they “cannot use language properly,” might initially appear different from the previous norm of “women should not speak.” Yet, in fact, the “new” belief, in purveying the functions of regulating, controlling and dominating women’s linguistic practice, made it quite difficult for women to speak out. Whenever they spoke, they were virtually forced to be aware that their speech was foredoomed to failure; no matter how she spoke, her speech would be evaluated based on the belief that “women cannot use language properly.” So the “new” belief, in conceptualizing women’s linguistic practice as the object of regulation, control and domination, had the same function as the premodern norms of feminine speech. Since then, critical discourse against women’s actual linguistic practice, such as “women talk too much,” “women talk about trivial matters,” and “women incessantly change topics of their talk not reaching to any conclusion,” have formed a major stereotype about women’s speech until today. My analysis of the three types of modern conduct books for women has demonstrated that, while no conduct book explicitly denied gender equality, each type used different logic to legitimate citing the andro-centric premodern norms, showing the confusion and difficulty faced by conduct-book writers in their radically changing society. The logic used in the first type of conduct book held that women and men were equal but had different rights, maintaining the gender

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distinction deemed necessary to accomplish the gendered nationalization required in building Japan’s modern nation state. To legitimate that difference in rights, which the writers regarded as innate, the conduct books, by redefining the differences in speech determined by the gendered norms as differences based on sex, essentialized gender. The logic used in the second type of modern conduct book was to claim that women and men had equal rights as subjects of the emperor. In redefining the norms in their books as the responsibility of female citizens and emphasizing the role of mothers to educate their children, the second type also legitimated giving premodern norms to modern women. The logic of the third type was to encourage women to speak up in situations requiring them to fulfill their daily role of good-wife-wise-mother. By creating a belief in the inability of women to use language properly, the writers of this third type of conduct book also legitimated their normative discourses. The three major lines of logic used in modern conduct books were the emphasis on gender distinction suitable for gendered nationalization, reframing women as female citizens based on the state-as-family ideology, and encouraging women to speak to fulfill their daily role of good-wife-wise-mother. In the next section, I will show that very similar lines of logic are found in school moral textbooks used to educate women since the end of the nineteenth century. Logic of the school moral textbooks The Meiji government, well aware of the importance of education in building a modern nation state, issued Gaku sei (The School System Law) in 1872, declaring: “From now on, among nations in general (including nobles, descendants of sam­ urai, farmers, merchants, and women), there will be no family in any town or village without education, nor any person in a family without education” (Monbushoonai kyooikushi hensankai 1938: 277). More women, especially the daughters of upper- and middleclass families, started attending school and, as we have seen in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s negative attitude toward the speech of female students, they evoked virulent criticism. The changing attitudes of not only Japanese women but also Japanese men were considered to be the result of too much Western influence. In 1879, therefore, the Meiji emperor issued Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education), which remonstrated against too much Westernization and declared the start of ethical education based on Confucianism (Mitsui 1977: 175). In 1890, the Meiji emperor issued Kyooiku chokugo (the Imperial Rescript on Education), which set the principle of moral, ethical education in Japan, officially articulating the ideology of state-as-patriarchal family and the Confucian teaching of patriarchal family with the emperor atop the Japanese



Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech

state-as-family. That remained the fundamental principle of Japanese education until the end of WWII. Responding to Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education), the Meiji government launched a compilation of women’s moral textbooks for use in compulsory ethical education. The school system in Japan’s early modernization period frequently changed, but the school attendance rates of both girls and boys rapidly increased in elementary schools. From 1886 to 1890, compulsory education meant four years of elementary school (jinjoo shoogakkoo) (starting from age six) and two years of higher elementary school (kootoo jinjoo shoogakkoo), extended in 1890 to four years. In 1907, compulsory elementary school was extended to six years with two years of higher elementary school. According to the report, Nihon no seichoo to kyooiku [The Growth of Japan and Education] (1962), by Monbukagakushoo (Japanese Ministry of Education and Science), the school attendance rate of girls in compulsory elementary schools, though always lower than for boys until the 1920s, already exceeded 90% in 1900 and reached almost 100% after the beginning of the twentieth century (drop-out rate not included). Few girls, however, were allowed to receive further advanced education after elementary school. In the school system of 1890, beyond elementary school, there was kootoo jogakkoo (women’s secondary school), a five-year institution for girls from twelve to sixteen years old. According to the same report, among female students who graduated from elementary school in 1905, only 4.2% went on to women’s secondary school, which constituted only 1.7% of twelve-year-old girls. The Meiji government also established joshi kootoo shihan gakkoo (women’s higher normal school) in 1890, a four-year public school for women from seventeen to twenty-one years old, who would become teachers. According to the report, only 0.1% of seventeen-year-old girls received education beyond secondary school. School moral textbooks were compiled, in other words, for teaching the Confucian lessons proclaimed in Kyooiku chokugo (the Imperial Rescript on Education) to the increasing number of educated girls, ensuring that the literacy and knowledge acquired at school would be used solely to fulfill their principal role in life of good-wife-wise-mother. The school moral textbooks from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century can be divided into three groups, according to the content of norms taught concerning women’s speech. The first type of moral textbook, by emphasizing the necessity to assign distinctive norms to women and men, gave additional restrictions specifically on women’s speech. The writer of Shoogaku shuushinkun [Elementary School Moral Precept] (1880), Nishimura Shigeki, even promoted separate education for girls and boys (Monbushoonai kyooikushi hensankai 1938: 471). He says in his introduction: “There are naturally some norms only for girls. They may be passed over when teaching boys” (Kaigo 1964a: 7). On women’s speech,

97

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he mentions fu-gen (female-language), one of the four Confucian behaviors of women, frequently cited in premoden conduct books, as noted in Chapter 1. “Female-language means using language selectively, not using rough words, and speaking after [thinking] for a while so that others will not hate what you say.” He also refers to Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning]: “It is against the woman’s way of life … to use coarse language or to start speaking before others.” (Kaigo 1964a: 20–21). Sooga shoogaku onna reishiki [Illustrated Elementary School for Women’s Manners] was compiled especially for female elementary students, from six to nine years old, in 1882. On speech, it gives very strict instructions: “When you speak, do not speak in too high a voice nor too low a voice, do not speak too slowly or too rapidly” (Kaigo 1964a: 177). Since it shows neither the appropriate tone of voice nor the ideal speed of speaking, giving such instructions, to my mind, must have made elementary school girls afraid of speaking up. Shoogaku sahoosho [Elementary School Manners Book] (1883) edited by the Ministry of Education, is also characterized by its emphasis on giving gendered-differentiated norms of speech. It especially warns girls that, “From childhood, you must always remember to use elegant language and keep yourself clean” (Kaigo 1964a: 183). In Shoogaku shuushinkun [Elementary School Moral Lesson] (1892), Suematsu Kenchoo, a Cambridge University graduate and member of Japan’s parliament, states: “A woman should serve her parents-in-law, respect her husband, behave herself, and keep her language soft….” (Kaigo 1964a: 393). The same author writes in Shuushin jokun [Moral Principles of Women] (1893): “This textbook is compiled for the use of female students at higher elementary schools…. We provide separate textbooks for male and female students, following the standard set by the Ministry of Education” (Kaigo 1964a: 439). While obediently following the Ministry of Education’s policy requiring different moral textbooks for girls and boys, Suematsu simply repeats the now standard remonstration on verbosity and disclosure of knowledge:

(1) As speech is said to be the flower of one’s mind, your mind is known by your speech. Restrain yourself from speaking. Intentionally androgynous speech is indecent. Direct speech is snobbish. A woman’s good speech should not jar one’s ear, but should be soft and lovable, and should not talk reason…. It is especially disgusting to see a woman speak knowingly and cleverly. (Kaigo 1964a: 460–461)

The logic used in the first type of textbook to legitimate their acts of repeating the premodern norms of feminine speech, therefore, was to claim that women and men needed different norms by emphasizing gender distinction, the distinction necessary to accomplish the gendered nationalization. Emphasizing the importance of giving different norms to women and men legitimated putting special constraints



Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech 99

on women’s speech. The textbooks of this group, quite similar to the conduct book by Fukuzawa Yukichi, also prohibited women from showing their knowledge. The second type of textbook, compiled after the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), redefined speech norms as the norms of “the subjects of the emperor” and presented the premodern norms of feminine speech as the responsibility of female citizens. Two books, Jinjoo shoogaku shuushinsho [Elementary School Moral Textbook] (1892) and Kootoo shoogaku shuushinsho [Higher Elementary School Moral Textbook] (1892), by Higashikuze Michitomi, vice chair of Japan’s Privy Council, simply repeat the premodern idea “of decreasing words” (Kaigo 1964a: 504), but they achieved distinction in their shift of emphasis from the respect for parents to loyalty to the emperor. Moral textbooks had heretofore presented respect for parents in their opening pages as the most important lesson. In Jinjoo shoogaku shuushinsho, by contrast, Higashikuze begins the first page of Volume 1 with a picture of Japan’s rising-sun flag fluttering over a village shrine. And the first lesson in Volume 2 is “Loyalty to the Emperor,” beginning with: “The emperor’s blessing is limitless. Never forget to be loyal [to the emperor]” (Kaigo 1964a: 489, 531). This shift was passed on to Shimpen shuushin kyooten [Newly Compiled Moral Scripture] (1900), complied by the Fukyuusha publishing company. The introduction defines students as “citizens,” stating the book’s purpose as, “teaching public morals which constitutional citizens should acquire … based on the Imperial Rescript on Education and the great duty of loyalty” (Kaigo 1964a: 587). On speech, Lesson 24, “The Manners of Girls,” of the elementary school edition, describes the “female-language” as one of the four Confucian behaviors of women, and Lesson 20 of the higher elementary edition, jo-toku (female-virtue), repeats this premodern notion: “To speak too much and to envy others are aspects of woman’s evil nature, so always restrain yourself from speaking” (Kaigo 1964a: 613, 650–1). The second type of textbook, by redefining female students as subjects of the emperor, successfully reframed the same premodern norms of feminine speech as the responsibility of female citizens serving the emperor. The third type of textbook mostly consisted of moral textbooks for female students in women’s secondary schools. Published after the Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895) and the groundswell of women’s liberation movements in the early 1900s, they show a substantial difference from the previous two groups of textbook; while they also warned women not to speak, they simultaneously proclaimed that it was acceptable for women to speak up when necessary. Inoue Tetsujiroo, author of Chokugo engi [Commentary on the Imperial Rescript], which declared the ideology of state-as-family (noted in Chapter 3), also wrote Teisei joshi shuushin kyookasho [Revised Women’s Moral Textbook] (1907). This book, while re-enforcing the familiar premodern lessons in the sections, “Restrain Yourself from Speaking” and “the Problems of Verbosity,” also has a section titled, “The Problems of Silence”:

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(2) However, women nowadays, different from women before, are sometimes required to stand among many people and talk to them. So, although verbosity is bad, to always remain silent should not be praised…. [A woman should] keep silent and refrain from verbosity, but, at the same time, should try to speak correctly when there is something that ought to be said. (Kootoo jogakkoo kenkyuukai 1989a: 105).

The lesson on the problems of silence is also found in the moral textbooks for female secondary school students during WWI (1914–18) and into the Taishoo period (1912–26). In Shintei joshi shuushinkun [Newly Revised Women’s Moral Lessons] (1918), Sawayanagi Seitaro, a Ministry of Education official, obligates women “to speak when necessary and to shut their mouths when not” (Kootoo jogakkoo kenkyuukai 1989a: 232). Shimoda Jiroo, professor at Tokyo joshi kootoo shihan gakkoo (Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School) wrote Joshi shin shuushinsho kaiteiban [Women’s New Moral Book Revised] in 1925. He also expects women to speak: “Although speaking honestly is said to be best, poor speech is not good when people are listening to you” (Kootoo jogakkoo kenkyuukai 1989b: 57). So when, according to these textbooks, is it necessary that something should be said? Kootoo jogakkoo rei (Women’s Secondary School Act), issued by Education Minister Yokoyama Toshiki in 1899, made explicit the goal of women’s secondary school education: “to teach knowledge to become a wise-mothergood-wife” (Fukaya 1998[1981]: 155). These textbooks of women’s secondary schools, therefore, asked women to speak only when necessary to fulfill the roles of a good wife and a wise mother. On the subject of women’s speech, therefore, moral textbooks of the period repeated the premodern norms of feminine speech. The three major lines of logic used by each group of moral textbooks to legitimate that repetition are quite similar to those used in conduct books. The first group of moral textbooks, by emphasizing the gender distinction required to enhance gendered nationalization, rationalized the assignment of additional restrictions specifically on women’s speech. The second group reframed women as female citizens based on the state-as-family ideology and transformed premodern norms into the responsibility of modern female citizens. The third group expected women to speak when it was necessary for them to fulfill the role of good-wife-wise-­ mother. The spread of conduct-book norms through the medium of school textbooks transformed the traditional norms of feminine speech into the official, legitimate norms that ought to be taught in the public educational institutions authorized by the government.

Chapter 4.  The modern norms of feminine speech 101



Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that the normative discourse of conduct books and school moral textbooks from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century successfully reframed the premodern norms of feminine speech as modern norms. The perspective of conceptualizing women’s speech as the object of regulation, control and domination, as a result, was preserved and legitimated despite the radical social changes of Japan’s early modernization period. Three major lines of logic, used both in conduct books and moral textbooks to rationalize the repetition of premodern norms, were the emphasis on gender distinction deemed necessary to enhance gendered nationalization, the redefinition of women as female citizens based on the ideology of state-as-family, and the encouragement of women to speak when it was necessary to fulfill the role of good-wife-wise-mother. By reframing the premodern norms within the modern ideologies of gendered nationalization, state-as-family and good-wife-wise-mother, these books transformed the premoden norms of ideal feminine speech into the modern norms for female citizens. By modern norms, I refer to a set of rules concerning how much, about what, and how women should talk, defining a style of speaking considered ideal for modern female citizens. Accordingly, the discourses of modern conduct books and moral textbooks successfully transformed the premodern ideology of feminine speech into the modern version of that ideology, the ideal speech of modern good-wife-wise-mothers following modern norms of feminine speech. The control and domination of women’s speech was reinforced in modernizing state institutions – above all, in schools – as inherited by a metalinguistic tradition observed in etiquette manuals today. The norms of feminine speech, this strongly implies, have been preserved, maintained and legitimated by being reframed in the hegemonic ideologies of each historical juncture.3 Japan’s modernization period from the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, therefore, created two gendered linguistic ideologies, men’s national language and the modern feminine speech. At the end of Chapter 3, I argue that there must have been some ideological construct associated with women’s speech, which functioned to sustain the hegemonic status of a men’s national language. The modern ideology of feminine speech played the role of a negative counterpart to maintain the unmarked, standard, and normal status of a national language, along with the regional varieties and the speech of the often uneducated people in lower social classes. The regional varieties and the speech of such people 3. The contemporary norms of feminine speech, as we have seen in the list of etiquette manuals in the Introduction, emphasizing the importance of feminine speech for women to be attractive to and loved by man, are explicitly legitimated by the hetero-romantic ideology.

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were distinguished from the ideology of national language by regions and social class, and the modern feminine speech was contrasted with men’s national language by gender. If we consider the types of discourse that constructed men’s national language and feminine speech and how they were related to each other, it becomes clear that they were asymmetrically distinguished. While men’s national language was discussed in academic, political, and literary discourses, feminine speech was dealt with in the completely distinctive discourses of conduct books and moral textbooks. Men’s national language was conceptualized as a goal vital to national unity and power. Feminine speech, in contrast, remained an ideal, against which women’s linguistic practice was constantly criticized, regulated and controlled outside the legitimate ideology of national language. In the next chapter, we will see another example of the gendered asymmetry in Japan’s modernization period, by looking at how the speech of typically modern Japanese women – schoolgirls – was constructed.

chapter 5

Creating indexicality Schoolgirl speech

Kimiko: Watashi moo itteyo. Moo itteyo. Aa kokoro ga … nuketchimaisoo…. Aa ii noyo. ‘I’m already coming. I’m coming now. Oh, my mind is going crazy. Oh, it is good.’ Oguri Fuuyoo (1907–1911) Sode to sode [Sleeve to Sleeve]1 In a pornographic story, Sode to sode [Sleeve to Sleeve], written during 1907–1911, a female student, Kimiko, is speaking with strange sentence-final forms, teyo and noyo, when she is having sex with a man (Oguri 1998[1907–1911]: 54). The above epigraph induces some questions. First, how did female students, educated daughters of middleclass families, come to appear in pornographic stories as sex objects? By the phrase “female students,” I refer to a group of women in secondary schools (kootoo jogakkoo), the five-year schools for twelve-to-sixteen-yearold girls, and higher normal schools (kootoo shihan gakkoo), the four-year schools for seventeen-to-twenty-one-year-old women in the 1990s school system. As cited in Chapter 4, in 1905, girls in secondary schools were only 1.7% of twelve-year-old girls and those in higher normal schools only 0.1% of seventeen-year-old girls. Female students, in other words, were composed of daughters of rich, high-class families, who constituted only a portion of women in their age group in Japan’s early modernization period. Second, why did Kimiko, one such daughter of a rich, high-class family, speak with the unfamiliar sentence-final forms? Those forms, teyo and noyo, along with another sentence-final form, dawa, came to form what was called jogakusei kotoba (schoolgirl speech) in the early twentieth century. The investigation into schoolgirl speech is particularly important in analyzing the genealogy of Japanese women’s language, since the sentence-final forms included in schoolgirl speech are assumed to constitute what we now call Japanese women’s language. What was schoolgirl speech and what did it have to do with the 1. Neither the author nor the publication year of Sode to sode [Sleeve to Sleeve] has been determined, since pornography was strictly censored by the state at the time. It is assumed to have been published between 1907 and 1911, and the author has been variously said to be Oguri Fuuyoo, his teacher Ozaki Kooyoo, or Oguri Fuuyoo’s student, Nakagawa Hakkaku.

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transformation of female students into sex objects and, further, with the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother set as a goal of women’s secondary education in the gendered nationalization of building the modern nation state? The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the construction process of schoolgirl speech by analyzing the discourses about the speech of female students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Japan underwent modernization during the period, several linguistic ideologies were constructed, including one of the national language, one of schoolgirl speech (jogakusei kotoba), and another of schoolboy speech (shosei kotoba).2 This chapter focuses on schoolgirl speech because: (1) Komatsu Sumio (1988) shows that sentence-final forms, features associated with social identities in Japanese, used in fiction, were being differentiated by gender during the early twentieth century;3 (2) sentence-final forms included in schoolgirl speech, such as teyo, dawa, and noyo, constitute what we now call Japanese women’s language; and (3) the emergence, formation, and establishment of schoolgirl identity and schoolgirl speech are historically clear. Japanese women officially became students for the first time in 1872 when the Japanese government issued Gaku sei (The School System Law), declaring the importance of education for everybody, including women (Monbushoonai kyooikushi hensankai 1938: 277). When the law was issued, there was no specific

2. Shosei (lit. writing student), is a general term for students prevalent in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It was also used to refer to young men who lived in their master’s house to study while helping the household. The term usually indicated a male student as is exemplified in the case that onna shosei (woman student), rather than shosei, was used to refer to a female student. Shosei kotoba (lit. student speech), typically referred to peculiar speech spoken by male students of the period. Since the term shosei mainly indicated a male student, I translate the term shosei kotoba as “schoolboy speech.” 3. The Meiji era saw the recognition of gendered linguistic elements such as personal pronouns and sentence-final forms. Komatsu (1988) compares sentence-final forms appearing in the two stories published in the premodern and the modern periods, respectively, Ukiyo buro (1813) and Sanshiroo (1909), and concludes that: 1) of the sentence-final forms used by both women and men in Ukiyo buro, some were used either by women or men in Sanshiroo, and 2) in Sanshiroo, there were new sentence-final forms used only by female characters. This shows that novels, such as Sanshiroo, played an important role in gendering linguistic features in Japan’s modernization period. Concerning the schoolgirl features, dawa and noyo, some studies show that they were new features invented during the modern period by female students. Komatsu (1988) finds that other sentence-final forms, avoided by upper-class women in Ukiyo buro, were used only by men in Sanshiroo. Dawa and noyo, however, are exceptions. Although upper-class women avoided them in Ukiyo buro, female characters still used them in Sanshiroo, demonstrating the difference between the premodern and the modern dawa and noyo. Kinsui (2003: 144) also points out that dawa and noyo in Ukiyo buro and those same forms in schoolgirl speech are used differently, denying any continuity from the premodern dawa and noyo to the modern ones.

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 105



identity of female students as opposed to that of male students.4 By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Japanese society created a social category called “schoolgirls,” clearly distinguished by gender from the category of male students. Honda Masuko (1990: 133) has demonstrated that symbolic devices such as attire (ebicha-bakama [maroon trouser skirt]), hairstyle (tabane gami [tied-up hair]), and speech (jogakusei kotoba [schoolgirl speech]) constructed the social identity of schoolgirl. In investigating the transformation of female students into sex objects, therefore, I use the two terms “female students” (joshi gakusei) and “schoolgirls” (jogakusei) distinctively. By “female students,” I refer to students who were women. By “schoolgirls,” I refer to the social category of female students created by the metalinguistic discourses about their attire, hairstyle and speech, produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter concentrates mainly on speech. Before clarifying further the difference between “female students” and “schoolgirls” by analyzing schoolgirl speech construction, I would like to show how female students’ way of dressing quickly altered as the government’s policy on female education changed in the late nineteenth century. The quick transition occurring with female students’ clothing, an important, if symbolic, system helping construct the social category of schoolgirls, reflected the trial and error of the Meiji government and school administrations in their attempts to define what kind of Japanese citizen these newly educated young women should be and where to locate them in the structure of the emerging modern Japanese nation state. As we will soon see, the trial and error of the government and school administrations also had a great effect on the process of constructing schoolgirl speech. Changing attire of female students Figures 5.1 to 5.4 show photographs of female students from 1877 to 1900 (Karasawa 1958: frontispiece). One can see radical changes in their attire in little more than two decades. Figure 5.1 is a photograph of female students at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School around 1877. Wearing hakama, the trouser-style kimono worn by male students, the girls are sitting just like boys, with their legs apart and their arms crossed in front of them. When the School System Law was passed in 1872, there were not enough school buildings, so “in the early years after secondary education was first introduced, schools accepted girls and the girls entered 4. It does not mean that the term jogakusei (schoolgirl) was not used at the beginning of the modern school system. Though I cannot determine whether the term was read as jogakusei (schoolgirl) or onna gakusei (woman student), the term appeared in some written discourses produced in the late nineteenth century.

106 Gender, language and ideology

Figure 5.1  Female students in hakama around 1877.

Figure 5.2  Female students in kimono in 1885.

secondary schools [with boys]” (Fukaya 1998[1981]: 58). This means that some women were learning alongside their male counterparts, and this situation continued until coeducation was prohibited in 1879. An article in the magazine, Shimbun zasshi, issued in March, 1872, describes those early female students as “walking up and down the streets in hakama and wooden clogs, their sleeves rolled up and foreign books in their arms” (Ishii 1944: 539). Nakagawa Kenjiroo, principal

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 107



Figure 5.3  Female students in Western dress in 1886.

Figure 5.4  Female students in maroon trouser skirts in 1900.

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of Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School, wrote: “In 1872 … the government founded their first school for women. Every time I walked around the neighborhood, I saw strangely dressed girls in hakama. They were students at the school” (Monbushoonai kyooikushi hensankai 1938: 794). These are perfect descriptions of the students in Figure 5.1, suggesting that, on entering school, those girls did not think that they became “female students,” but considered themselves “students” who came to study the same as male students. This shows that neither the Meiji government nor the school administrations gave any apparent instruction about what to wear to these early female students, because they had not made a decision concerning what kind of Japanese citizens the newly emerging educated young women should be. As mentioned earlier, there was no specific social identity of female students clearly distinguished from the identity of male students in the late nineteenth century. The female students in male hakama received severe criticism. The magazine, Shimbun zasshi, after describing the female students as shown in the above citation, continues: “Even if they are female students [who study just like male students], to wear men’s clothing and vigorously use men’s manners tells us that they have already strayed from their course of study and forgotten the important principle of women’s learning” (Ishii 1944: 539). An article, Joseito no kutsu hakama [The Shoes and Hakama of Woman Students], in a newspaper, Tokyo nichinichi shimbun, in 1881, reports that an Education Ministry official, inspecting women’s schools in the Tohoku area (northeast of Tokyo) saw “many female teachers and students in half-male-half-female attire, triumphantly wearing shoes and hakama and exultantly proclaiming their superficial understanding of equal rights between the sexes…. So everywhere he stopped he gave a speech, deploring what he had witnessed” (Nanba 2012: 164). The phrase, “half-male-half-female” vividly expresses the disgust of the official as he witnessed women transgressing the gender boundary by wearing male clothing. Some observers described these women as “rough and uncouth female students” (Karasawa 1958: 40). So jarring in fact to traditional assumptions was the phenomenon of female students in male hakama that it made intellectuals and bureaucrats aware of the need to distinguish students by gender. In 1879, as we have seen, the Meiji emperor issued Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education), which remonstrated against too much Westernization and declared the start of moral education based on Confucianism (Mitsui 1977: 175). Coeducation in secondary schools was prohibited in the same year (Mitsui 1977: 178). In 1881, sewing and domestic science became compulsory subjects for female students. “From 1879 to 1882, hakama for women were prohibited” (Honda 1990: 71). Instead, female students wore kimono, the traditional women’s costume. Figure 5.2 shows female students in kimono in 1885. Kimono clearly differentiated them from male students.



Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 109

In 1883, the Meiji government built Rokumei-kan (Deer-cry Hall), a Westernstyle dance hall, as a diplomatic space to entertain Western visitors in Western parties and balls. Since the wives of high-ranking Japanese men were not accustomed to Western dancing, the government expected female students to contribute to Japanese diplomacy as ballroom dancers. In 1896, the administrators of women’s normal schools began teaching ballroom dancing and encouraging their students to wear Western dress (Honda 1990: 75). Figure 5.3 shows female students in Western dress in 1886. After the Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895), many intellectuals began to recognize female education as indispensable to enhancing national power. Women’s schools were expected to produce “good wives” with high domestic abilities and “wise mothers” who would efficiently bring up the next generation. Kootoo jogakkoo rei (Women’s Secondary School Act), issued in 1899, explicitly stated that the goal of women’s secondary school education was “to teach the knowledge to become a wise-mother-good-wife” (Fukaya 1998[1981]: 155), clearly distinguishing female schools from male schools, whose goal was to foster efficient workers and soldiers. As the Women’s Secondary School Act stipulated that at least one public women’s secondary school be established in each prefecture, new women’s secondary schools were build in Japan’s major cities. School administrators, therefore, thought it necessary to require uniforms for women’s secondary schools to give the students attending them an identity distinguishing them from other women. Neither kimono that bundled students with the traditional obi (a kind of woven sash), nor the tight corset of a Western dress, however, was suitable for a secondary-school uniform, especially because the importance of physical education had been recognized in the good-wife-wise-mother education policy. Instead of kimono or a Western dress that symbolized an obedient but incompetent woman bundled in obi or in the tight corset, therefore, ebicha-bakama (a maroon trouser skirt) was chosen as the uniform of a future good-wife-wise-mother. Figure 5.4 shows female students in maroon trouser skirts in 1900. This new uniform distinguished female from male students by its color and female students from other women by its shape. The maroon trouser-skirt uniform, however, gradually gained an unexpected meaning that school administrators would never have imagined; sexuality. As the number of women’s secondary schools increased, not only the daughters of highclass families, but also smart, ambitious women came from outside cities to attend school and live in boardinghouses away from their families. The emergence of young women living by themselves spawned a perception of female students as “destroyers of the social order and deviators of sexual morals” (Honda 1990: 89). The new school uniform of maroon trouser skirt also liberated these students from both the obi of a kimono and the tight corset of a Western dress, and they were able

110 Gender, language and ideology

Figure 5.5  Female students in maroon trouser skirts at an athletic meet in the 1900s (Honda 1990: 59).

to ride bicycles and play tennis. A puff of wind would occasionally expose parts of their active bodies. Figure 5.5 shows an athletic meet in the early 1900s at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School with the students actively running, moving and playing sports in their maroon trouser skirts, their hair waving in the wind. As people came to recognize the maroon trouser skirt as the uniform of female students, photographs of professional geisha in the schoolgirl uniform sold well (Figure 5.6). Associated with the sexual conceptualization of female students, the maroon trouser skirt was used to increase the sexual attractiveness of professional geisha. The transition observed in the clothes of female students from male hakama, to bundled kimono, to Western dress and finally to the maroon trouser skirt with sexual meaning demonstrates that the identity of female students was transforming in the late nineteenth century from diligent students who studied along with boys to sex objects of men. Construction of schoolgirl speech Along with attire, language played an important role in the social construction of schoolgirls. The formation process of schoolgirl speech can be divided into four

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 111



Figure 5.6  Photographs of professional geisha in the schoolgirl uniform in the 1900s (Honda 1990: 29).

processes: gender-differentiation, selection, derogation, and sexualization (Nakamura 2006).5 Gender-differentiation: Denial of schoolboy speech Female students in male hakama were believed to speak what was later called shosei kotoba (schoolboy speech). A letter to the Yomiuri shimbun in 1875, in criticizing female students, describes a conversation between two female students, who want to become teachers and make their own living, rather than getting married, so that they can freely go to the theater and keep a gigolo (Soga 1875). (1) a.

Kore wa boku no oji ga shoohoo o this top my gen uncle nom business obj hajime mashite senjitsu ittan boku ni hakama start sfx the other day a roll me to trouser-style kimono ni itase to itte tooyo sare mashitayo. goal make quot say give do-hon sfx-past-sfp ‘My uncle started a business and gave me a roll of cloth the other day saying I should have a hakama [made out of it].’

5. I divide the formation of schoolgirl speech into four processes. That does not mean, however, that the four processes occurred separately, one after another. Some temporarily overlapped others. Hiraishi (2012: 76), by showing that newspaper articles in 1875 represented as sex objects not only female students but also geisha in male students’ hakama, points out that “female students and geisha were already symbolically represented as belonging to the same category [of sex object] in the 1870s.” This indicates that the fourth process of female students’ sexualization had already started in the 1870s.

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b. Kimi kitto hokudoo e kotowari tamae you must mother to refuse sfp ‘You must tell your mother that you will refuse it [marriage].’ c. Eesu, eesu, eesu, eesu yes, yes, yes, yes ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’ The students use boku (the male first-person pronoun); Chinese words (Japanese words written in Chinese characters, cf. Chapter 1), such as shoohoo (business), tooyo (give), and hokudoo (mother); kimi (male second-person pronoun); tamae (sentence-final form); and the English word “yes.” Their conversation contains many of the linguistic features of what was called schoolboy speech in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Komatsu Sumio (1974: 26) claims that schoolboy speech is characterized by linguistic features such as: 1) Chinese words, 2) foreign words, 3) the first person pronouns, boku and wagahai, 4) the second person pronoun, kimi, 5) the address form, kun, used after last name in the form, last name-kun, 6) sentence-final forms such as tamae and beshi, and 7) shikkei (good-bye). This indicates that, not only in clothes but also in speech, some early female students behaved just like male students. It is worth noting, moreover, that, in the above letter, the two students say they want to become teachers so that they can go to the theater and keep a gigolo. They are described as students lacking morality who just want to have fun. The letter, in other words, in letting the two depraved female students talk in schoolboy speech, also criticized the use of schoolboy speech by female students. The declaration of Confucian education by Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education) (1879) meant a return to the official promotion of feminine speech as encouraged in women’s conduct books and school moral textbooks. The media immediately apprehended the Confucian turn of female education and criticized the use of schoolboy speech by female students. One interesting point was how authors of novels used language to portray female student characters. Bad female students were characterized by using schoolboy speech, while good female students always used polite, feminine language. In 1885, Iwamoto Yoshiharu, a prominent advocate of women’s education, wrote a story, Baika joshi no den [The Story of Miss Apricot Scent] in Jogaku zasshi [the Women’s Education Journal]. The story describes the school life of the good heroine, Ume, sharply contrasting her with two bad female students, Sawayama and Tanaka. Figure 5.7 shows the heroine Ume, a good student, standing by the tree, while the other girls, Sawayama and Tanaka, are running in the schoolyard. They do not behave in a feminine manner and apparently have lost interest in their studies.



Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 113

Figure 5.7  Female students in Baika joshi no den [The Story of Miss Apricot Scent] (Iwamoto 1885: 70).

The stark contrast between good and bad female students is also emphasized by their speech. Table 5.1 shows the linguistic features of schoolboy speech used by female students in the story, followed by the example utterances of schoolboy speech by each student. (A checkmark means the student uses the linguistic feature and an “×” means she does not.) Both of the bad girls, Sawayama and Tanaka, use many features of schoolboy speech, such as the address form kun, the firstperson pronoun boku, the second-person pronoun kimi, and the sentence-final particle tamae. The heroine Ume, in contrast, never uses them. The example utterances show that Sawayama calls herself by boku, and Tanaka calls Sawayama Sawayama-kun, using the male address form, kun, along with the sentence-final form of schoolboy speech, tamau (tamae). They also freely use Chinese words in their conversation. Bad female students use schoolboy features, while good female students do not. Nevertheless, even Sawayama and Tanaka stop using schoolboy speech and shift to polite speech when they talk to Ume. Even those female students who spoke schoolboy speech among themselves recognized the norm of polite speech.

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Table 5.1  Use of schoolboy features by the female students of Baika joshi no den (1885). Schoolboy features Address form kun (last name + kun) First-person pronoun, boku Second-person pronoun, kimi Sentence-final particle, tamae

Sawayama Tanaka Ume (bad student) (bad student) (good student) ✓ ✓ × ✓

✓ × ✓ ✓

× × × ×

(2) Example utterances of the female students of Baika joshi no den a. Sawayama: Bokura, iya, shoora wa kore o michibikite toosee fuu ni suru gimu ga arimasu ze. ‘We have a responsibility to lead them and liberalize them.’ b. Tanaka: Sawayama-kun, sonnani shiranu fuu o shitamau na. ‘Sawayama-kun, do not pretend not to know so much.’ c. Ume: Sawayama-san, sakujitsu wa makoto ni arigatoo gozai mashita. ‘Sawayama-san, thank you very much for yesterday.’  (Iwamoto 1885: 69) This story reveals two points about the speech of female students in the media of the late nineteenth century. First, the writer used schoolboy speech and polite speech as linguistic symbols to make the distinction between bad female students and decent, good female students. Compared to Sawayama and Tanaka, who eventually lost interest in their studies, Ume is eager to learn. Second, even for bad female students, polite speech was recognized as the norm. Both Sawayama and Tanaka switched to polite speech when Ume appears on the scene. The writer of the story says: “This chapter depicts the behavior of female students exactly as they are” (Iwamoto 1885: 71). My analysis shows, however, that the writer tactfully makes the distinction between good/bad female students via language use, thus designating schoolboy-speech usage as a symbol of bad female students. In both the above letter to a newspaper and Baika joshi no den [The Story of Miss Apricot Scent], bad female students speak schoolboy speech. By having bad female students speak schoolboy speech, the Meiji media denied the use of schoolboy speech by female students and thereby linguistically gender-differentiated female students from male students. Selection: choosing “Teyo dawa speech” and western words Around 1879, some female students started using new sentence-final forms, such as teyo, dawa, and noyo. As Ozaki Kooyoo (1994[1888]: 4), a leading Meiji

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 115



novelist, observes: “Eight or nine years ago [1879–1880], elementary female students began to use a strange form of language in their conversations with intimate friends.”6 His comment includes the following examples: (3) a.

teyo Ume wa mada sakanakutteyo. apricot top yet bloom-neg-sfp ‘The apricot has not yet bloomed.’

b.

dawa Sakura no hana wa mada sakanaindawa. cherry gen flower top yet bloom-neg-sfp ‘The cherry flowers have not yet bloomed.’

c.

noyo Ara moo saita noyo. oh already bloom-past sfp ‘Oh, [it has] already bloomed.’

Takeuchi Hisaichi (1907: 24), a sculptor, also observed some changes in women’s speech, noting that around 1877 upper-class women began using atai (first-person pronoun), iya yo (“no” with the sentence-final form, yo), shite teyo (“do” with the sentence-final form, teyo), and yokutteyo (“I don’t care” with the sentence-final form, teyo). It is not clear why they began to use such speech. Three facts imply, however, that one major function of this speech was to resist the good-wife-wise-mother identity that the school system officially provided for them. First, they started using this speech around the time when Confucianism and the gender-segregated educational system were institutionalized. As already noted, 1879 was the year when Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education) declared the start of the Confucian good-wife-wise-mother education and coeducation was prohibited. Before Kyoogaku seishi was issued, some female students, attempting to create and express their own identity as different from that of other Japanese women, dressed in male hakama, spoke schoolboy speech and behaved just like their male counterparts. Since both the male hakama and schoolboy speech were prohibited for female students in the rapid spread of the good-wife-wise-mother pedagogical policy, female students, attempting to construct and express their specific identity as female students, created their new speech with sentence-final forms, such as teyo, dawa, and noyo. 6. Once they become well known, modern novelists are ordinarily referred to by their first names. Thus, in Japan, Ozaki Kooyoo is known as Kooyoo rather than Ozaki. In this book, however, to avoid confusion, I consistently use last names in the main text.

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Second, as seen in Chapter 4, women’s conduct books and school moral textbooks used in good-wife-wise-mother education required strict norms of feminine speech. Teaching the norms of feminine speech constituted a core curriculum in good-wife-wise-mother education. Using new speech not following the norms of feminine speech under such circumstance, irrespective of the intention of female students themselves, functioned to resist the good-wife-wise-mother identity devised for them by the schools. As Honda (1990: 134) points out, referring to the “teyo dawa” new speech of female students, “They [female students] filled the closed space of ‘girl’s school’ with ‘foreign fashion’ and ‘teyo dawa speech’ and nonchalantly neutralized the image of good-wife-wise-mother forced on them from outside that space.” An article in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1902 voices the prevailing view, that for girls to use the “teyo dawa” new speech could only be negative: “Obscene speech such as ii-kotoyo (fine with me), kii-teyo (listen to me) and shiranakuteyo (I don’t know) has an awful effect on the future wise-mother-good-wife, [meaning female students]” (Author unknown, “Hagaki shuu”). Third, the new speech of female students was severely criticized as originating from “the lower social classes.” Ozaki Kooyoo (1994[1888]: 4) states that “the daughters of the low-grade vassals in Aoyama” began to use teyo, dawa, and noyo at the end of the Tokugawa regime. According to a literature journal in 1896: “It spread from lower society to the mansion world” (author unknown, “Reijoo saikun no kotoba”). An article in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1905 claims that, as more daughters from the lower classes began to go to girl’s schools, “schoolgirls began to speak the language of merchant’s children” (author unknown, “Jogakusei to gengo”). Takeuchi Hisaichi (1907: 24–26) decided that “teyo dawa speech” was originally spoken by geisha, some of whom were married to high-ranking men (including many who were assigned to governmental officials because they had served the emperor during the Meiji Restoration), and spread the speech among high society, but “if you consider their origin, you will realize that it is not elegant speech. It is obscene speech.” Nevertheless, Komatsu (1988: 105) denies such an argument for the vulgar origin of the new speech, citing two examples. The first occurs in the novel, Imo to se kagami [Mirrored Couples], by Tsubouchi Shooyoo (1886a). In this story, a girl named O-tsuji, uses the word zentei (basically), and the author adds a note that “this girl sometimes uses rough language” (Tsubouchi 1969[1886a]: 165). The girl also uses the sentence-final form, wa, right before and after zentei, but the writer gives no comment, indicating that a girl’s use of wa at the end of her utterance was not considered rough. The second example is found in Satsuki goi [May Carp] by Iwaya Sazanami (1888), the first novel to use teyo, according to Ishikawa Tadanori (1972: 23). In this story, daughters of rich families frequently use teyo and dawa (Iwaya 1968[1888]: 198, 207, 203). These examples prove, Komatsu points out, that using wa, teyo, and dawa was not considered



Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 117

rough or impolite at the time when they first appeared. The argument that “teyo dawa speech” came from “lower society,” therefore, was not based on fact. Those who asserted this intended only to denigrate such usage; the “vulgar origin” was invented to belittle the new speech of female students. The persistent denigration and criticism of the new speech testifies to the power of speech to resist the goodwife-wise-mother education. Inoue (2006: 67) argues that male intellectuals regarded the speech as “unpleasant to the ears,” because “it disrupts the symbolic alignment between modernity and masculinity, for she is ‘female’ and ‘modern’” (emphasis original). The new speech of female students functioned as the language of resistance, no matter how much the speakers were aware of it, in the sense that the new speech did not follow the good-wife-wise-mother norm of polite, feminine speech in Japan’s modernization period. To clarify that this usage functioned as a resistant practice at a particular historical point, I will call it “teyo dawa speech” until we reach the stage when it is transformed into “schoolgirl speech.” It is worth noting here that actual female students were speaking in a variety of ways. While no data of Meiji-period speech is available, there are plenty of documents throughout the period criticizing the speech of female students for speaking like male students and using “teyo dawa speech.” These criticisms indirectly show that some female students spoke like male students, others used “teyo dawa speech,” and some others spoke politely. Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1890: 594) criticizes the “rough, impolite, strange, and disgusting speech” of female students, using several examples as follows: (4) a. Rough and impolite speech Examples: kita (come-past), iku (go), okkasan (mother), otottsuan (father). Iwamoto claims that female students should use politer words, irassharu (come-past), ukagau (go), okaa-sama (mother), and otoo-sama (father). b. “Teyo dawa speech” Examples: sentence-final forms, yo, teyo, and dawa, and the interjections, ara and aramaa. c. Schoolboy speech Examples: kimi (the second-person pronoun), boku (the first-person pronoun), and the sentence-final form dayo. Here, Iwamoto criticizes all speech other than polite speech. An article in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1891 also criticizes the use of “teyo dawa speech” and schoolboy speech by female students: “An old woman knits her brows when she hears words such as Soo nee (That’s right) and Ara yokutteyo (Ah, I don’t care). She would be shocked to hear girls say Soo kai (Is that so?) and Ii ja nai ka (That’s good)”

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(author unknown, “Jogakusei no heifuu”). The article criticizes both “teyo dawa speech” (Ara yokutteyo) and schoolboy speech (Ii ja nai ka) spoken by female students. An article in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1905 continued criticizing female students who use “teyo dawa speech” (Yokutteyo and Atai iya dawa), schoolboy speech (boku, kimi, and Asobini ki tamae na) and English words (Miss, Mrs., and husband) (author unknown, “Jogakusei to gengo”). Okada Yachiyo (1957: 45), a novelist and playwright, also testifies that female students around 1910 used the “impolite” language of male students.7 These documents reveal that female students spoke a variety of styles, including schoolboy speech, “teyo dawa speech,” as well as Chinese words and English words. Not all or even most female students always and repeatedly used “teyo dawa speech.” Some of them indeed used teyo, dawa and noyo, but this simple fact did not make it a linguistic index of female students. Rather, it was the writers of novels who selected “teyo dawa speech” and foreign words as the linguistic index of female students. By having female student characters speak “teyo dawa speech” and foreign words in fiction, they turned these features into linguistic indexes of female students. The writers of novels striving for the unification of speech and writing tried to describe the differences between characters by having them speak in different ways. To describe different characters, writers often used different sentence-final forms. Tsubouchi Shooyoo (1969[1886b]: 34), a leading intellectual, translator and writer seeking to unify the written and spoken languages, proposed that conversations be written in spoken language. If conversations are written “directly reflecting actual speech,” he argues, they will show the “natural activities of the speakers” (Tsubouchi 1969[1886a]: 164). Tsubouchi believed, in other words, that different groups of people spoke different styles of speech and the writer’s task was to write conversations reflecting their “natural” differences. Interestingly, his proposal motivated many writers to use “teyo dawa speech” and foreign words for the speech of their female student characters. However, as noted before, not all female students always spoke “teyo dawa speech”; their speech did not reflect what Tsubouchi called the “natural activities” of female students. Rather, novelists selected “teyo dawa speech” simply as a useful linguistic resource to characterize young women characters. The first instance of “teyo dawa speech” in a novel occurs in the translation of speech by a young Western woman. In 1909, Tsubouchi Shooyoo and Uchida Roan recalled the time in 1885 when Futabatei Shimei, another leading writer of novels attempting to unify speech and writing, was translating a work by Ivan Turgenev: “He 7. Okada (1957) states that the female students used not only male students’ rough speech, like the first-person pronoun, ore, but also extremely polite usage, like o-koohii (honorific-prefix o in front of “coffee”). The most interesting case is using the extremely polite form of “do”, asobase, with very rough forms, such as asobashite yagarun datosa (Well, she can damn well do what she pleases) resisting the normative speech symbolized by asobase.

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 119



was having such difficulty [in 1885]…. [because] At the time, there was no suitable language to describe Western women like the schoolgirl speech we have today” (Tsubouchi & Uchida 1965[1909]: 489). (See note 9 for the first instances of teyo and dawa in Japanese novels.) Tsubouchi Shooyoo (1977[1933]: 419) also recalled:

(5) At the time, in translation, we could not use middleclass speech, especially women’s speech, which was full of polite words. This was a hardship and difficulty modern-day writers cannot imagine, because they are used to listening to and using schoolgirl speech since the end of the Meiji era and [the writers today can use] woman’s language. How lucky these modern writers are!

Therefore, Futabatei (1962[1888]: 382–384), who, in 1885, had struggled in translating the speech of a Russian girl into Japanese, used “teyo dawa speech” in 1888 when translating the speech of a Russian farm girl who appeared in Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches. Since Western girls do not speak Japanese, the use of “teyo dawa speech” in translation clearly shows that the writer’s choice does not reflect “natural activities of the speakers.” Rather, the writer chose “teyo dawa speech” from the various kinds of speech spoken by Japanese women, and, by having Western women speak it in fiction, they turned “teyo dawa speech” into a symbol of the West and modernity. At the same time, the choice of “teyo dawa speech” for Western girls constructed female students to symbolize the West and modernity.8 After being chosen and used by writers of novels, “teyo dawa speech” became prevalent among real-life female students. An article in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1905 denied the view that the writers used “teyo dawa speech” for their fictional femalestudent characters simply because actual female students were speaking “teyo dawa speech”: “Some of them [female students] began using English and Chinese words as a result of reading novels. It was not that the writers of novels adopted the speech of actual female students. On the contrary, it was the writers who made an effect on the speech of actual female students” (author unknown, “Jogakusei to gengo”). Satoo 8. The Japanese novelists were so enthralled by “teyo dawa speech” because they considered “teyo dawa speech” as the most appropriate as the speech of the exotic woman within modern Japan. According to Levy (2006: 2), Japanese writers chose female students as heroines to solve the dilemma of translation, to bridge the gap between reading Western literature and writing in Japanese. Levy first points out that modern Japanese literature could only be achieved by means of translating Western vernacular literature. Japanese writers at the time, therefore, faced the linguistic dilemma not only of unifying Japanese speech and writing, but also of unifying the vernacular West and the native body of spoken Japanese. To bridge the gap, they invented the Westernesque femme fatale, typically the Japanese schoolgirl, as the representative par excellence of exoticism within modern Japan. The unfamiliar new sound of “teyo dawa speech” must have felt and sounded most appropriate to them for creating the textual exotic other.

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Haruo (1999[1941]: 173), a poet, writer and literary critic, also argues that the spread of “teyo dawa speech” was motivated by readers imitating the speech of female-­ student characters in fiction: “The words used in woman’s everyday conversation such as teyo and dawa are the result of the work of novelists…. In the beginning, female student readers imitated conversation in novels, and now these words are used by women in general.”9 An article in a literary journal in 1896 also points out the divergence between the speech of actual women and that of female characters in fiction: “If we observe the speech of middleclass women, they mix obscene slang with difficult Chinese words, except in formal conversation. In novels about middleclass society, however, middleclass women characters always use formal, polite speech” (author unknown, “Reijoo saikun no kotoba”). In reality, the article argues, middleclass women used a variety of speech in different situations. In novels, however, formal, polite speech was used to characterize their identity as middleclass women. The spread of “teyo dawa speech” was motivated by the writer’s choice to clearly distinguish female students as a group from other groups of women. Derogation: Frivolous students Frequently used in novels, “teyo dawa speech” was increasingly used to emphasize particular characteristics of the female-student speakers. One of those characteristics was frivolousness. Yabu no uguisu [Bush Warbler] (1888), for instance, written by Miyake Kaho, a female-student writer herself, distinguishes female students by their use of “teyo dawa speech.” There are four female student characters in the story: Hattori, Saito, Aizawa, and Miyazaki. Hattori is a good girl who studies hard and follows the prescribed Confucian norms. Saito and Aizawa are bad girls who frivolously reject marriage and behave in an unwomanly fashion. Miyazaki can be located between them in that she behaves in an unwomanly manner but wants to get married after graduation. Figure 5.8 presents the four students on the axis of the two extremes between “normative girl with a positive attitude toward marriage” and “frivolous girl with a negative attitude toward marriage.” 9. The first part of Satoo Haruo’s argument can be interpreted to claim that “teyo dawa speech” was completely the creation of novelists. The spread of “teyo dawa speech,” however, was not merely a one-way flow from writer to reader. First, people were commenting on female students using teyo and dawa at least seven to eight years before the speech began to appear in novels. In the commentary cited above, Ozaki Kooyoo noticed the “strange speech” of female students around 1879 or 1880. According to Ishikawa Tadanori (1972: 23, 25), the first appearance of teyo was in Satsuki goi [May Carp] by Iwaya Sazanami in 1888, and dawa first appeared in Imo to se kagami [Mirrored Couples] by Tsubouchi Shooyoo in 1886. Second, in Satsuki goi, the character who used teyo was modeled after a particular girl – Ayako, the third daughter (nine years old) of the Kawada family with whom Iwaya Sazanami boarded when he was sixteen (Senuma 1968: 404). It was likely, therefore, that his character spoke in the same way as Ayako.

Chapter 5.  Schoolgirl speech 121







Hattori

Miyazaki

Aizawa, Saito

Figure 5.8  Attitudes of four female student characters in Yabu no uguisu [Bush Warbler] (1888).

Table 5.2 shows what linguistic features of “teyo dawa speech” each of the four female students uses in the story, followed by the example utterances of each student. In Table 5.2, a checkmark means the student uses the linguistic feature and an “X” means she does not. Their use of teyo, dawa, and noyo mostly corresponds with their attitudes. Hattori, the most normative girl, uses none of the three features. Miyazaki uses noyo and Aizawa uses dawa. Saito, the most frivolous one, uses all three features. Table 5.2 indicates that “teyo dawa speech” was used as a linguistic symbol of female students portrayed as frivolous, while it was not spoken by students portrayed as normative. We have seen that the distinction between schoolboy speech and polite speech created the subcategories of “bad female students” and “good female students.” Here again, the different use of “teyo dawa speech” creates the distinction between “frivolous female students” and “normative female students.” Table 5.2  Use of teyo, dawa, and noyo by the four female students of Yabu no uguisu.

teyo dawa noyo

Hattori

Miyazaki

Aizawa

Saito

× × ×

× × ✓

× ✓ ×

✓ ✓ ✓

(6) Example utterances of female characters in Yabu no uguisu Hattori: Saa, saa, o-machi asobase … maa, itte, meshi agatte irasshaina. ‘Ok, ok, please wait … well, come in and have some please.’ Miyazaki: Naichi zakkyo ni naruto dooda no kooda no to ossharu noyo. ‘[He was talking about] what happens if people from other countries live in Japan.’ Aizawa: Honto dawa. ‘That’s true.’ Saito: Watashi wa kyoo wa nemukutte shooga nai noyo…. Yokutteyo…. Tanso o oidashite yarun dawa. ‘I am very sleepy today…. I don’t care…. I’ll let carbon dioxide out of here.’ (Miyake 1972[1888]: 133–135)

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As “teyo dawa speech” became associated with frivolousness, serious matters spoken in “teyo dawa speech” were funny in their own distinctive way. The writers and intellectuals thus let their intelligent female characters speak in “teyo dawa speech” when they wanted to ridicule these women. Jibore musume sakka [Conceited Woman Writers] by Iwaya Sazanami (1889) features conversation between two female writers. As is clear from the title, the aim is to ridicule them. In their conversation, they talk about shari shugi (mercantile spirit), shoosetsu shinzui (essence of the novel), and genbun itchi (the unification of speech and writing) in “teyo dawa speech” (Iwaya 1985[1889]: 402, 404, 442). The discrepancy between the intelligent topics of conversation and the frivolous language successfully illustrates the foolishness of these so-called intelligent women. In the late-Meiji years (after 1907), “teyo dawa speech” was firmly established as a symbol of frivolous female students. Kaburagi Kiyokata (1989: 203), a nihonga (Japanese-style painting) artist, recalls that, in those years, teyo in Yokutteyo (I don’t care) and wa in Shiranai wa (I don’t know) were recognized as “frivolous” terms. Mori Senzoo (1969: 184), a historian, points out that schoolgirl speech was so popular that it appeared even in a senryuu (a short poem of seventeen syllables, like haiku, but featuring humor) written in 1905. A four-panel cartoon published in 1906, Teyo dawa monogatari [Story of teyo dawa], was about modern female students playing a traditional New Year’s card game. As shown in Figure 5.9, they grapple in a hilarious manner with male students, all the while speaking in “teyo dawa speech.” Similarly, even the use of Western language, a symbol of academic knowledge at the time, once associated with female students, came to symbolize the speaker’s frivolousness. Shoobi no kaori [The Scent of a Rose], written by Iwamoto Yoshiharu in 1887, centers on Eiwa Jokoo (English Women’s School), where “students do not use Japanese from ‘good morning’ to ‘good night’” (Iwamoto 1887: 79). The writer describes those students gossiping in English and criticizes them by saying, “They carry on their everyday conversation just like Westerners, so that … they talk about things shy [Japanese] daughters would blush over” (Iwamoto 1887: 79). Momiji [Maple] by Aeba Kooson (1888–1889) is the story of two schoolgirl sisters. Osetsu, the elder, is “elegant but not gaily dressed” and believes that “to become a wife and a mother is a woman’s destiny.” Although she studies English, she does not like Western dress. Okine, in contrast, the frivolous younger sister, behaves in an unfeminine manner and often uses French words. Her first appearance in the novel symbolizes her frivolousness; wearing a Western dress, she enters a room saying, ‘“Bonjour’ in a shrill voice” and loudly discusses her “superficial” understanding of women’s rights (Aeba 1988 [1888–1889]: 121). The use of Western words and “teyo dawa speech,” characteristic of the speech of modern Japanese educated women, therefore, was turned into the linguistic index of frivolous girls.

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(1) Watashi ga saki dawa. Watashi ga hayakutteyo. ‘I took [the card] first. I was faster.’ (2) Watashi dawa. Iie, watashi dawa. Aa, ude ga nuke teyo. Moo, koo nare ba kenka dawa. ‘I [took the card]. No, I took it. Oh no, [someone is] pulling my arm. Now, I will fight.’

(3) Ara, kutsushita no kakato kara tsuki ga moreide teyo. ‘Oh, [I can see] the moon [the heel] coming out of someone’s sock.’ (4) Goran nasai. Konnani watashi no te ni kuitsui teyo. Ara, yokutteyo. Watashi jya nakutteyo. Uso dawa. ‘Look at this. You bit me on my hand. Oh, I don’t know. It’s not me. You are lying.’

Figure 5.9  Frivolous female students speaking “teyo dawa speech” (“Teyo dawa monogatari” 1906: 13).

Sexualization: From “teyo dawa speech” to schoolgirl speech After the Women’s Secondary School Act (1899) stipulated at least one public women’s secondary school be established in each prefecture, schools were flooded with female applicants. According to Gakusei hyakunen shi [The Hundred-Year History of the Japanese School System] by Monbukagakushoo [the Ministry of Education and Science] (1981), women’s secondary schools in 1894 increased from 14 to 52 by 1900 with 11,984 students, to 100 schools with 31,918 students in 1905 and to 193 schools with 56,239 students in 1910. That number included not

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only the daughters of wealthy, upper-class families, but also ambitious common women from outside the large cities who often lived in boardinghouses by themselves. The seemingly sudden emergence of large numbers of young women receiving an education evoked virulent criticism. Newspaper articles talked about jogakusei daraku ron (depraved schoolgirl syndrome) and jogakusei seibatsu (subjugation of schoolgirls) (Fukaya 1998[1981]: 200), and how offended the writers were “by all of their behaviors, from walking to speaking” (Ubukata 1978: 236). The attention to and criticism of female students also stimulated two key changes to the way they were described in novels. First, more female characters, not only students, but also women in general, began to speak “teyo dawa speech” in novels and the labels, schoolgirl and schoolgirl speech, became widely recognized. This wider use is typically observed in katei shoosetsu (family novels), healthy stories written for family readers based on Confucian or Christian ethics. In one of the family novels, Hamako [Hamako], a young wife uses teyo and dawa (Kusamura 1969[1902]: 72, 18). In Chi kyoodai [Bosom Sisters], both a young mother and 19 to 20-year-old women use teyo and noyo (Kikuchi 1969[1903]: 101, 98, 212). In Meoto nami [Husband and Wife Wave], a 21 to 22-year-old wife uses dawa and noyo (Taguchi 1969[1904]: 242, 253). Interestingly, “teyo dawa speech” in family novels does not function to distinguish normative from frivolous girls. For example, while Fusae, one of the two sisters in Chi kyoodai, is a good, normative girl, “kind and affectionate,” Kimie is bad and frivolous, “controlled by a woman’s vanity.” Both use “teyo dawa speech.” When Kimie says, “Fusa-san watasha onakunarini natta okka-san no ko jya nakutteyo (Fusae, I am not a child of our deceased mother), Fusae answers, “Sonna hazu wa nakutteyo (That cannot be true) (Kikuchi [1969[1903]: 104]). Novelists began using “teyo dawa speech” for young women of high social class in novels, irrespective of whether they were frivolous or not. The association of “teyo dawa speech” with female gender, youth and high class, is most clearly shown in Wagahai wa neko de aru [I Am a Cat], written by Natsume Sooseki, one of the foremost novelists in the Meiji era, in 1905. In the story, a young, high-class, female cat speaks with “teyo dawa speech,” as in Anata taihen iro ga warukutteyo (You look pale), Ara goshujin datte, myoo nano ne. Oshishoo-san dawa (Oh, [you call your master] goshujin. That’s strange. [I call my master] oshishoo-san), and Ara iyada, minna bura sageru noyo (Oh, no. Everybody will hang up) (Natsume 1961[1905]: 19).10 Natsume could describe not only the gender but also the age and status of the cat – which 10. Natsume (1961[1905]: 15), in this work, also characterizes two male cats, Wagahai and Kuro, by letting them use different speech, schoolboy speech and the speech spoken in the Tokyo shitamachi (“downtown,” meaning not the business center but the older, more traditional part of town). Novelists in the years around 1905 used schoolboy speech and Tokyo shitamachi speech, as well as “teyo dawa speech,” to distinguish the gender, social class and age of a speaker.

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never speaks at all – by using teyo, dawa and noyo. “Teyo dawa speech” thus had become a linguistic index of female gender, youth, and high social class. The second change after the Women’s Secondary School Act (1899) was a sexualization of female student characters. A typical transformation of a female student into a sex object occurs in a scene from a novel, Makaze koikaze [Magic Wind, Love Wind] by Kosugi Tengai published as a serial in the Yomiuri shimbun in 1903. The heroine, Hatsuno, changes her clothes with the help of the mistress of her boardinghouse: (7) The wife … removed her navy blue damask belt, her padded kimono, her silk underwear in a cherry-blossom pattern, and the flannel undergarment. Then, from nowhere, came the scent of white rose. Her skin was as white as pearls. Her breasts were plump and firm. The color of her underskirt appeared to be moist, and [when she took it off,] it looked as if there were a red waterfall.   “Oh, Madam,” she whispered, somehow twisting her body away from view in front of the lamp.   “Oh my! But there’s nothing wrong with it.” (Kosugi 1951[1903], volume 1: 51–52).   “But…”

The newspaper’s front page featured an illustration of the half-naked Hatsuno (Figure 5.10). Kan Satoko (2001: 134) points out that this illustration describes her from the view of the man who peeps through the window enticing readers to look at her body as a sex object. In 1889, the Ministry of Home Affairs banned the publication of a story, Kochoo [Butterfly], because of its illustration of a female body. Given the strict press censorship at the time, the mere fact that the illustration of a half-naked female student was put on the newspaper’s front page testifies that regarding female students as sex objects was widely prevalent. Why did female students become sex objects in novels? Two major reasons are clear. First, as Saeki Junko (1998) argues, the introduction of the Western concept of “love,” emphasizing a spiritual connection between a woman and a man, required female students to become appropriate partners in a love relationship. The main theme of Japanese premodern literature was a man’s iro (lit. color, erotic) relationship mainly with geisha and yuujo (play women) (cf. Introduction, note 6). Iro literature presented an artistic and disciplined culture, including physical relations as part of a sublime culture. Some geisha and yuujo were even praised as kwannon (the Goddess of Mercy). In the modern era, however, Christianity gained some influence in Japan and promoted the separation of body from spirit. Such teaching ultimately denigrated the status of professional women and physical relations with them, advocating instead virginity and male-female relations based on spiritual love. Many intellectuals argued for such relationships as the ideal for

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figure 5.10  Makaze koikaze [Magic Wind, Love Wind] in the Yomiuri shimbun, March 14th, 1903.

intellectual men and male students. To enable a spiritual relationship, a male intellectual needed a female partner who was intelligent enough to build a spiritual tie. Instead of professional women, therefore, the newly emerging “love” literature chose the educated daughters of middleclass families—i.e. female students—as the most appropriate partners in the modern love relationship. The second reason why female students became sex objects in novels is, as Kan Satoko (2001: 136) suggests, because novel readers looked forward to stories about educated daughters of wealthy families becoming sexually corrupted. In this sense, the transformation of female students into schoolgirls, a social category conceptualizing them as sex objects of men, began as a media response to the desire of readers. The sexualization of female students accompanied the sexualization of their language, “teyo dawa speech.” And the association with sexuality completed the



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transformation of “teyo dawa speech” into schoolgirl speech. The sexualization of such speech is most evident in female student characters in pornographic novels. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, in a pornographic story Sode to sode [Sleeve to Sleeve] (Oguri 1998[1907–1911]), three female student characters have sex among themselves and with men as well, speaking schoolgirl speech throughout, including when they are having sexual intercourse. By contrast, another woman, Oteru, who is from the countryside, never uses it. The contrast becomes even clearer if we compare the two scenes in which Oteru and Kimiko, one of the female students, both 22 years old, are having sex with the same man, Yoonosuke. While Kimiko uses teyo and noyo, Oteru uses masu (polite sentence-final form) instead: (8) a. Kimiko (schoolgirl): Watashi moo itteyo moo itteyo. I now come now come Aa kokoro ga … nuketchimaisoo…. Aa ii noyo. oh mind top go out oh good ‘I’m coming, too. I’m coming now. Oh, my mind . … is going crazy. Oh, it is good.’  (Oguri 1998[1907–1911]: 54) b. Oteru (non-schoolgirl): I … ii Yoo, yoono … suke … sama. good Yoonosuke dear Watashi … moo ikimasu Aa … ikimasu I now come oh come ‘Good, Yoonosuke, dear. I’m coming now. Oh, I’m coming.’ (Oguri 1998[1907–1911]: 33) The differences between the speech styles of the two women reflect the difference in their social status: one a schoolgirl, one not. This indicates that schoolgirl speech was strongly linked to high social class of schoolgirls. That connection enabled writers to express the sexuality of high-class women, as differentiated from the sexuality of other women. According to Mihashi Osamu (1999: 13, 19), Japanese women in this period were ideologically classified into three groups by their sexuality and speech. The first, explicitly sexual women, were professional prostitutes, who were associated with special styles of language used in their quarters. The second, also sexual women, were widows, stepmothers, and servant girls, indexed by non-standard Japanese. The last, and the least sexual women, were wives and mothers of high-class families, who were indexed by standard Japanese. The sexuality emitted by schoolgirl speech is characterized by the innocence and high social class of female students, quite distinct from the sexuality of prostitutes and non-standard speakers. Ozaki Kooyoo

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(1994[1888]: 4) notes that “some men are happy hearing the [schoolgirl] speech because of its ring of innocence.” Honda (1990: 132) expresses this innocence as “the irresponsible [way of speaking in which] many words are spoken but no clear information is delivered.”11 The association between schoolgirl speech and sexuality, therefore, brought sexuality into the world of upper-class, standard Japanese where sexuality had been most strictly controlled. Now, women of all classes became sex objects. Once schoolgirl speech became associated with sexuality, writers were able to use it in expressing the sexuality of older upper-class women. They use schoolgirl speech, however, only in scenes in which the older, upper-class women express their love to men. In Yabu no uguisu [Bush Warbler], a 27- or 28-year-old woman uses dawa when talking to her lover. Her way of speaking is described as “sounding innocent in spite of her age” (Miyake 1972[1888]: 127). Hamako [Hamako] (1902) is the story of a rich family’s 23-year-old daughter, Hamako, who uses teyo and dawa only in the scenes where she and her lover confess their love to each other. The narrator comments: “Her way of speaking became as innocent and naïve as a child” (Kusamura 1969[1902]: 63). In Sono omokage [The Silhouette] (1906), Sayoko falls in love with her brother-in-law, Tetsuya, a 35 or 36-year-old lawyer, after her husband dies. She uses teyo only when they are confessing their love to each other (Futabatei 1962[1906]: 349). Sorekara [And Then] is the story of Daisuke (30 years old) who falls in love with his friend’s wife, Michiyo, who is also in love with him. In the scene when he finally confesses his love to her, she uses teyo, dawa and noyo many times. And again, this is the only scene in which she uses them (Natsume 1981[1909]: 349–356). The writers let these older women use schoolgirl speech even though they had to add special comments such as, “sounding innocent in spite of her age” and “Her way of speaking became as innocent and naïve as a child,” exactly because schoolgirl speech was the only linguistic resource available to express upper-class female sexuality as being distinct from the sexuality of a professional geisha or prostitute. Through the four processes of gender-differentiation, selection, derogation, and sexualization, the discourse produced by intellectuals and writers of novels constructed the notion of schoolgirl speech.

11. In a conversation between Hanako (woman) and Haruyama (man) in an essay, titled, Ara yokutteyo [Ah, I don’t care], Hanako flatters Haruyama by using teyo, dawa, and noyo. Hanako says, “Ara yokutteyo (Ah, I don’t care). You call me a tomboy.” To this, Haruyama is merely confused, saying, “No, that’s not what I meant. You misunderstand me.” When Hanako says, “You left me alone. You are bad [using teyo],” Haruyama can only say, “When did I leave you alone?” (Oono 1906: 100–102). Haruyama, who responds to information in Hanako’s words, is flurried by the irresponsibility of “teyo dawa speech.”

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Dilemma of sexuality: Schoolgirl speech revised It was the association with sexuality that simultaneously enhanced and repressed the prevalence of schoolgirl speech, because sexuality is ambivalent, good in one sense but bad in another. As we have seen above, writers started using schoolgirl speech for more characters, including older standard speakers. Actual female students, furthermore, as Uchida Roan notes, enthusiastically read those novels and imitated schoolgirl speech: “Recent female students are so completely addicted to the yokutteyo novels that they read the novels when their teachers aren’t watching” (Uchida 1986[1894]: 179). Their imitation was probably motivated by the upper-class, modern, Western, and sexual identity associated with this speech. Many women’s magazines published after 1890, along with the increase of women’s literacy, promoted its dissemination.12 Schoolgirl speech, however, having been marginalized as a language peculiar to students, had not yet gained sociolinguistic legitimacy as the speech of upper-class women. Novelists made special comments, as noted earlier, when they used schoolgirl speech for the older upper-class women. Even in the late-Meiji years, writers added special comments when they let older women use it. In Mon [The Gate] by Natsume Sooseki (1938[1910]: 8), when the wife uses teyo, the writer adds the comment: “Her speech … has a certain sound common to today’s schoolgirls.” In this ambivalent situation, both students and the producers of media began to use schoolgirl speech in a slightly different way to decrease its negative meanings of sexual derogation and frivolousness. They put the schoolgirl features, teyo, dawa, and noyo, after the polite sentence-endings, desu and masu, forming what can be called “revised schoolgirl speech,” desu-yo and masu-wa. Kawamura Kunimitsu (1993) analyzes readers’ letters to Jogaku zasshi [Women’s Studies Magazine] in 1916 and points out that those letters contained the schoolgirl speech features. Most of the letters, however, use revised schoolgirl speech featuring wa, ne, wane, and no with desu and masu with a few exceptions of teyo. Kawamura emphasizes that what characterizes these letters more than sentence-final forms is the use of English such as “heart” and “romance”; particular words such as natsukashii (yearning), kanashii (sad) and sabishii (lonely); and the fact that most letter writers identified themselves as otome (maiden).13 To express the pure and 12. Twelve women’s magazines were founded in 1901, seven in 1902, 10 in 1903, nine in 1904, 14 in 1905, and 12 in 1906 (Kawamura 1993: 25). The large number of publications was caused by the new middleclass emerging on the post-WWI wave of prosperity and the development of women’s education (Maeda 2001[1973]: 217–220). 13. Female students were not mere receivers of magazine information but constructed strong networks of readers by writing letters, poems, and stories to the magazines, exchanging letters and presents with other readers, and going to readers’ meetings (Imada 2002; Satoo 1996). Soon, however, they were prohibited from meeting each other because some

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sentimental feelings of a maiden, the readers of the women’s magazines apparently preferred revised schoolgirl speech rather than schoolgirl speech. Revised schoolgirl speech was also used in cosmetics and sanitary advertisements in magazines. Inoue (2006) analyzes advertisements in Jogaku sekai [Women’s Studies World] (1901–1925) and Fujin sekai [Lady’s World] (1906–1933), showing how those texts made schoolgirl speech as a symbol of the middleclass woman’s lifestyle associated with commodities, exactly because the speech was most strongly associated with the upper class, modernity and the West. As with readers’ letters to women’s magazines, most advertisements used revised schoolgirl speech, while unrevised schoolgirl speech was generally confined to sexualized women. For instance, a photographic image of a modern woman drinking a glass of wine alone appeared in Fujin sekei in 1930, with the caption, “teisoo desutte, sonna share wa imadoki hayara nakutteyo (Chastity? It’s a joke nowadays),” using the schoolgirl feature, teyo (Inoue 2006: 134). This suggests that, among the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech, teyo implied the strongest sexual, frivolous connotation in the early twentieth century.14 Advertisers and the editors of women’s magazines, therefore, used schoolgirl speech as a symbol of sexuality and revised schoolgirl speech as a symbol of the middleclass lifestyle with fewer sexual implications. Some women continued to use revised schoolgirl speech even after they had graduated from school. Schoolgirl speech, however, was closely tied to the narcissistic self-image of schoolgirls floating in their memories of schooldays, now separated from their real lives. Many of the readers’ letters that Kawamura (1993) analyzes are from women who, after graduating from schools, moved back to their hometowns in Japan or to Japanese colonies at the time. Since their everyday conversation “must have been carried out in regional varieties specific to each area” (Kawamura 1993: 103), writing those letters was a rare occasion for them to use revised schoolgirl speech. Thus, using schoolgirl speech in their letters to magazines, Kawamura (1993: 108) concludes, “gravitated toward constructing a specific world of images, an imagined community, through ‘fictional’ communication by the use of common speech,” common, that is, only among schoolgirls. Schoolgirl speech functioned to index the men tried to meet them by writing letters in women’s names. After their contact was confined to letters, female students began to construct an imagined community by using what Kawamura (1993) terms “maiden style,” an exceedingly romantic and sentimental style of writing. As the military regime became stronger, however, the maiden style of writing and its attendant community were rebuffed as too romantic and sentimental for fighting girls (Imada 2002). 14. The strongest sexual, frivolous connotation of teyo may have been a principal reason why dawa and noyo among the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech became the major linguistic features of Japanese women’s language, while teyo was gradually excluded from it.

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imagined identity of schoolgirls. This corroborates my observation that both the social identity of schoolgirls and the notion of schoolgirl speech were abstract ideologies loaded with political implications. Schoolgirls were not real people, but the persistently and fancifully imagined result of the gender ideology of schoolgirl identity created by several symbolic systems, such as attire and language. Similarly, no actual woman always spoke schoolgirl speech. It was an ideological constuct created by the discourse of fiction and metalinguistic commentary. Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideology of schoolgirl speech was constructed by the discourses of novelists and intellectuals through the four processes of gender-differentiation, selection, derogation, and sexualization. In this concluding section, I will discuss three implications of my analysis concerning the issues of indexicalization, gendered nationalization, and women’s linguistic resistance. First, the formation process of schoolgirl speech analyzed in this chapter sheds new light on the notion of indexicality, the association between linguistic features and social identities. Indexicalization, a semiotic process whereby one entity becomes a pointer to another, is assumed to account for associations between linguistic features and social identities. The process by which a particular indexicality is created in a specific historical time and space, however, has not been extensively studied, because many researchers have assumed that indexicality is constructed by repeated use of particular features by a particular group. Elinor Ochs (1992), for instance, accounts for indexicality as the process by which some linguistic features directly index affective meanings, through which they are indirectly associated with social identities. The Japanese sentence-final form wa, Ochs (1992: 341–342) argues, directly indexes delicate intensity, the preferred image of Japanese women, so Japanese women are motivated to use it. The repeated use of wa by Japanese women reinforces the indirect association between wa and femininity. Here, the indexicality between wa and feminine identity is assumed to be constructed by repeated use in women’s local linguistic practice. However, the logic of indexicality formation by the repeated use in local linguistic practice contradicts my argument that women’s language is not naturally formed by the repeated local practices of women but is an ideological construct historically created by discourses. The indexical association between feminine identity and linguistic features, such as the sentence-final forms of schoolgirl speech, teyo, dawa, and

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noyo, constitutes one of the most important aspects of the Japanese notion of women’s language. If we assume that indexicality is constructed by repeated use, we should conclude that women’s language is also constructed by the repeated local practices of women. Then how are linguistic features associated with the social identity of a particular group of speakers? On this question, my analysis has demonstrated that the indexical association between the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech, teyo, dawa, and noyo, and the social identity of schoolgirl was constructed by discourses such as conversation in fiction and metalinguistic comments by intellectuals. It was female students who invented “teyo dawa speech” at the end of the 1880s. The use of teyo, dawa, and noyo by female students, however, did not directly create the notion of schoolgirl speech. Actual female students spoke varieties of language such as schoolboy speech and polite speech as well as “teyo dawa speech,” until the late-Meiji years (–1907). “Teyo dawa speech” was just one variety. Yet, novelists and intellectuals chose to focus on “teyo dawa speech” and, by using it, criticizing it, and derogating it, successfully transformed it into schoolgirl speech. The indexicality between particular features and schoolgirl identity was constructed by repeated use in fiction and repeated metalinguistic comments. These metalinguistic discourses became meaningful and acceptable in the rapid political, economic, and social changes of Japan’s modernization, particularly the policy of gendered nationalization, the emergence of novels enhanced by the movement to unify speech and writing that promoted creation of the Japanese national language, the development of publishing houses that permeated the metalinguistic discourses by publishing newspapers and magazines, and the increased literacy of print-media consumers.15 My analysis here also denies the view that indexicality is a process simply associating linguistic features with the identity of people already there. The construction of indexicality is a political process by which both a social identity of schoolgirl and the ideology of schoolgirl speech are simultaneously constructed. The schoolgirl identity did not exist before schoolgirl speech but was constructed along with the creation of schoolgirl speech. We should, therefore, understand indexicality as the process of indexicalization that simultaneously constructs both the meanings of particular linguistic features and the characterization of a social identity. The second implication arising from my analysis in this chapter is that the formation of schoolgirl speech and gendered nationalization, a policy of the Meiji 15. Silverberg (1991) points out that previous studies of Japanese identity before WWII often defined it merely as “imperial subject,” emphasizing the importance of analyzing Japanese identity as “consumer subject” who consumed commodities, information, and images produced in the rapidly developing media, department stores, radio, and movie theaters.



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government central to building its modern nation state, reinforced each other. To answer why “teyo dawa speech” was chosen among many other varieties of speech that female students were speaking, and why it was transformed into a symbol of sexuality, we should consider the socio-political context of Japan’s modernization. As presented in Chapter 3, Japan’s modernization was characterized by gendered nationalization that ascribed to male citizens the roles of worker and soldier and to female citizens those of wife and mother. In nationalizing women into efficient wives and mothers, improvement in women’s education was vital. At the same time, under the political agenda of gendered nationalization, it was crucial that the students, the country’s future citizens, be gendered. If women received education and became independent, however, they might refuse to fulfill the roles prescribed for them. The writers and intellectuals, as shown in this chapter, repeatedly criticized such independent female students, some of whom even denied marriage. The emergence of young educated women, they were afraid, could be a threat to the nationalization of women. So many educators and intellectuals considered it necessary to distinguish female students from male students. The political agenda of gendered nationalization enabled, made meaningful and acceptable the discourse of the writers and intellectuals constructing the ideology of schoolgirl speech and the gendered special category of schoolgirls. In the case of novel discourse, by not choosing schoolboy speech, novel writers first differentiated female students from male students. By not choosing polite, feminine speech, they excluded their schoolgirl characters from the category of normative female students, the future good-wife-wise-mothers. By choosing “teyo dawa speech,” in other words, they emphasized the sexual and social deviance of female students. One of the differences between “female students” and “schoolgirls” was that the former were regarded simply as students who happened to be women, while the latter were characterized by a feminine sexuality distinct from that of geisha and prostitutes; the former category, in short, was contrasted with male students, the latter category was contrasted with other women, that is, older women, maids, and prostitutes. The construction of schoolgirl speech and schoolgirls, in other words, transformed female students from potentially dangerous women, who might attempt to become citizens equal to men, into sexual objects for men. “Teyo dawa speech,” redefined as schoolgirl speech, therefore, was no longer a threat to gendered nationalization. In fact, Ozaki Kooyoo, who had criticized “teyo dawa speech” as strange in 1888, used a good deal of it in Konjiki yasha [Gilded Demoness] in 1897 (Ozaki (1965[1897]: 133). Yet, schoolgirl speech was carefully excluded from the Japanese national language. Intellectuals criticized it even by inventing its “vulgar origin,” preventing it from gaining legitimate status as part of the national language. The exclusion of schoolgirl speech from the national language also denied the possibility of

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schoolgirls becoming its legitimate speakers and obtaining an identity as fullfledged citizens. After the establishment of the schoolgirl category, the citizenship of female students was confined to girl’s schools, temporally and spatially segregated places. The social identity of schoolgirls, its link with sexuality attracting attention from both Japanese people and female students themselves, played the role of confirming the ideal identity of a normative, good female student who would become a good-wife-wise-mother at a time when the government was promoting gendered nationalization. Third, my analysis in this chapter demonstrates that “teyo dawa speech,” the speech women invented to resist good-wife-wise-mother education, was turned into schoolgirl speech, a symbol of their sexuality. “Teyo dawa speech” was chosen as a symbol of corrupted, frivolous students by novelists, severely criticized by intellectuals, and finally linked to sexuality. As a result, “teyo dawa speech,” which had been created by female students to resist the good-wife-wise-mother education, was redefined as schoolgirl speech, which served to reinforce the educational policy and, hence, the nationalization of women. This indicates that women’s linguistic resistance cannot always transform the order of gender in the dominant ideologies such as modernization and nationalization. No matter how many female students used it, “teyo dawa speech” could not index the identity of the intellectual, modern Japanese woman. Rather, it was exploited to transform female students into schoolgirls, ensuring gendered nationalization. Just as court-women’s speech was turned into the norm of feminine speech, as shown in Chapter 2, “teyo dawa speech” was transformed into schoolgirl speech. That gives one answer to the question posited to the post-structural feminism that I cited in the Introduction: why do resistant, subversive performances often remain ephemeral, leaving the prevailing power order largely untouched? The arguments in Chapters 2 and 5 demonstrate that metalinguistic practices, enabled by dominant socio-political ideologies, have the power to define, characterize, and marginalize local practices, using the creative, resistant, local linguistic practices of women to reinforce the dominant ideologies (Nakamura 2009). Chapter 2 showed that metalinguistic practices of conduct books turned the innovative speech of court women into the norm of feminine speech. Similarly, Chapter 5 demonstrates that metalinguistic practices of novels and the comments of intellectuals turned “teyo dawa speech,” created by female students to express their own identity, into schoolgirl speech, a symbol of sexuality. Those metalinguistic practices by novelists and intellectuals became possible, meaningful, and acceptable precisely because their practices were legitimatized by the dominant political ideology of gendered nationalization that the Meiji government adopted to enhance building the modern nation state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ideology of schoolgirl speech has been constructed by metalinguistic



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practices that effectively exploit women’s subversive performances. This denies the argument that we can actively construct our identities by using language. Simply using innovative language does not guarantee the creation of new identities, because it is not local linguistic practices but metalinguistic practices enabled by dominant ideologies that define, categorize and determine the value and meaning of the local practices. This chapter has demonstrated that the ideology of schoolgirl speech was constructed by the beginning of the twentieth century. This was exactly the same period, as shown in Chapter 3, when Japanese linguists were eager to establish the Japanese national language. How did they treat schoolgirl speech in their attempt to set up the national language? The next chapter will try to answer the question by examining the discourse of grammar books and school readers that linguists were producing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

chapter 6

Masculinizing the national language Boku wa hatamochi…. Satoo-kun wa rappa o fuki tamae. ‘I will be a flag holder…. Satoo-kun, you blow the bugle.’  Shimpoo Iwaji (1886) Nihon tokuhon [Japan Reader] In a very early Japanese national-language school reader, Nihon tokuhon [Japan Reader], compiled by Shimpoo Iwaji in 1886, three boys play soldiers. One boy says, “I will be a flag holder,” and tells another boy, Satoo, to be a bugle blower. The boy is using schoolboy speech with features such as a first-person pronoun, boku, male address form, kun, and sentence-final form, tamae (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 331). Japanese school readers, which were complied for the purpose of teaching children the Japanese national language, thus obviously included schoolboy speech in the Japanese national language. What happened to its counterpart, schoolgirl speech? How did the academic discourses of grammar textbooks and school readers relate linguistic features of schoolgirl speech, such as teyo, dawa and noyo, and those of schoolboy speech, such as boku, kimi, kun and tamae, to the Japanese national language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? It was the period when grammar textbooks and school readers played a major role in prescribing Japanese national language. Numerous studies have been done on the development of grammar textbooks and school readers published during the Japan’s modernization period. Few studies, however, have focused on how the authors of grammar textbooks and school readers contained or excluded gendered linguistic features, such as features of schoolgirl speech and schoolboy speech, when they were defining the national language. The purpose of this chapter, by analyzing grammar textbooks and school readers published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is to reveal how differently the academic discourses treated these gendered linguistic features in their attempt to define and prescribe Japanese national language. Before analyzing those discourses, I will describe the historical and political context framing and even influencing the emergence of grammar textbooks and school language readers during the period.

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Grammar textbooks and school readers as metalinguistic practices As shown in Chapter 3, the construction of the Japanese national language was considered crucial in forming the Japanese nation state. Ueda Kazutoshi and his colleagues planned to establish the Japanese national language by unifying speech and writing. To accomplish this task, Ueda, the leading advocate of unifying speech and writing, claimed that the speech of “educated Tokyo residents” should be the standard of Japanese national language. When he defined the speech of “educated Tokyo residents” as the national-language standard in 1895, Ueda was expecting the Japanese national language to naturally emerge but only on the proviso that educated Tokyo residents would “polish” their speech: “the speech of educated Tokyo residents needs to be further polished to become the standard language of our country” (Ueda 1964[1895]: 507). Even among educated Tokyo residents, however, wide speech variations were used and it seemed impossible to expect their speech to represent one national language. Usage varied not only according to social status and occupation in the Edo Period (ending hardly three decades earlier with the Meiji Restoration in 1868), but also “more varieties were used because people were coming from other parts of the country to live in Tokyo….” in the late nineteenth century (Tanaka 1983: 156). According to Okano (1964[1902]: 510), a sentence like “Give it to me, too,” was expressed in different ways “in common language, by boys, girls, geisha, male students, and artisans,” in Tokyo in 1902. Facing such large speech variations, Ueda felt the need to prescribe a language policy. In 1900, he changed his opinion to make the prescription of a standard language his top priority:

(1) We should establish Tokyo speech as the standard language as soon as possible…. We should form its grammar, compile a dictionary, and force its use in elementary schools all over the country…. Thus, first institute it as the model of [standard] language, and then later, preserve it and polish it….” (Ueda 1968[1900]: 134)

Ueda changed his opinion because so many varieties of Japanese were spoken in Tokyo that it seemed impossible to expect the natural emergence of standard Japanese by virtue of a public effort:

(2) Tokyo speech is not stable enough to become Japan’s standard spoken language at all. People from Kyuushuu [the southwest island of the four main Japanese islands] speak a Kyuushuu speech and those from Toohoku [the northeast part of Honshuu, Japan’s main island] speak a Toohoku speech [in Tokyo]. And they receive no sanction…. This indicates that our people [in Tokyo] do not possess either the knowledge or conviction to consciously set a standard for their spoken language.  (Ueda 1968[1900]: 131–132)



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 139

As Lee Yeounsuk (1996: 142) points out, Ueda’s change clearly indicates that the notion of a standard language itself could be built only by “prescription from above [the government].” A “national language” is not actually spoken but is an ideological construct prescribed and reproduced following the language policy created by linguists, politicians and intellectuals as well as through language education. Ueda and his advocates soon launched the prescription project, notably through instituting a language policy and publishing grammar textbooks and school language readers. Both koogo bunten (spoken-speech grammar textbooks) and kokugo tokuhon (national language readers), thus, played crucial roles in the process of establishing standard Japanese and Japanese national language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Japanese language education in this period focused on the establishment of kokugo ka (the academic subject of the national language) and the adoption of koogo bun (spoken style of writing) in the school curriculum. The Meiji government recognized the importance of education for the modernization of Japan and established a school system with Gaku sei (The School System Law) in 1872. Intellectuals stimulated furious disputes on the national language and had a great influence on language policy; language education, as a result, was forced to change dramatically in a short period of time. In 1886, Mori Arinori, the first Minister of Education, started an inspection of school textbooks, which enhanced the emergence of a great number of school grammar textbooks. As the unification of speech and writing proposed by Ueda Kazutoshi and others prevailed, the Elementary School Amendment Law in 1900 established the national language as a subject of school education: “The writing style in school readers should be plain and should be a model of the national language….” (Masubuchi 1981: 50). In 1901, Genbun itchi no jikko ni tsuite no seigan (Petition for Execution of the Unification of Spoken-Written Languages) was approved by the Imperial Diet. The following year, the National-Language Research Committee was founded. Following one of its key resolutions that “the writing [of the national language] should adopt a style based on the unification of speech and writing,” more grammar textbooks emerged (Monbushoo kyookashokyoku kokugoka 1949: 59). In 1904, the first state-appointed school reader was published “to spread and to unify the standard of the national language by using spoken language and adopting words used mainly in the middleclass society of Tokyo,” designating the spoken language as the aim of national-language education (Monbushoo 1972[1904]: 477). That is why many of the grammar textbooks were called koogo bunten (spoken-speech grammar textbooks). The emergence and increase of grammar textbooks and school readers made two major changes in the metalinguistic discourses concerning the Japanese national language in the late nineteenth century. First, since Ueda Kazutoshi and his colleagues chose to prescribe a standard language by “forcing its use in elementary

140 Gender, language and ideology

schools all over the country” as the major strategy to establish the national language, grammar textbooks and school readers played increasingly significant roles in constructing it. The linguists and grammarians writing those books, therefore, assumed increasing authority in prescribing the national language grammar by determining the linguistic features that were and were not appropriate for the national language. They also comprised the major authors of state-appointed school readers, starting from 1904, that the Ministry of Education required all elementary schools throughout Japan to adopt in teaching the national language. Taught in schools, the discourses of grammar textbooks and school readers were continuously re-enforced as “correct knowledge.” Second, in that effort, those books started referring to specific linguistic features defining, for instance, which of the many first-person pronouns used at the time among “educated Tokyo residents” should be considered appropriate for the Japanese national language. Since then, Japanese linguists have defined and distinguished different varieties of Japanese, such as women’s language, men’s language and honorific language, by the specific linguistic features. This implies that the ideology of Japanese women’s language, conceptualized in the premodern period based mainly on stylistic characteristics (like verbosity, loudness of voice, tone of voice and topics of speech), would undergo a new phase of conceptualization, in which specific linguistic features, such as personal pronouns and sentence-final forms, would also be used to characterize women’s language. If a standard language is a phenomenon needing to be prescribed, the standard Japanese described in grammar textbooks and school readers hardly reflected actual language use; it was, rather, the result of a calculated process of selection and exclusion. Grammar textbooks, in short, created standard Japanese by adopting some features and rejecting others. The compilers and editors selected certain linguistic features from written and spoken variations and presented them as standard Japanese. It is through this selection process that the political ideologies of linguists, including those concerning gender, could emerge, whatever the intention of each linguist might have been. This process is clearly seen in their treatment of atai, one of the many Japanese first-person pronouns. The grammar textbooks written by Kanai Yasuzoo (1901: 63) and Yoshioka Kyooho (2001[1912]: 48) excluded atai from standard Japanese, stating that it was “a term used by women.” Some documents prove, however, that atai was also used by boys. A working-class boy (12 to 13 years old), who appeared in a story written by Ooe Sazanami (1892: 13), called himself atai. Okano Hisatane (1964[1902]: 510), in describing different ways of saying “Give it to me, too,” by different groups of speakers in Tokyo in 1902, presented Atai nimo sore o okunna as a boy’s utterance and Watashi nimo sore o choodai na as a girl’s example. Although some writers and linguists expected boys to use atai, the two grammar textbooks regarded it as a woman’s word and so excluded it from standard Japanese. In other words, atai was excluded from standard grammar precisely because the textbooks writers defined it as a woman’s term.



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 141

To capture how such sexist selection took shape in grammar textbooks and school readers, it is important to analyze the discourses of grammar textbooks and school readers as metalinguistic practices performed by a particular group of people in a particular political process at a particular time. As I argued in the Introduction, by regarding linguists’ activities of writing grammar textbooks and school readers as metalinguistic practice, it becomes possible to consider why they selected certain linguistic features and excluded others from standard Japanese. This reveals that academic publications – the grammar textbooks and school readers – spread the dominant political ideology that benefited certain groups in the society. In analyzing the discourses of these books in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, therefore, I maintain that they were metalinguistic practices of the Japanese linguists, through which they defined the national language under the political requirement of gendered nationalization that mandated distinctive roles for female and male citizens. Gender and linguistic features of Japanese national language In analyzing how the discourses of grammar textbooks and school readers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries treated linguistic features in their relation with gender, it is important to remember that, when they associated certain features with gender, the association hardly reflected actual language use. People at the time used a variety of speech, just like the contemporary speakers; it is impossible and not worthwhile to try determining exactly which linguistic features were actually used by women or men in the period. We should rather pay attention to what is possible and worthwhile – i.e., the process in which, as the case of atai shows, grammar textbooks and school readers, in prescribing which linguistic features belonged or did not belong to standard Japanese, simultaneously associated certain linguistic features with gender. In short, by focusing on that process, we will discover how the discourses of grammar textbooks and school readers associated particular linguistic features with gender in their attempts to define standard Japanese. Grammar textbooks and school readers indeed did far more than simply prescribe the linguistic features already distinctively used by actual female and male speakers. In the first section, therefore, I will first analyze which linguistic features grammar textbooks toward the end of the Meiji period associated with gender and examine whether they included those features in standard Japanese. In the second section, I will investigate whether grammar textbooks and school readers included in standard Japanese the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech and schoolboy speech, the features explicitly associated with gender at the beginning of the twentieth century.

142 Gender, language and ideology

Excluding features by associating them with women In examining which linguistic features grammar textbooks associated with gender, I analyze eleven such books (all written by linguists). Tables 6.1 and 6.2 show the books’ authors and publication years, the linguistic features grammar textbooks associated with gender and whether they included these features in the national language.1 Table 6.1 shows that at least one of the eleven grammar textbooks regards one secondperson pronoun, kisama, and three first-person pronouns, sessha, washi, and ore, as “used only by males” and shows how the other textbooks defined these features. Similarly, Table 6.2 shows that at least one of the eleven textbooks describes certain linguistic features as “used only by females” and shows how the other textbooks defined these features. Notice that the choice of linguistic features does not reflect the actual usage of women or men in this specific, late-Meiji period, but I chose these linguistic features based on whether the feature is defined as “used only by females or males” in any of the grammar textbooks. S, M, F, and X in the Tables 6.1 and 6.2 represent how Table 6.1  Linguistic features masculinized in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). Authors of grammar textbooks (Years published)   (1)  Satow (1873)   (2)  Chamberlain (1888)   (3)  Matsushita (1901)   (4)  Maeha (1901)   (5)  Kanai (1901)   (6)  Usuda (1909)   (7)  Hoshina (1910)   (8)  Hoshina (1911)   (9)  Yoshioka (1912) (10)  Kokugo choosa iinkai (1916) (11)  Yamada (1922)

Personal pronoun kisama

sessha

washi

ore

S S S

S S S

S S S

S S S

M S S X S

M

X, M M

S S, M

X

X X M

Notes: An S indicates that the feature is presented as an unmarked standard. An M indicates that the feature is described as for male use only. An X indicates that the feature is described as inappropriate for standard Japanese. A blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature.

1. Previous studies on the history of Japanese spoken grammar have shown that a number of spoken-grammar textbooks were published in the mid-Meiji era (1897–1906), aiming to establish standard Japanese and the national language (Furuta 1965; Kasuga 1965; Nagano 1991; Hida 1992; Santoo 2002). Although this section analyzes only a portion of the grammar textbooks published at the time, they suffice to show the general tendency concerning how the authors of grammar textbooks associated linguistic features with gender in their descriptions of standard Japanese.

Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 143



Table 6.2  Linguistic features feminized in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). Authors of grammar textbooks (Years published)   (1)  Satow (1873)   (2)  Chamberlain (1888)   (3)  Matsushita (1901)   (4)  Maeha (1901)   (5)  Kanai (1901)   (6)  Usuda (1909)   (7)  Hoshina (1910)   (8)  Hoshina (1911)   (9)  Yoshioka (1912) (10) Kokugo choosa iinkai (1916) (11)  Yamada (1922)

Court- Inter- Prefix Personal pronoun women’s jection omae-san watashi atashi atai atakushi speech F F

F F

F

S

F

F F

X, F

X, F

X, F

S

X, F

X X, F

X, F

Notes: An S indicates that the feature is presented as an unmarked standard. An F indicates that the feature is described as for female use only. An X indicates that the feature is described as inappropriate for standard Japanese. A blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature.

the grammar textbooks treated these features with respect to standard Japanese. An S indicates that the feature is simply presented as an unmarked standard, without mentioning any association with gender. An M indicates that the feature is described as for male use only. An F indicates that the feature is described as for female use only. An X indicates that the feature is described as inappropriate for standard Japanese. A blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature. Tables 6.1 and 6.2 both show that linguistic features were gendered differently by each grammar textbook, indicating that linguistic features were not clearly gendered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Table 6.1 shows two tendencies. First, only four features, personal pronouns, kisama, sessha, washi, and ore, are explicitly associated with males in the eleven grammar textbooks under examination. Second, only three books, (5), (6) and (11), associate the four personal pronouns with males (M in Table 6.1) and the other five books present the same features as unmarked standards (S in Table 6.1). The four masculine personal pronouns are gradually excluded from the standard Japanese, due, as we shall soon see, to adopting the personal pronouns of schoolboy speech. Table 6.2 shows three tendencies. First, the eleven grammar books associated more linguistic features with women than men. Court-women’s speech includes special terms such as o-hiya (water), which were used by court women in the

144 Gender, language and ideology

fourteenth century (cf. Chapter 2). Interjections include ara, maa, oya, and are. Prefixes include honorifics such as o and go. One second-person pronoun, omaesan, and four first-person pronouns, watashi, atashi, atai and atakushi, were also associated with women. The grammar textbooks often describe these features as marked, exceptional elements of a standard grammar. Indeed, there is a typical grammar-textbook style that simultaneously associates particular features with women, making those features marked exceptions. Grammar textbooks first list several linguistic features of the same category, then add a special comment that some of them are for female use. Grammar book (5) in Table 6.2, for instance, first lists several interjections, and states that, “the last four words are mainly used by women” (Kanai 1901: 126). Such comment simultaneously associates “the last four words” with women and makes them marked exceptions of standard grammar, requiring special comment. In fact, there is no case when grammar books comment that “the last four words are mainly used by men.” Second, with only two exceptions, one interjection and the first person pronoun watashi in book (9), no forms associated with women are offered as unmarked elements of standard grammar (S in Table 6.2). Third, two grammar textbooks, (5) and (9), describe some of the features as both used only by women (F) and inappropriate for standard Japanese (X) (X, F in textbooks 5 and 9). Grammar book (9) in Table 6.2 states: “Use of [first-person pronouns] other than watashi, varies according to sex and class so they should not become standard [Japanese]. Atakushi, atashi, and atai are used by women” (Yoshioka 2001[1912]: 48). This comment explicitly states that the first-person pronouns, atakushi, atashi, and atai, “should not become standard” and “are used by women,” as if the comment associated these pronouns with women to ensure the exclusion of those features from the standard. Overall, Table 6.2 demonstrates that the authors of grammar textbooks simultaneously associated some features with women and rendered them exceptional and unsuitable for inclusion in the standard language. Schoolboy features into the Japanese national language This section analyzes how grammar textbooks and school readers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries defined the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech and schoolboy speech in their prescription of Japanese standard language. As seen in detail in Chapter 5, schoolgirl speech refers to a new style of speaking developed by some female students in the 1880s, characterized by using the sentence-final particles such as teyo, dawa, and noyo, Chinese words (Japanese words written in Chinese characters), and Western words. Schoolboy speech (shosei kotoba, cf. Chapter 5, Note 2) refers to a variety of Tokyo language “already prevalent among doctors, samurai, and intellectuals at the end of the Edo period [1603–1867],” which came to be recognized as schoolboy speech in the 1870s



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 145

(Komatsu 1998: 679). The discursive formation of schoolboy speech has not been fully investigated. I assume, however, that media discourse such as newspapers, in which novels also appeared, played an important role. An essay in 1885 states: “Now we can learn the Tokyo [schoolboy] speech by reading newspapers. So some impertinent male students speak it even before they go to Tokyo” (Yamamoto 1965: 245). Male students who had never been to Tokyo could speak schoolboy speech precisely because it was an ideological notion constructed by media discourse. In fact, in analyzing schoolboy speech, Komatsu (1974: 26) chooses as data the novel Toosei shosei katagi [The Characters of Male Modern Students] (1885– 1886) by Tsubouchi Shooyoo, rather than the speech actually spoken by schoolboys in the late nineteenth century. His analysis shows that schoolboy speech was characterized by the use of first-person pronouns boku and wagahai, the secondperson pronoun kimi, mentioning names without using honorifics, or using names with the suffix -kun, sentence-final forms, tamae and beshi, shikkei (good-bye) as a greeting, Chinese words, and Western words. Both schoolgirl speech and schoolboy speech were in principle equally qualified to become standard Japanese in the sense that they both fulfilled the definition of a national language as “the language of educated Tokyo residents.” For colloquial varieties to be recognized as legitimate standard Japanese, however, they needed to be validated by authoritative discourse in such texts as dictionaries, school readers, and grammar textbooks.2 And, since deliberate selection and exclusion of linguistic features were at work in the concerted effort to prescribe a standard language, there must have been some differences in the ways schoolgirl features and schoolboy features were adopted in grammar textbooks and school readers. Table 6.3 shows that the eleven grammar textbooks prescribed five schoolboy features as standard Japanese, a first-person pronoun boku, a second-person pronoun kimi, another first-person pronoun wagahai, an address form kun, and a sentence-final form tamae. An S indicates that the feature is presented as standard Japanese without stating that it is used by men; an M indicates that the feature is described as used by schoolboys or men; an X indicates that the feature is described as inappropriate for standard Japanese; and a blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature. While almost all these grammar textbooks referred to two personal pronouns, boku and kimi, the other three features, wagahai, kun and tamae, were scarcely mentioned. Among the 2. Both schoolgirl speech and schoolboy speech were spoken styles called zoku-go (colloquial speech) at the time. Standard spoken Japanese, nevertheless, does not mean spoken styles but “written language written as if it were spoken” (Santoo 2002: 152). According to Nagano Masaru (1991: 189), Japanese language in early Meiji can be divided into written Japanese and spoken Japanese. Spoken Japanese can be further divided into kootoo-go (oral language), including zoku-go (colloquial speech) and koogo bun (writing style based on spoken language). The standard Japanese that school readers and grammar textbooks prescribed was koogo bun.

146 Gender, language and ideology

many schoolboy features, this indicates, the grammar books mainly included the personal pronouns, boku and kimi, in standard Japanese. A close look at Table 6.3 shows that the grammar textbooks differed in how they included those two schoolboy features in standard Japanese. While many grammar textbooks list boku and kimi as standard Japanese (S in Table 6.3), about half describe the same two words as features used only by schoolboys or men (M in Table 6.3). In fact, even when they are included in standard grammar, as in book (3) in Table 6.3, by Matsushita Daizaburoo (1997[1901]: 78–79), boku and kimi are mentioned not in the section on pronouns but in the section on honorifics, indicating that the two words had not become major pronouns yet. Some grammar books also present the ambivalent status of the two personal pronouns, boku and kimi, in their respective relationships with standard Japanese. In book (6) in Table 6.3, by Usuda, the author lists boku and kimi as standard Japanese without stating that they were used by male students and men (S in Table 6.3) (Usuda 1909: 47). In his table of pronouns in the same book, however, he adds the note “used only by men” (M in Table 6.3) (Usuda 1909: 49). In two textbooks by Hoshina (7) and (8) in Table 6.3, published in 1910 and 1911, in contrast, the author presents both boku and kimi as standard Japanese to be taught in schools, without qualifying them as masculine pronouns. In (7), Hoshina (1910: 455) states that the two pronouns “should be taught in elementary schools,” and, in (8), Hoshina (2001[1911]: 65) presents a table of pronouns including boku and kimi. The different treatments of boku and kimi reveal a period in transition, with grammar Table 6.3  Schoolboy linguistic features in grammar textbooks (1873–1922). Authors (Years published)

  (1)  Satow (1873)   (2)  Chamberlain (1888)   (3)  Matsushita (1901)   (4)  Maeha (1901)   (5)  Kanai (1901)   (6)  Usuda (1909)   (7)  Hoshina (1910)   (8)  Hoshina (1911)   (9)  Yoshioka (1912) (10)  Kokugo choosa iinkai (1916) (11)  Yamada (1922)

Schoolboy linguistic features boku

kimi

M S S M M S, M S S

M S S M S S, M S S M M M

M S

wagahai

kun

tamae M

S S S, M

S S

X S

Notes: An S indicates that the feature is presented as an unmarked standard. An M indicates that the feature is described as for male use only. An X indicates that the feature is described as inappropriate for standard Japanese. A blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature.



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 147

textbooks elevating the status of these pronouns from colloquial words to standard Japanese. From the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, in short, the authors of grammar textbooks gradually transformed the features of schoolboy speech from colloquialisms to standard Japanese. Compared to schoolboy features, no schoolgirl features are included in the descriptions of standard Japanese in any of the grammar textbooks listed above. I found two cases in which schoolgirl linguistic features are abruptly used in example sentences. Yoshioka Kyooho (2001[1912]: 156, 290) uses the sentence-final forms dawa in an example sentence. Kokugo choosa iinkai (1980[1916, 1917]: 202) uses noyo in one of the example sentences. The authors of grammar textbooks throughout the late-Meiji period, therefore, in selecting features for standard Japanese grammar, elevated some of the schoolboy features, but not a single schoolgirl one, from colloquial to standard Japanese. This unequal treatment of schoolgirl and schoolboy features is more conspicuous in school readers, kokugo tokuhon (national language reader), compiled as exemplars of standard Japanese by linguists and the Ministry of Education. Nihon tokuhon [Japan Reader] (1886), by Shimpoo Iwaji, is, I believe, the first school reader prescribing schoolboy features. It consists of two volumes of Beginners for six-year-old first graders and six volumes of Readers for children from second to fourth grades. It is characterized by abundant use of schoolboy features. Both kimi and tamae appear from the first volume of Beginners (Shimpoo]1964[1886]: 324). The linguistic features, boku and kun, first appear in the second volume of Beginners, in the story in which three boys play soldiers, as shown at the beginning of this chapter (Figure 6.1). The firstperson pronoun, boku, and the address form, kun, of schoolboy speech continue to appear in later volumes (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 331). In Beginners, all schoolboy features are used by boys, while in the third volume of Readers, an inanimate kite says boku, kimi, and tamae (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 356). In the fourth volume, a teacher uses kimi to a student (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 369). Although the schoolboy features are mostly used in conversation, a boy uses boku and tamae in his school composition in the fourth volume (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 377). In the sixth volume, a sparrow uses kimi, boku, and boku-ra (the plural form of boku) in speaking to a butterfly. There are no examples of girls using these features. All eight volumes of Japan Reader, therefore, use the schoolboy features, boku, kimi, kun, and tamae, throughout.3 In contrast, no schoolgirl features appear in Japan Reader. Instead, the emphasis is on girls learning how to do domestic work. In the unit, “Washing,” in the third 3. Although Hida (1992: 160) argues that the first school readers presenting boku and kimi were Jinjoo shoogaku tokuhon [Elementary School Reader] and Kootoo shoogaku tokuhon [Higher Elementary School Reader] by the Monbushoo in 1904, Japan Reader (1886) had already presented many of them.

148 Gender, language and ideology

Minna de shuuren shiyoo. ‘Let’s play soldiers.’ Boku wa tenugui o boo ni tsukete hata ni suru. ‘I put a towel on a stick and make a flag.’ Boku wa hatamochi, Itoo-kun wa taishoo desu. ‘I will be a flag holder. Itoo-kun, you are a general.’ Saa, minna soroi tamae. ‘Now, everybody. Stand in a line.’ Satoo-kun, rappa o fuki tamae. ‘Satoo-kun, you blow the bugle.’ Susume, hidari, migi, hidari, migi. ‘March, left, right, left, right.’

Figure 6.1  Japan Reader Volume 2 (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 331).

volume of Reader, a girl called O-hana-san, who does not like washing and sewing, is contrasted to another girl, O-matsu-san, who likes doing them and concludes that “I learn washing and sewing everyday” (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 361). In another unit, also called “Washing,” in the fourth volume, two girls learn from their mother how to wash a doll’s clothes (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 368–369). Thus, Japan Reader, while adopting schoolboy features as standard Japanese, preaches to girls on the necessity of learning domestic work. This bias is hardly surprising, given the convictions of Shimpoo Iwaji, who wrote Japan Reader, and was a staunch advocate of both the unification of speech and writing and the ideology of goodwife-wise-mother. Japan Reader was “written with the cooperation of Nakagawa Kenjiroo, Miyake Yonekichi, and Kawamura Juugo” (Shimpoo 1964[1886]: 314).



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 149

Shimpoo, Nakagawa, and Miyake, with five others (all men), started the journal Iratsume, meaning “gentle, elegant, Japanese ladies.” Their two-pronged objective, as seen in Chapter 3, was to promote the unification of speech and writing and the good-wife-wise-mother ideology. As noted in Chapter 3, Meiji intellectuals advocated establishing both the ideology of a national language and the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother. Japan Reader clearly exemplifies how the two seemingly contradictory ideologies were substantiated in the form of a school reader. It succeeded in manifesting the two ideologies by adopting features associated with male students while excluding those associated with female students, but, at the same time, including units of good-wife-wise-mother. To see whether this tendency occurs in later readers, I examine how schoolboy features are treated in nine readers, from Japan Reader (1886) to Elementary National Language Reader (1933). Table 6.4 shows how many times each schoolboy feature appears in the nine readers. Readers (1) to (5) were written by specific individuals or publishers; readers (6) to (9) are state readers, approved and published by the Ministry of Education. Four readers (2, 4, 5 and 6) in Table 6.4 were divided into those for lower grades and higher grades. Linguistic features counted as schoolboy features include a first-person pronoun boku, a second-person pronoun kimi, the address form kun, a sentence-final form tamae and the plural forms of boku (boku-ra) and kimi (kimi-ra).4 Occurrences of other plural forms, boku-tachi and kimi-tachi, are shown in parentheses. Table 6.4 shows three tendencies. First, reader (1), Japan Reader, by Shimpoo in 1886, as already cited, used the linguistic features of schoolboy speech many times, and reader (2) continued to use them.5 Second, state readers (6, 7, 8 and 9) increasingly used schoolboy features. The more state readers were published, the more schoolboy features were included in their descriptions of national language, indicating that the government’s language policy promoted the elevation of schoolboy features from colloquial to standard language. Third, readers (3) to (5) hardly used schoolboy features. This is because they were compiled to teach written, not spoken, Japanese. Reader (1), Japan Reader, is known as the textbook that “consciously adopted a style based on the spoken language for the first time” (Yamamoto 4. The school readers in this period used the second-person pronoun kimi in two different ways. In the written style, kimi was used with the first-person pronoun, ware. In spoken style, kimi was used with the first-person pronouns watakushi or boku. So I did not count kimi used with ware, in writing, as a schoolboy feature. 5. Each reader is different in the way it adopts schoolboy features. While (1) Shimpoo (1886) and (6) Monbushoo (1904) use them in conversations between boys, animals and inanimate things, (7) Monbushoo (1910) uses them in conversations between boys and girls, thereby teaching the different linguistic norms of boys and girls. For instance, in the unit, kiku no hana (chrysanthemum) in the reader (7) volume 2, a boy uses a male first-person, boku, and a girl calls herself watakushi.

150 Gender, language and ideology

Table 6.4  The number of occurrences of schoolboy linguistic features in school readers (1886–1993).6 Number of schoolboy linguistic features Author or publisher (Years published)

boku

(1)  Shimpoo (1886) 29 (2)  Gakkai shishinsha (1892)     Gakkai shishinsha (1893) 1 (3)  Imaizumi & Sunaga (1894) (4)  Kinkoo Doo (1900)     Kinkoo Doo (1900) (5)  Tsubouchi (1900)     Tsubouchi (1900) 3 (6)  Monbushoo (1904) 13     Monbushoo (1904) 2 (7)  Monbushoo (1910) 8 (8)  Monbushoo (1918) 52 (9)  Monbushoo (1933) 139

boku-ra (-tachi)

kimi

1 2 (1)

18

4

13 5 1 5 20

7 7(1) 16(10)

kimi-ra (-tachi)

kun

tamae

6 1

7

4

5 1

21 44

3 8

1

4(1) 7 2

1965: 423). Indeed, as noted, during the period between readers (1) and (6), from 1886 to 1904, the Ministry of Education set teaching the spoken language as a goal of national language education. Reader (6) was edited with the intention of including “much spoken language” (Monbushoo 1972[1904]: 477). This suggests that both reader (1) and state readers (6, 7, 8 and 9) included colloquial schoolboy features as proper and legitimate for teaching spoken Japanese. Adopting the spoken language enhanced adoption of schoolboy linguistic features. In contrast, none of the school readers I examined used the linguistic features of schoolgirl speech in their lessons and stories. Instead, these school readers consistently contained the stories and lessons that taught children the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother. Table 6.5 shows the number of units in the nine readers featuring good-wife-wise-mother stories and lessons. “Household work” here refers to stories teaching the importance for girls of sewing, cooking and washing. “Play” refers to stories recommending different kinds of play for girls and boys. “Four female behaviors” refers to the lessons teaching the four types of Confucian female behavior, female-virtue, female-language, female-appearance, and femaleskills, which had repeatedly appeared in premodern conduct books (cf. Chapter 1). 6. Since the titles of the state readers are very similar, they are generally referred to by the sounds or titles of their first units, (6) I e su shi tokuhon [I, e, su, shi Reader], (7) Hata tako tokuhon [Flag-Kite Reader], (8) Hana hato tokuhon [Flower-Dove Reader], and (9) Sakura tokuhon [Cherry Reader].

Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 151



Table 6.5  The number of units about good-wife-wise-mother in school readers (1886–1993).7 Number of units about good-wife-wife-mother Author or publisher (Years published)

Household work

(1)  Shimpoo (1886) (2)  Gakkai shishinsha (1892)     Gakkai shishinsha (1893) (3)  Imaizumi & Sunaga (1894) (4)  Kinkoo Doo (1900)     Kinkoo Doo (1900) (5)  Tsubouchi (1900)     Tsubouchi (1900) (6)  Monbushoo (1904)     Monbushoo (1904) (7)  Monbushoo (1910) (8)  Monbushoo (1918) (9)  Monbushoo (1933)

Play

Four female behaviors

Other

1

1 1

1

3

1 1 3

3 1

1 1 3 5 1 2

2

7. While Tables 6.4 and 6.5 present the numbers of occurrences of schoolboy linguistic features and stories concerning the idea of good-wife-wise-mother in school readers, Table 6.6 shows the

Table 6.6  The rates of units using schoolboy linguistic features and units on good-wifewise-mother in national-language readers (1886–1933). Author or publisher (Years published) (1)  Shimpoo (1886) (2)  Gakkai shishinsha (1892)     Gakkai shishinsha (1893) (3)  Imaizumi & Sunaga (1894) (4)  Kinkoo Doo (1900)     Kinkoo Doo (1900) (5)  Tsubouchi (1900)     Tsubouchi (1900) (6)  Monbushoo (1904)     Monbushoo (1904) (7)  Monbushoo (1910) (8)  Monbushoo (1918) (9)  Monbushoo (1933)

Total number Number of units (rate) Number of units (rate) of units using schoolboy about good-wife-wiselinguistic features mother 198 214 120 180 171 93 172 89 160 82 301 303 309

12(6%) 3(1%) 1(1%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 8(5%) 3(4%) 8(3%) 26(9%) 36(12%)

Note: The percentages are rounded off to the nearest decimal point.

3(2%) 0(0%) 0(0%) 4(2%) 2(1%) 6(6%) 1(1%) 2(2%) 1(1%) 3(4%) 7(2%) 1(1%) 2(1%)

152 Gender, language and ideology

“Other” refers to stories concerned with other types of female-vurtue.8 Table 6.5 shows that, except for (2), all school readers taught children the stories and lessons of good-wife-wise-mother. In the period when spoken Japanese acquired wider acceptance and schoolboy features gained status as part of the of a national language, girls were expected to follow the norms of good-wife-wise-mother.9 The analyses of grammar textbooks and school readers in this chapter reveal exactly how these academic discourses masculinized the Japanese national language. Academic discourse simultaneously defined and masculinized standard features mainly by two strategies. First, as shown in my discussion concerning Table 6.2, grammar textbooks explicitly associated some features with t otal number of units and the ratios of units using schoolboy features and the good-wife-wisemother stories. The numbers in Tables 6.6, however, are not completely determinate, for three reasons. First, as many of the school readers start with a character chart, a vocabulary list, and single sentences without a unit title, it is impossible to determine the total number of units. In Table 6.6, more than three sentences are counted as a unit. Second, although each unit is usually built around a story, the older the students, the longer the story. Finally, some units use a schoolboy linguistic feature only once, while others use it many times. Despite these discrepancies, Table 6.6 demonstrates that more schoolboy linguistic features were used after the first state textbook was published (6) and that stories about good-wife-wise-mother were constantly cited. 8. Reader (3) by Imaizumi and Sunaga (1894), for example, includes the following units about good-wife-wise-mother:





(1) Household work (Volume 7 Unit 10 “Women’s responsibilities”): “Women have many responsibilities. Cooking and sewing are the most important…. Washing and combing hair are also what women should know. If a woman does not learn them, even if she has knowledge, she does not uphold a woman’s responsibility.” (2) Play (Volume 4 Unit 16 “How to play”): “Boys should do rough play like flying a kite, spinning a circle, running, or pretending to fight. Girls should do quiet and soft play such as Japanese badminton, bouncing a ball, or decorating a doll.” (3) Four female behaviors (Volume 8 Unit 24 “Female four behaviors”): “Female-language means a good language. [It means] to use words selectively, not to use rough words, and to say what needs to be said, and not unnecessary things, so that others will not hate what you say.” (4) Other (Volume 4 Unit 8 “Questions and answers about birds”): Abstract: A teacher asks three girls what kind of bird they want to be. O-matsu wants to become a bush warbler because it sings with a good voice. O-take wants to become a mandarin duck because it has beautiful feathers. O-ume wants to become a crow because it is obedient to its parents. The teacher praises O-ume and tells them that beauty of mind rather than beauty of appearance is important for women.

9. Some changes are observed in the way the ideology of good-wife-wise-mother was presented in readers, especially between state textbooks and other readers. Readers published before state textbooks simply repeat the Confucian lessons of women’s conduct textbooks. State textbooks published after the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), however, contain stories praising women who send their children to be soldiers and those who themselves fight for the emperor.

Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 153



women and simultaneously excluded those very features from standard grammar. This process made all other features part of the unmarked masculine standard, based on the widespread belief in binary gender opposition. Second, while the authors of grammar textbooks and school readers increasingly included the linguistic features associated with schoolboys in standard Japanese, they completely precluded the features of schoolgirl speech, promoting standardization of schoolboy features. Here again, the masculinized features became unmarked, standard, and central, while the feminized features were marked, exceptional, and marginalized. The authors, all linguists or grammarians, and publishers of grammar textbooks and school readers not only distinguished between feminized and masculinized linguistic features but also asymmetrically arranged them in their respective relationships to the national language. Moreover, the academic metalinguistic practice of male linguists and the ideology of men’s national language reinforced each other in the political ideology of gendered nationalization. The ideology of men’s national language legitimated linguists’ sexist selections, while their metalinguistic practice of producing grammar books and school readers in turn reproduced and further legitimated the ideology of men’s national language. Conclusion This section concludes the four chapters in Part 2 and argues that gender played a crucial role in the process by which nationalization and standardization reinforced each other as Japan rapidly modernized. I cited that the invention of a national language accompanied the construction, marginalization, and denial of regional dialects (Chapter 3, note 3). How the establishment of the national language was related to gender, however, has rarely been discussed. I will argue that the construction, marginalization, and denial of linguistic ideologies related to women made it possible to create a men’s national language without explicitly stating it. Figure 6.2 illustrates the argument developed in Part 2. The lower section shows that gendered opposition recurs on the three linguistic levels: national language vs. feminine speech, schoolboy speech vs. schoolgirl speech, and masculine and schoolboy features vs. feminine and schoolgirl features. I put the term “men’s” of men’s national language in Figure 6.2 in parentheses to indicate that masculinizing the national language was accomplished without being explicitly stated; men’s language was often (mis)recognized as the national language for all citizens, including women (Chapter 3). By “feminine speech” in Figure 6.2, I refer to the modern ideology of feminine speech, the ideal speech of modern female citizens following the modern norms of feminine speech (Chapter 4). Gal and Irvine (1995)

154 Gender, language and ideology

Gendered nationalization

[Unmarked, standard, central masculinity] male citizens

[Marked, exceptional, marginal femininity] female citizens

Gendered linguistic ideologies [speech of nation]

(men’s) national language

feminine speech

[speech of students]

schoolboy speech

schoolgirl speech

[linguistic features]

masculine features schoolboy features

feminine features schoolgirl features

Figure 6.2  Gendered nationalization and linguistic ideologies in Japan’s modernization.

identify three semiotic processes, fractal recursivity, iconization, and erasure, of linguistic boundary construction. Fractal recursivity means “the projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto some other level” (Gal & Irvine 1995: 974). Figure 6.2 demonstrates that gendered opposition recurred on the three levels: that of langauge spoken on a national scale, again on that of speech spoken by a small group of students, and yet again on that of certain linguistic features. The term “Gendered” in Gendered Linguistic Ideologies does not indicate that these ideologies were simply divided by gender, but that they were in an asymmetrical power relationship in that feminized ideologies are assigned marked, exceptional, and marginalized value, while masculinized ideologies are assigned unmarked, standard, and central value. While the ideology of feminine speech was the norm peculiar to women’s speech, (men’s) national language was presented as the norm for the whole nation. Linguists and intellectuals continuously criticized schoolgirl speech and excluded schoolgirl features from the national language (Chapter 5). In contrast, they rarely criticized schoolboy speech; academic discourses increasingly included schoolboy features in standard Japanese. Grammar textbooks excluded some linguistic features from the national language, marking them as feminine features used only by women, which, in turn, implicitly associated all other features with masculinity as the unmarked standard of the national language. The upward and downward arrows between Gendered Nationalization and Gendered Linguistic Ideologies in Figure 6.2 indicate that gendered linguistic ideologies and the political ideology of gendered nationalization reinforce each other: “[N]ationalist [ideologies] and language ideologies often reflect and reinforce each



Chapter 6.  Masculinizing the national language 155

other” (Echeverria 2003: 409). Gendered linguistic ideologies formed iconic representations of male and female citizens. Iconicity, another semiotic process that Gal and Irvine (1995) have observed in the process of boundary construction, “involves a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic practices, features, or varieties and the social images with which they are linked” (Gal & Irvine 1995: 973). The masculine linguistic ideologies helped promote the construction of the unmarked, standard identity of a male citizen. Marginalized in their relation to national language, feminine linguistic ideologies exacerbated the positioning of female citizens as marked, “exceptional speakers” (Hall 2003). The establishment of gendered linguistic ideologies was promoted more by prevailing academic discourse enabled in political ideologies of gendered nationalization and linguistic standardization than by how individual speakers actually used language. Figure 6.2 indicates that the unmarked, hegemonic status of national language was established in its two relationships, horizontal and vertical, to the other linguistic ideologies, both of which were closely related to gender. First, in the horizontal relationships, the masculine, unmarked, central status of national language was constructed by its asymmetrical relationships with the feminized, marked, and marginalized ideologies. Since feminine speech, schoolgirl speech, feminine features, and schoolgirl features were highlighted both by their associations with women and by being explicitly distinguished and excluded from the national language, the national language implicitly acquired its association with masculinity. The construction and denial of feminine linguistic ideologies are effective symbolic strategies to heighten the purity and integrity of male citizens. Narita Ryuuichi (1994: 193) points out that, after distinguishing “we” in Japan from “they” in other countries, “differences within ‘we’ were created.” As factors of internal difference, he mentions gender difference along with the father’s occupation and school achievements. To this, Kume Yoriko (1997: 207–208) correctly points out that gender difference is different from other factors because neither effort nor luck can overcome it. By emphasizing this immutable difference, Kume argues, women were redefined as the Inside Other, who “negatively mediate to elevate the purity and integrity of ‘we = Japanese men’ at the center.” Any group other than educated, middleclass men could be designated as the Inside Other. The exclusion of women, however, was particularly effective because of the irrevocable interpretation of the gender distinction. Accordingly, exclusion and denial of linguistic ideologies associated with women, such as feminine speech, schoolgirl speech, feminine features, and schoolgirl features, functioned to symbolically invent women as the Inside Other and to enhance a highly integrated construction of male citizens. Generally speaking, therefore, processes of creating a hegemonic ideology, such as standardization, often require both the construction and denial of

156 Gender, language and ideology

marginal linguistic ideologies. And, in this process, gender, the irrevocable inside difference, is most effectively utilized. Second, in the vertical relationships in Figure 6.2, the recursive, gendered opposition established a strong link among masculinity, national language, and particular linguistic features. By repeating the gendered opposition from the level of national language to the level of linguistic features, the abstract ideology of the national language was associated with physical, concrete features, such as schoolboy personal pronouns, boku and kimi. Being given an indexical association with concrete forms, the (men’s) national language obtained the means to be reproduced in everyday practice. Although the ideology of national language was available for negotiation and contestation and did not guarantee total control of individual practices, gendered indexicalization through everyday linguistic practices renders the andro-centric ideology of the Japanese national language into highly naturalized “dominant language ideolog[y]” (Kroskrity 1998: 117). Gender played a crucial role in the process of constructing the hegemonic, andro-centric ideology of the Japanese national language in the early twentieth century. It is worth noting here that the academic discourse developing gendered linguistic ideologies in Japan became possible, meaningful and acceptable by several key developments: the establishment of the modern school system, the emergence of school textbooks, the improvement of literacy, the advent of print technology and print media, and the new literary form of the novel emerging from the unification of speech and writing, that aimed to create the national language. Those developments and the resulting social changes, furthermore, were caused by the encounter with Western technology, military force, and science. Western language studies made a great effect on the very notions of national language, grammar, and school textbooks in Japan. The gendered linguistic ideologies in the early twentieth century presented in Figure 6.2, however, saw a radical change during the periods of war from the beginning of WWI in 1914 to the end of WWII in 1945. The next chapter will investigate what occurred to the relationships between gender and linguistic ideologies during that timeframe.

part 3

Women’s language into national language The impact of war

In Part 2, I have demonstrated that major linguistic varieties and features were ideologically gendered in Japan’s early modernization period. Interestingly, the asymmetrical relationship between feminine speech and men’s national language dramatically changed during the war years in the first half of the twentieth century. Women’s language became part of the national language and gained legitimate linguistic status for the first time. Part 3 will show how this change occurred during Japan’s periods of war, from the beginning of WWI (1914) through the end of WWII (1945). In Chapter 7, by analyzing the discourses produced by linguists and intellectuals concerning women’s speech, I will demonstrate that women’s language was invented as a tradition of the Japanese language during the war period, reflecting the Japanese government’s colonization policy in East Asian countries. Chapter 8 will analyze how the academic discourses of grammar books and school readers gendered linguistic features and will consider the result of that analysis as it relates to Japan’s war-influenced political policy of National Mobilization.

chapter 7

Women’s language as imperial tradition Legitimating colonization

Can we see a correct, pure Japanese language spoken in the future Manchuria? This is an important, national task of the Japanese empire. If we realize that the major role to fulfill this task depends on women’s speech, however … I feel horrified and cannot help but worry about the future of this country. Matsumoto Shigeko (1941)  Manshuu no fujingo [Ladies’ Language in Manchuria] Matsumoto Shigeo, a male teacher at an elementary school in the Japanese colony of Manchuria, was offended with the Japanese women’s speech he heard in Manchuria in 1941. Matsumoto was disappointed precisely because he was expecting the speech of Japanese women in Manchuria to fulfill “an important, national task” of speaking “pure Japanese language” (Matsumoto 1941: 28). That is why he paid attention to women’s speech and noticed that they were not speaking as he expected. And he interpreted this fact as a national problem that would affect the future of Japan. Nevertheless, such nationalistic and emotional expectations towards women’s speech were unimaginable in the previous period. As seen in Part 2, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s speech was completely excluded from national language and remained as either the object of feminine norms or the target of criticism. For Matsumoto to make such a statement, some changes must have occurred in the way Japanese people conceptualized the speech of Japanese women in the first half of the twentieth century. What did Matsumoto mean by “national task” of speaking “pure Japanese” in Manchuria, a Japanese colony, in the middle of twentieth century? How did Japanese people change their ways of conceptualizing women’s speech and what political and economic processes enabled such change during the war period? The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the discourses of linguists and intellectuals concerning women’s speech during the war period from WWI (1914) to the end of the WWII (1945) and, on that basis, to examine the process by which Japanese people changed their ways of conceptualizing women’s speech. Before examining those discourses, I will briefly describe Japan’s political situation during the period, focusing on colonization and the role of Japanese language in the Asian colonies.

160 Gender, language and ideology

Japanese language in the Asian colonies In the first half of the twentieth century, the Japanese military was invading and colonizing East Asia. After victory in the Sino-Japanese war in 1895, Japan occupied Taiwan. After winning the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Japan annexed Korea in 1910. Although Japan experienced economic growth during WWI (1914–1918), the government reacted to the disastrous Kanto Earthquake (1923) and the world financial crisis (1929) with a colonial policy utilizing armed aggression. Japan occupied and began ruling Manchuria the year after the Manchurian Incident (1931). In 1933, Japan left the League of Nations when the international body objected to this takeover. In 1937, Japan went to war with China, and the government issued the National Mobilization Law and claimed control over all Japanese citizens, including women and children, for the war effort. Freedom of speech was strictly controlled inside Japan, and invasions of Asian countries continued. The Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 triggered the Pacific War. The American military dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, and on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Japanese Cabinet announced the Allied Powers the acceptance of the Japan’s unconditional surrender in the Potsdom declarations on August 14 of the same year and the emperor’s broadcasting the surrender on August 15 terminated the Japanese military regime. Studies on language in Japanese colonization in the twentieth century have shown that Japan placed excessive emphasis on teaching Japanese language to people in the colonized areas (Kubota 2005; Lee 1996; Osa 1998; Yasuda 1997, 1998). Japanese colonization was carried out based on a policy of assimilation (dooka seisaku), educating people in the colonies to become Japanese citizens loyal to the emperor and infused with the Japanese spirit. The military government, in its effort to emphasize differences from European colonization, planned to establish an Asian imperial realm under the sovereignty of the emperor. For the people in the colonized areas, however, the emperor was not the subject of religious worship but merely the chief colonizer. The colonized people lacked the historical and religious foundations to “implement the Japanese spirit” or even to grasp its meaning. It was impossible, therefore, to expect them to naturally come to respect the Japanese emperor. Given that reality, both the Japanese government and intellectuals specified the Japanese national language as probably the most effective tool for this implementation, because, as seen in Chapter 3, Ueda Kazutoshi in 1894 had defined the Japanese national language as “the spiritual blood of the Japanese people.” Intellectuals, especially linguists, claimed that, since Japanese national language was “the spiritual blood of the Japanese people,” which was also “the Japanese spirit” representing loyalty to the emperor, teaching the Japanese national language to people in the colonies would make them complete Japanese



Chapter 7.  Imperial tradition 161

citizens loyal to the emperor. Ootsuki Fumihiko states in his Introduction to Koogohoo bekki [Spoken Language Grammar Separate Edition], compiled by Kokugo choosa iinkai (1980 [1917]), that “Now that Taiwan and Korea have become part of our country, teaching the Japanese spoken language is the best way to transform those people into Japanese.” As Yasuda Toshiaki (1997: 128) points out, “Since Japanese became the ‘national language,’ that is, ‘the language of the nation state,’ it was claimed that [people of the colonies] should also speak it.” In Korea, Japanese-language education was forced on the Korean people by the educational laws issued in 1911, 1922, and 1938. In 1940, Koreans were obliged to use Japanese names (Lee 1996: 253). In the 1940s, the military government proposed the idea of Daitooa kyooeiken (the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere), and Japanese linguists repeatedly claimed that it was crucial to teach Japanese language to succeed in governing those countries. A linguist, Ishii Shooji (1941: 235), proposed controlling East Asia through language: “the Japanese language is expected to take an active part as the common national language in the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.” Sakuma Kanae (1942: 25), another linguist, also pointed out: “Control of a country with a strong defense system will require strictly uniform use of the Japanese language. Fulfilling the role of a common national language to establish the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere will also require strictly uniform use of the Japanese language.” What Matsumoto Shigeo, the elementary school teacher in Manchuria, meant by “an important, national task” of speaking “pure Japanese language,” therefore, was the task of Japanese people in the Japanese colonies to speak and teach Japanese national language, aiming to transform people in the colonies into the Japanese citizens loyal to the Japanese emperor. Nevertheless, in addition to the colonies’ local resistance against the compulsory use of Japanese, the teachers of Japanese language in the colonies were challenged by a huge difficulty: there was no single Japanese national language even inside of Japan. Just as people in Japan were speaking regional variations of Japanese, Japanese language teachers in the colonies spoke their own regional variations. Lee Yeounsuk (1996: 297–299) documents that, in the Second National Language Measure Conference held in 1941, the major discussion theme involved not methods of teaching Japanese in the colonies but discontent with the speech of the teachers. The more the language policy makers tried to set one national language as a goal of colonial education, the more they were annoyed by the fact that there was not one Japanese national language. Komori Yooichi (2000: 258) asserts that “It was because of this discrepancy that the myth of a single national language had to be desired” in the colonies much stronger than inside Japan. In this situation, it was urgent to declare those characteristics of the Japanese language that proved its superiority and legitimated Japan’s invasions. Hoshina Kooichi (1942: 199) had no doubt about the superiority of the Japanese language: “Since

162 Gender, language and ideology

the language of a superior nation always possesses a strong influence, it is obvious that the Japanese language, the language of the leader of the Co-prosperity Sphere, meets the qualifications.” The idea of a superior country with a superior language, he assumed, should legitimate Japanese domination of its colonies. I will argue in the following sections that the need to prove the superiority of Japanese language over other languages changed the ways the linguists and intellectuals produced discourse concerning women’s language during the war period. Women’s language in the war period The discourses concerning women’s language produced by the linguists and intellectuals during the war years can be divided into three categories: (1) discourses that constructed women’s language as a tradition of Japanese language; (2) discourses that constructed women’s language as a symbol of Japanese cultural superiority; and (3) discourses that assigned women the role of protecting and maintaining the national language. Women’s language as Japanese imperial tradition The first type of discourse typically argued that the origin of women’s language was nyooboo kotoba (court-women’s speech) and keigo (honorific language). Washi Rumi (2000: 20) finds the paper by Kikuzawa Sueo (1929), “Fujin no kotoba no tokuchoo ni tsuite [On characteristics of ladies’ language],” particularly important, because “it was the first paper connecting women’s language to court-women’s speech.” Kikuzawa claims in the paper that four characteristics of court-women’s speech – (1) use of polite speech, (2) use of elegant speech, (3) an indirect way of speaking, and (4) avoidance of unrefined Chinese words – were also the characteristics of women’s speech in 1920s, implying that the origin of women’s language is court-women’s speech. He simply presupposed that court-women’s speech in the fourteenth century and women’s speech in the 1920s had common characteristics, despite the fact that the two types of speech were spoken in the periods separated by more than five hundred years. He assumed, in other words, that it was women’s innate nature, the only common point between court women in the fourteenth century and women in the 1920s, which somehow characterized their way of speaking. We have seen in Chapter 4 the problems in such view of essentialization of gender. Despite its problem, Kikuzawa’s paper had a great effect among linguists and on the subsequent discussion of women’s language. Hoshina (1936: 228–229) repeats Kikuzawa’s four characteristics of court-women’s speech as also true of women’s language: “Generally, women’s speech, compared to men’s, is characterized by

Chapter 7.  Imperial tradition 163



its softness. Women try to use elegant, polite expressions as much as possible even when they are not speaking honorific language. They have the habit of not expressing anything directly and this gives an elegant and refined impression…. Until the Meiji era, women did not use hard-sounding, difficult Chinese words.” Ishiguro Yoshimi (1943: 227), a linguist, makes similar observations: “The characteristics of women’s language are making a refined and elegant impression, not expressing anything directly, being polite, and avoiding Chinese words that sound awkward as a part of the Japanese language.” Nagao Masanori (1943: 27) considers courtwomen’s speech to be the origin of women’s language, stating that “the first separation of women’s language [from men’s language] was court-women’s speech in the Muromachi period [in the fourteenth century].” Hoshina Kooichi (1936: 227) also associates women’s language with honorific language: “In our country, women generally use many more polite words than men.” Kindaichi Kyoosuke (1942: 296) further asserts that women’s language and honorific language have the same origin: “Women’s language is characterized by its abundance of honorific language. The development of honorific language cannot be discussed separately from the emergence of women’s language. To consider the origin of honorific language, therefore, is to consider the origin of women’s language.” These discourses by linguists were reproduced in etiquette books. Courtwomen’s speech and honorific language were not only repeatedly referred to but also turned into the norms for women. Yanagi Yae (1941), a female journalist, describes women’s language as having Kikuzawa’s four characteristics, among which (1b), (1c), and (1d) were presented as norms with “must” and “should”:

(1) a. The first characteristic of [women’s] good language is elegance (with examples of court-women’s speech). b. Women’s speech must, first and foremost, be polite. c. Women should avoid speaking directly and … should make descriptions and express emotion that present no more than 70% of what they actually want to say. d. Women should never fail to use honorific language. (Yanagi 1941: 253–259)  Morita Tama (1943: 100, 104), a female writer and politician, in her etiquette book for women, also emphasizes the importance of speaking politely and presents indirect speech as the norm. Why were court-women’s speech and honorific language referred to during the war as the origin of women’s language? To answer this question, we need to know what they were considered to represent. First of all, the linguists’ discourse shows that court-women’s speech was understood in terms of its connection with the emperor. Kikuzawa (1933: 40) asserts that the elegance of the emperor’s family

164 Gender, language and ideology

has continued in the form of court-women’s speech: “Court-women’s speech originated in the gracious imperial court, spread to women in the Shoogun families, to the wives of feudal lords, then to good families in the common population, and they are still used today.” Ishiguro (1943: 226) also considers that the elegance of court-women’s speech was due to its origin in the imperial court: “Court-women’s speech originated in the gracious imperial court and … we can assume [from this fact] how elegant it was.” Nagao (1943: 30) praises court-women’s speech as the tradition of the Japanese national language and the imperial realm: “[Court-­ women’s speech], which originated in the imperial court, spread to the inner palaces of the Shoogun and are still in use in our everyday lives. They present a long, precious tradition of the Japanese national language and … a tradition representative of the beauty and nobility of the imperial realm.” It must be recalled, however, that, as seen in Chapter 2, it was not the emperor or the members of the emperor’s family but women working in the court who started using court-women’s speech. Court-women’s speech was not initially considered elegant speech. The first reference to court-women’s speech, found in Ama no mokuzu [Seaweed of a Mermaid] (1420) regards it as negative ((1) of Chapter 2). Kusa musubi [The Grass Tie] (1771) also criticized it for changing beautiful, traditional names ((3) of Chapter 2). The linguists in the war period, in other words, redefined court-women’s speech as an elegant symbol of the emperor’s family. Next, the linguists of the period considered honorific language to be one of the characteristics of the Japanese language of which the entire country could be proud. Hirokoo Ryoozoo (1941: 448) asserts that honorific language was created by the polite nature of the Japanese nation and considers it a matter of Japanese pride: “The fact that our national language possesses honorific language clearly shows the deeply respectful nature of the Japanese people. It is the characteristic of our national language that most clearly distinguishes it from any other.” Kindaichi (1942: 307) also considers honorific language as a symbol of the superiority of Japan: “Our national language has nothing else we can be proud of compared to Western languages…. This category of honorific language usage is what we can be fully proud of…. It is women’s language that shows a particularly subtle and fine use of honorific language.” Some linguists refuted such a view of honorific language. Tokieda Motoki (1941: 449) states that: “To regard honorific language simply as a reflection of our laudable custom to respect politeness does not account for the system of honorific language itself. Polite ways of speaking can be found in foreign languages, too.” However, some people even argued that honorific language was a tradition originating out of respect for the emperor. Nagao Masanori (1943: 99–100), who wrote a whole book on women and language during the war period, says: “Women especially should not forget that the lives of the Japanese have always been filled with manners and ethics, and that the tradition

Chapter 7.  Imperial tradition 165



of the emperor has always been associated with beauty and nobility…. We should not forget that the honorific language women use today has its roots in the gracious imperial family.” The linguists in the war period, these discourses show, positively evaluated both court-women’s speech and honorific language by emphasizing their connections with the emperor system. The association with court-women’s speech and honorific language constructed women’s language as a Japanese imperial tradition originating with the emperor system. As Eric Hobsbaum (1983: 1) suggests, tradition is invented, and “[invented traditions] normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.” The assertion that court-women’s speech and honorific language were the origin of women’s language is an attempt to establish continuity with the past. The war-time discourse invented women’s language as a Japanese imperial tradition originating with the emperor system and maintained by Japanese women. By “imperial tradition,” therefore, I mean the tradition recognized as derived from the emperor and the emperor system. As observed in the Introduction, contemporary Japanese dictionaries still refer to court-women’s speech as an old example of women’s language. The analysis of this section shows, however, that it was during the periods of war in the first half of the twentieth century when court-women’s speech was invented as the origin of women’s language. Women’s language as a symbol of Japanese superiority The second type of discourse spoke of women’s language as if it were peculiar to the Japanese language and argued that it showed the superiority of the Japanese language and of Japan. Tanizaki Junichiroo (1975[1934]: 157), modern Japanese writer, states: “That languages spoken by men and women are different is an advantage only the Japanese spoken language possesses. This cannot be found in any national language other than Japanese” (emphasis original). Kindaichi (1942: 293) considers Japanese women’s language as “a phenomenon uncommon in the world because it is based on Japanese women’s way of living.” For Ishiguro (1943: 236), women’s language is “one of the beauties of the Japanese language that no other national language is allowed to follow.” Dan Michiko (1943: 97), a female writer, after showing how women should use different levels of honorific language, says: “These things may appear troublesome … but only Japanese citizens, with their history of more than two thousand years, can use it. Those citizens [of countries] lacking a history cannot use it.” These discourses, by praising and characterizing women’s language as a phenomenon found only in Japan, used it to promote the superiority of Japan over other countries.

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Female citizens as protectors of the national language The third type of discourse assigned women the role of protecting and maintaining the national language. As women’s language became a Japanese tradition, women were expected to cooperate with the military regime by preserving this tradition. Shinmura Izuru (1938: 96), a linguist known for compiling many Japanese dictionaries, emphasizes the role of female citizens: “Now and in the future, women’s contribution to language is especially important in our country.” Kindaichi (1942: 309) declares: “To become a complete Japanese woman, she must, more than anything, acquire this traditional Japanese women’s language, complete with its exquisite use of honorific language, something very rare in the world.” This made the acquisition of women’s language the primary condition for becoming a female citizen. According to Ishiguro (1943: 280), “Throughout history, both Japanese citizens and the national language have been protected and fostered at the hands of women.” Nagao (1943: 39, 58, 93) believes that women should be thankful to be given the role of preserving the tradition of the Japanese national language, and that they should protect it with their lives: “Women should be proud that they have preserved and polished the traditions of the national language…. It was women who acquired the beauty of the national language, preserved it, and fostered it…. Women should not forget that it is their power and lives that preserve the legitimacy of the national language and make its purity, elegance, flexibility, and simplicity eternal.” These linguists, to our surprise, boldly declared that women had protected and fostered Japanese national language, even though their predecessors had excluded feminine linguistic features from the national language several decades ago, as shown in Part 2. Female citizens were also expected to teach the “correct” national language to children. These discourses can be divided into two groups: those that required women to protect the national language, and those that blamed women for causing disorder in speech. The importance of education at home was often mentioned in discourses by the government. The Ministry of Education issued instructions about family education in 1930, and emphasizing that, “although both the father and mother have responsibility for education at home, the responsibility of women is especially important” (Mitsui 1977: 665). The Ministry of Education, again in Reihoo yookoo [Gist of Manners] (1941), claims the importance of teaching language use at home: “At home, family members should be careful about the language they use, and we should make sure that children always hear correct, refined language so that they will naturally use it themselves” (Reihoo yookoo kenkyuukai 1941: 54). According to Ishimori Nobuo (1941: 103), “as instruction in language is often given at home rather than at school, both family and school should



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cooperate … so that the language of children won’t decline.” Shinmura Izuru, in his speech in 1942, asks women to present models of correct language usage: “We need some models in language usage, too…. At home, mothers and sisters should train sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters” (Shinmura 1972[1942]: 379). Similarly, Ishiguro (1943: 277) considers teaching the correct national language as the task of female citizens: “Women constitute half the nation. They are and should be the first national-language teachers. The beauty and correctness of women’s speech is concerned not only with making half the national language correct but also making its future correct. It is woman’s responsibility to build the basis of a beautiful, correct Japanese language.”1 The other group of discourses by linguists blamed women for causing disorder in speech. Hoshina (1936: 231) warns: “Recently in our country, the language of young men and women has declined dramatically…. Although school [teachers] should be careful about it, it is more crucial for mothers at home to pay close attention to it.” Ishii (1941: 232) asks parents “to pay attention to the use of [masculine pronouns] kimi and boku [by girls].” Kindaichi (1942: 308) severely criticizes mothers who do not teach the correct national language: “Since children’s language all depends on mothers, it shows their frivolous irresponsibility in allowing children to use [English words for parents] papa and mama.” Morita Tama (1943: 96) laments: “Although mothers were responsible for language training, this system has been destroyed … since the end of Meiji.” And Nagao Masanori (1943: 114) declares: “The destruction of women’s language today is caused by a lack of strict discipline in childhood. Women are born to be mothers and teachers. It is women’s responsibility to preserve and respect the legitimate national language.” These discourses ask women to speak the “correct” national language themselves and to teach it to their children. The two groups of discourses functioned to force women, both positively and negatively, into the role of protecting the national language. Nishihara Keiichi (1941) starts his book, Kotoba no shitsuke [Discipline of Language], with the following poem: 1. Teaching language was also motivated by claims that people in high society trained their children to speak properly. Yanagi Yae (1941: 252) states: “The completion of one woman’s language takes about fifty years, through the three generations from her grandmother and her mother.” Dan (1943: 86) claims: “Language is passed on through three generations…. Those who can lay claim to achieving status as the first generation of those [speaking correct language] will be able to hear correct language in the generation of their grandchildren.” The expression, “Those who can lay claim to achieving status as the first generation,” shows that speech was considered an indication of one’s social class. This was reason enough for mothers who wanted their daughters and granddaughters to get into high society to pay attention to the speech of their daughters.

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(2) The precious nature of children’s language It is the triumphant shout of their lives as they grow to be the citizens of the imperial realm.  (Nishihara 1941: Introduction) According to him, language discipline was crucial to “make them always aware that they are the children of a country with a high-level defense system,” which required them to fight and die for the emperor (Nishihara 1941: Introduction). These discourses transformed women into the protectors and teachers of national language, expecting them to fulfill the role of female citizens to continue producing efficient soldiers loyal to the emperor. The male teacher in Manchuria, cited at the beginning of this chapter, listened to the speech of women and got worried about the future of Japan, exactly because women were to bring up efficient soldiers by speaking correct women’s language, the symbol of imperial tradition in the middle of the twentieth century. Conclusion During the war years, therefore, women’s language was praised as a Japanese imperial tradition originating with the emperor system and a symbol of Japanese cultural superiority that, these writers were convinced, could not be found in any other country. It was during the war period in the 1930s and 40s when Japanese women’s language became the tradition of Japanese language. Why did the linguists and intellectuals suddenly begin to praise women’s language as a tradition of the imperial realm during the war period? As described in the beginning of this chapter, the Japanese government, in its attempt to govern the Japanese colonies by forcing the teaching of Japanese language, was facing the problem that there was no single Japanese national language. To legitimate Japan’s linguistic invasion, therefore, it was urgent for the government to declare those characteristics of the Japanese language that proved its superiority over other languages. In ensuring close corporation with the government, I argue, linguists used women’s language to the fullest to give substance to the discussion of the superiority of the Japanese language. By making women’s language a Japanese tradition rooted in the imperial realm and a characteristic unique to the Japanese language, the superiority of the Japanese language appeared unequivocal. Praise for women’s language functioned to maintain the Japanese military regime and legitimize its invasion. Discourses praising women’s language became meaningful and acceptable, when it was necessary to validate teaching the Japanese national language in the colonies and to legitimate the Japanese colonization.



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Highly praised because of its perceived value, women’s language was not allowed to change. Osa Shizue (1998: 150) points out, in discussing the language of Okinawa, that “making the Okinawan language special by stating that it preserves old Japanese terms results in substantiating it among those people and refusing its changes.” Assigning value to the Okinawan language resulted in refusing its changes. Similarly, women’s language, given the value of the imperial tradition, became a national notion not allowed to change, because any loss or change in women’s language meant loss or change in that tradition. That is why many linguists regarded the use of women’s language as the primary task of female citizens. Kindaichi (1942: 309) declares: “To become a complete Japanese woman, she must, more than anything, acquire this traditional Japanese woman’s language.” Kieda Masuichi (1943: 85) claims: “If a young woman uses boku or kimi … I should say that such a woman is not a Japanese woman.” These rather emotional statements reflect a latent fear of losing or experiencing any change in the imperial tradition, a fear also shared by the male teacher in Manchuria (cited at the beginning of this chapter). Linguists during the war period, this chapter has shown, obviously changed their evaluation of women’s language, giving it a highly positive redefinition as integral to the imperial tradition. The next chapter will examine if similar change occurs in academic discourses such as grammar textbooks and school readers.

chapter 8

Gendering of the national language under national mobilization The power of women’s language, the language of love, comfort, and friendship, during this time [of war], along with the solemn, simple language of soldiers [which expresses] determination and responsibility, strengthens the unity of those who fight and promotes the will to cooperate with each other. Nagao Masanori (1943) Josei to kotoba [Women and language] In this statement by Nagao Masanori, a male linguist, women’s language is contrasted with soldiers’ language, both of which are conceptualized as supporting the military regime, like the wheels of a car (Nagao 1943: 131). As the National Mobilization Law (Kokka soodooinhoo) in 1938 required women to “serve the country behind the guns,” women’s language was expected to serve through “love, comfort, and friendship.” Linguistic gender differences were considered crucial in keeping women in their role behind the guns. This statement shows, furthermore, that women’s language was redefined as an indispensable part of Japanese national language along with soldiers’ language, men’s language. This is a great change considering that, as seen in Part 2, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, women’s speech was completely excluded from national language. It indicates that another change had occurred to women’s language, along with the new conceptualization of women’s language as imperial tradition, covered in Chapter 7, from the early twentieth century till the end of WWII. This chapter intends to delineate the process in which academic discourse placed women’s language within the national language during a time when National Mobilization required female citizens to contribute to the war. Before analyzing that discourse, I will describe Japanese women’s roles under the National Mobilization to show what was expected of women’s language in the war period. Women’s roles in national mobilization In 1938, the Japanese government issued the National Mobilization Law; women, who had been defined as “secondary citizens” by the Great Japan Imperial Constitution, were also required to contribute to the war. The government actively

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cultivated women as subjects of the emperor by assigning female intellectuals to governmental committees and combining female socio-political groups. In 1937, Yoshioka Yayoi, founder of Tokyo Women’s Medical College, was assigned to a position in the Education Committee. Subsequently, many female leaders such as Ootsuma Kotaka, founder of Ootsuma Women’s College, Inoue Hideko, Principal of Nihon Women’s College, and Muraoka Hanako, a writer, were assigned to positions in governmental committees. From such vantage points, the government encouraged women to cooperate with the military government (Suzuki 1997: 17–19). Women, who had not only been denied suffrage but also participation in political meetings, suddenly were given opportunities to speak out. Both female educators, such as Takara Tomi and Hani Motoko, and female political activists, such as Ichikawa Fusae and Yamataka Shigeri, welcomed the National Mobilization as an opportunity for women to participate in national politics and social activities (Suzuki 1997). Ichikawa Fusae, who led the women’s suffrage movement throughout the pre- and postwar periods, stated: “We promoted women’s participation in governmental administration and other political groups as women’s political participation, a way to liberate women” (Suzuki 1997: 103). Two major female groups, Aikoku fujinkai (The Patriotic Lady’s Group) and Dai Nihon kokuboo fujinkai (The Great Japan National Defense Lady’s Group) mobilized women in general. While the former group was founded in 1901 for middleclass women, the latter was founded in 1932 by the military government to embrace housewives, as well as factory workers and prostitutes. For housewives, confined to their homes, this was a chance to participate in social activities, such as seeing soldiers off, making care packages, asking people to make thousandstitch belts on the street, greeting the arrivals of soldiers’ remains, and visiting injured soldiers in hospitals.1 Armed with an official excuse to leave home, they experienced the true meaning of “liberation” for the first time. Doing these activities with factory workers and prostitutes, Japanese housewives also experienced the importance of “equality” for the first time (Kanoo 1995: 96). In 1942, the two groups were combined into Dai nihon fujinkai (The Great Japan Lady’s Group), which included every Japanese woman over the age of 20, with the aim of “serving the country of the emperor” (Suzuki 1997: 19–20). Both female leaders and women in general, therefore, worked diligently to contribute to the war, much more than the military government had expected.2 1. The thousand-stitch belt is a strip of cloth, decorated with 1000 stitches, each by a different woman, which women gave as an amulet to soldiers on their way to war during WWII. 2. According to Washi (2000), female leaders’ efforts in cooperation with the military regime were also observed in the field of language policy. Kokugo kyookai (National Language Society), established by the Ministry of Education in 1930 suddenly started a Ladies’ Section in 1939 and appointed major female educators as committee members. The Society and the Ladies’ Section



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National Mobilization, however, did not require women to fulfill the same roles as men. The military government did not consider the conscription of women. Since the first conscription law in 1873, the government had consistently recruited men only. As Prime Minister Tojoo Hideki stated in 1943, “We are not considering the conscription of women at all now. If we enlist women, following the U.S. and Britain, what would happen to our important family system?” (Wakakuwa 2000[1995]: 44). Even during the last years of the war, the military’s top brass vehemently refused the idea of female conscription, arguing that “to enlist women or to recruit women would lead to the fundamental destruction of our national system” (Ooe 1988: 442).3 In short, the military government strongly believed that “the destruction of the family system is the destruction of the country” (Wakakuwa 2000[1995]: 45). Why was the government so afraid of changing the family system? One reason was the perceived necessity to increase the population. Population control was launched in 1938, aiming to shore up both the military and the labor force. In 1941, the population policy set a goal of increasing Japan’s total population to 100,000,000 by 1960. The policy clearly stated that, to accomplish the goal, the employment of women over twenty years old should be repressed to encourage them to marry (Kondoo 1995: 491–492). Even under National Mobilization, therefore, women were expected to become mothers and to produce soldiers, rather than to become soldiers themselves. Another, more significant reason for refusing the conscription of women was to maintain the patriarchal family system, which had been very effective at controlling and mobilizing the Japanese nation. As indicated at the beginning of Chapter 3, the Great Japan Imperial Constitution (1889) established the patriarchal family, based on the father’s absolute power, turning the private sphere of the family into a minimum unit of the state. By creating continuity from the patriarchal family to the imperial state, the ideology of state-as-patriarchal family successfully presented the whole nation as the children of the emperor.4 The both agreed on the basic principle that women should speak feminine language. Here again, female leaders decided to work together with the Society, because “feminine speech was elevated to the goal of the government’s language policy” (Washi 2000: 68). 3. The statement that they do not recruit women soldiers, however, was merely the principle. In practice, many women were forced into military training and some women actually joined the military toward the end of the war. The army recruited female telephone operators in 1943 and airplane maintenance women in 1945. In June 1945, the law to recruit men from 15 to 60 years old and women from 17 to 40 years old passed parliament, but the war ended before anyone was drafted. 4. According to Wakakuwa (2005: 70), the ideology of state-as-family was the governing principle born in China and imported into Japan with Confucianism.

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natural expansion of the private family as coterminous with the whole country, it was claimed, gave soldiers a powerful motivation to fight. Hani Motoko, founder of Jiyuu Gakuen School, pointed out in 1943 that, while soldiers in other countries lose the will to fight when they long for their families back home, in Japan, since the emperor is their father and the country is their immediate family, the more they think of their families, the stronger they are motivated to fight (Suzuki 1997: 79). Conscription of women was denied, therefore, because it was considered to cause destruction of the patriarchal family system, of national mobilization through the patriarchy, and of sustaining the soldiers’ will to fight. Thus, there were three majors roles expected of women during the war period. The first was that of gunkoku no haha (mother of the militant nation). Their job was to send their husbands to the front and to bear male children who would become soldiers and serve gladly under the emperor. Wakakuwa Midori (2000[1995]), by analyzing the illustrations of women’s magazines during the period, documents mothers’ repeated presentation with their baby boys worshipping the souls of their dead husbands at Yasukuni Shrine. Women’s second role was to provide subservient labor. They were to work in the munitions industry, as military nurses, and in the home. As the war situation worsened, the government in 1943 enlisted unmarried women over fourteen years old to work in airplane and munitions factories. The next year, the complete mobilization of women forced all women, including students, to work in rough environments. Their third role was that of cheerleader for the war effort, as we can see from the social activities women participated in outside their homes. Wakakuwa (2000[1995]: 22) points out that there was a symbiotic relationship between the war and the patriarchal system and that the three major roles given to women in the war were “merely compulsory enforcement of the roles assigned to women in the traditional system of patriarchy.” With these roles forcing women to work outside their homes, the traditional family system was practically destroyed. Yet, it was precisely at such a critical time when the myth of traditional patriarchy and the myth of gendered citizenship should have been most desperately defended. During the war years, therefore, what we can properly regard now as an obvious and uncomfortable contradiction came portentously to the fore with the requirement to nationalize women as Japanese citizens while at the same time keeping the asymmetrical distinction between female and male by making women secondclass citizens. I maintain that, through language, too, National Mobilization kept women in the position of second-class citizens. Considering that the construction of linguistic ideologies often form iconic representations of citizens, as seen in Chapter 6, women’s language had to be incorporated into men’s national language

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to make women serve the war as subjects of the emperor. However, women’s language was not to be given the same status as men’s language in the national language. To maintain women’s position “behind the guns,” it was necessary to create gender differences in the national language, rendering women’s language as an exception at the margin of the national language. How did the wartime discourses accomplish these dual tasks of simultaneously incorporating women’s language into the national language while keeping the explicit gender distinction? This chapter will describe that process by analyzing intellectuals’ comments, and the discourses of grammar textbooks, books on etiquette, and school readers, mostly produced by linguists. Gender in academic discourse In this section, I will analyze academic discourses produced during wartime from three different perspectives. First, I will examine the discourses of linguists and intellectuals from the perspective of whether and how they located women’s language in its relationship with national language. Second, I will investigate the discourses of grammar textbooks and examine how they located linguistic features associated with gender in their prescription of national language. Third, I will analyze the discourses of school readers from the perspective whether and how they used linguistic features differently according to speakers’ gender in their model stories and lessons. Locating women’s language at the margin of standard Japanese Surprisingly, during the war years, despite press control and the lack of paper, many books about language continued to be published (Miki 2001: 17–29). After the Ministry of Education made teaching standard Japanese language a goal of school education, many standard-language grammar textbooks, teachers’ manuals, and school readers were published. In the 26 years from 1918 to 1944, I found 29 such publications. References to women’s language increased from a few comments, to a book chapter, to a whole book. The number of books on women’s language peaked in 1943. All of them discussed women’s language in terms of etiquette; none were grammar textbooks on women’s language. Military censorship cleared all these books for publication, testament that the Japanese government was fully aware of the necessity to reinforce National Mobilization from the aspect of language. Some grammar textbooks published during the war show two tendencies very similar to books published in the prewar period. First, some regard male-related

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features as standard without referring to gender differences. The grammar textbooks by Yamada Yoshio (1922), Maruyama Rinpei (1935) and Hashimoto Shinkichi (1938) simply present male-related features as standard. The second, more frequent tendency regards masculine features as standard, but adds feminine features as nonstandard exceptions. Matsushita Daizaburoo (1924: 625), for example, states that the “wa [sentence-­final form] in general use indicates the obviousness of a statement to others, but in women’s language, it is pronounced heavily and is used to appeal to the emotion of others.” What is implied by “in general use” here is male use. Nagata Yoshitaroo (1976[1935]: 108) comments that “words listed after o-deki are generally used but words listed before o-deki are confined to women” (1976[1935]: 108). By the phrase, “generally used,” Nagata means words spoken by middleclass men. These descriptions create men’s usage as the norm and women’s usage as the exception. The grammar textbook, Hanashi kotoba no bumpoo: Kotoba zukai hen [Grammar of spoken language: On language usage] by Mio Isago (1942), is of particular interest, since he devoted his whole last chapter to women’s language. He explains the reason for including this chapter:

(1) I touched on women’s language in previous chapters. However, as I described general language use based on male language as standard Japanese, some of my descriptions do not fit women’s language. In general usage (including written language), the da-form and desu-form are clearly distinguished. In women’s spoken language, by contrast, they cannot be as clearly distinguished. (Mio 1995[1942]: 403)

What is called “general language use” or “general usage” here is, of course, men’s usage. By including a separate chapter on women’s language at the end of his book, Mio successfully marginalized women’s language with respect to the national language. Furuta Toosaku, in his commentary written for the 1995 reprint, praised Mio for writing this chapter: “In the case of what is called spoken-language grammar, there was a tendency to present norms only, and little was written about women’s language” (Mio 1995 [1942]: 451). This comment ironically proves that men’s usage is still considered the norm of standard spoken Japanese today. It was not only women’s language that received such biased treatment in grammar textbooks. Languages not spoken by “educated Tokyo residents,” such as regional varieties of Japanese and those spoken by uneducated speakers were excluded from the standard language. Kieda Masuichi (1943: 86) prohibits the use of feminine personal pronouns such as watai, atai, and wate because “they are merely dialects.” Washi Rumi (2001) shows that the speech of village girls and female factory workers was rejected in the war years, and proposes to call

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accepted women’s language of this period by the term, “standard women’s language.” This indicates that the definition of standard Japanese as the speech of “educated Tokyo residents” was also applied to women’s speech, and the speech of “educated Tokyo women” was adopted as women’s language. Nevertheless, grammar textbooks’ treatment of women’s language differed from their treatment of regional varieties and variations spoken by uneducated speakers; while grammar textbooks increasingly referred to women’s language use, regional varieties and the speech spoken by uneducated speakers were completely ignored. Compared to women’s language, located at the margin of (within) standard language, regional varieties and the speech of uneducated speakers were located outside standard Japanese. Gendering the national language The starkest difference between the prewar and the wartime academic discourses was an increasing reference to gender differences. As noted in Chapter 3, there were few references to linguistic gender differences in the argument to unify speech and writing in the prewar period. During the war, however, more linguists and intellectuals began to refer to linguistic gender differences in their discussions of standard Japanese. The prominent grammarian, Matsushita Daizaburoo (1930a: 379), creates the distinction between women’s “weak” language and men’s “rough” language: “Women of any age should use the beautification [prefix o]. Otherwise, her language sounds rough…. In contrast, if a young man uses this beautification, his speech sounds feminine and weak.” Tanizaki Junichiroo (1975 [1934]: 217), argues for gender distinction in writing: “Since equal rights for sexes do not mean changing a woman into a man, and the Japanese language has a system for distinguishing the sex of the writer, I want women’s writing to express womanly softness.” Shinmura Izuru (1938: 96), though recognizing that women’s and men’s speech were getting closer, still promotes the difference: “Although we do not approve of linguistic equality between men and women in the national language … we cannot help noticing that … the language of the two sexes is getting closer…. Nevertheless, the proximity of linguistic differences of social classes and sexes should have their own limitations.” Morita (1943: 96) also grieves over the proximity of women’s and men’s speech as a problem similar to the inflow of foreign words. The military government strongly emphasized the importance of maintaining linguistic gender differences. In 1941, when the Pacific War began, the Ministry of Education issued Reihoo yookoo [Gist of Manners]. In the fifth chapter, “On language use,” it emphasizes the importance of gender differences as well as class differences. According to Reihoo yookoo kaisetsu [A General Commentary on

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Gist of Manners], Reihoo yookoo emphasizes the importance of linguistic gender differences by stating: “Men’s honorific language and women’s honorific language are different,” “Women should not use [masculine first-person pronouns] wagahai, wareware, and boku,” and “For people younger than you, men should use kimi and women should use anata and omae-san so that it sounds soft.” As for replies, it states “un and aa can be used only among very intimate equals and people younger than you. Women should never use them” (Reihoo yookoo kenkyuukai 1941: 58, 59, 61, 65–66). In short, Reihoo yookoo requires “All men to use manly language and all women to use womanly language” (Reihoo yookoo kenkyuukai 1941: 65), making a strict linguistic distinction between female and male citizens. The government, linguists and intellectuals of the war period, by frequently referring to the importance of linguistic gender differences, gendered the national language. One other group of discourses during the war demonstrates the strong intention of gendering the national language. These can be called essentialization discourses, asserting that women’s language is based on women’s innate characteristics (cf. Chapter 4, note 1). As Yoshida Sumio (1935: 145, 149) argues, “the elegance of women’s language has its root in women’s innate nature, meaning that it is probably eternal,” and that “men’s language is intellectual and logical … and women’s language emotional and affective.” Ishiguro Yoshimi (1943: 224) argues similarly that women’s language was naturally born out of sex distinction: “The origin of women’s language is her sex. So any female language from any country will have pronunciation, vocabulary, and usage different from men’s language.” There were, however, arguments that directly contradicted these essentialization discourses. For example, during the same years, Kikuzawa (1940: 228) declares, “Our national language is emotional rather than logical, feminine rather than masculine, and simple and clear rather than complicated,” indicating that these characteristics of Japanese language were true of both female and male speakers. And Kasuga Masaharu (1985[1918]: 80) adds that, “basically, the difference between men’s language and women’s language increases as [the speaker begins to use] adult speech. Children’s speech, especially that spoken by six-to-seven-­yearolds, has extremely small [gender] differences.” This last argument, for socially learned linguistic gender differences, is a complete contradiction of the above claim by Ishiguro Yoshimi that “women’s language has its root in women’s innate nature.” Why then did many linguists assert that women’s language was based on women’s innate nature? What made their discourses possible, meaningful and acceptable? I argue that the strong intention of government, linguists and intellectuals to gender the national language was the pivotal factor here. To construct women’s language based on women’s innate characteristics was to make the linguistic difference eternal, based on nature; such



Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 179

claims, we can logically conclude, were made with the deliberate intention of gendering the national language. Grammar textbooks that associated individual linguistic features with women further promoted gendering the national language. Table 8.1 shows linguistic features associated with either males or females in 16 grammar textbooks of standard Japanese, published during the twentieth century periods of war. I selected the linguistic features, based on whether they are defined as “women’s word, feminine form or used only by women” or “men’s word, masculine form or used only by men” in the 16 grammar textbooks. The letter “m” in parentheses indicates that the linguistic feature is assigned to men. The letter “f ” in parentheses indicates that the feature is assigned to women. An asterisk indicates those features assigned to women that had been recognized as features of schoolgirl speech during the prewar period. Table 8.1 contains two masculinized personal pronouns, boku and kimi, eight sentence-final forms and one feminized honorific prefix, o. Of eight sentence-final forms, three forms, ze, zo and ka, were masculinzed (m), meaning at least one of the grammar textbooks referred to them as features used only by men. The feature ka refers to an interrogative sentence-final form. Five of the eight sentence-final forms were feminized (f), meaning that at least one of the grammar textbooks referred to them as features used only by women. Of the five feminized sentence-final forms, three, (da)wa, no(yo), and te(yo), were features that had been recognized as schoolgirl features. Some of the schoolgirl features in parenthesis in Table 8.1 were occasionally deleted; when a grammar textbook mentions either dawa or wa, therefore, the reference is almost certainly to (da)wa. A check mark in the table means the grammar textbook refers to the indicated linguistic feature. A blank indicates that the grammar textbook does not refer to the linguistic feature. Table 8.1 shows three major tendencies. First, there was inconsistency concerning which features should be associated with gender, except the sentence-final form, wa. While some grammar textbooks did not refer to gender differences, other textbooks emphasized gender differences. In textbook (10), Sakuma (1983 [1940]: 61–62) states, “Both zo and ze are used only by men. Wa is used frequently by women.” He then devotes a section to “wa as a woman’s word,” further stressing the gender difference (1983 [1940]: 66). In book (16), Iwai Yoshio also emphasizes gender differences, stating that “Boku is a special word for men of the educated class,” “Wa is used only by women” and “Zo and ze are used mostly by young men” (Iwai 1944: 17, 150, 151). As for the sentence-final form wa, after the prominent linguist Matsushita Daizaburoo classified it as a woman’s word in 1924, other textbooks followed his classification and described it as a feminine form. Nevertheless, the authors of four textbooks, (7) Maruyama (1935), (9) Hashimoto (1938), (11) Tokieda (1941), and (13) Kindaichi (1942) do not call wa a feminine form. Those

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Table 8.1  Linguistic features gendered in grammar textbooks from 1918 to 1945. Personal pronouns Authors (Years published)   (1)  Yamada (1922)   (2)  Matsushita (1924)   (3)  Matsushita (1930a)   (4)  Matsushita (1930b)   (5)  Kieda (1931)   (6)  Nagata (1935)   (7)  Maruyama (1935)   (8)  Matsuura (1936)   (9)  Hashimoto (1938) (10)  Sakuma (1940) (11)  Tokieda (1941) (12)  Hirokoo (1941) (13)  Kindaichi (1942) (14)  Mio (1942) (15)  Fujiwara (1944) (16)  Iwai (1944)

(m) boku, kimi

Sentence-final forms

Prefix

(m) (f)* (f) (f) (f)* (f)* ze,zo (da)wa wayo wane no(yo) te(yo)

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

(m) ka

✓

(f) o

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓

✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓

Notes: An (m) indicates that the linguistic feature is assigned to men. An (f) indicates that the feature is assigned to women. An asterisk indicates that those features had been recognized as features of schoolgirl speech during the prewar period. A check indicates the grammar textbook refers to the linguistic feature.

four authors and Yamada (1) (1922) – i.e., five of the 16 textbooks – moreover, do not associate any linguistic features with gender. This suggests that, when those five grammar textbooks were published, gendering linguistic features was a work in progress; Japanese linguists were still at work differentiating what they regarded as feminine or masculine features. This endeavor of gendering features has no end since, as argued in the Introduction, speakers use linguistic features for varying pragmatic and epistemic purposes according to different contexts. The analysis here demonstrates that one justification of a linguist allotting linguistic features between feminine and masculine features can be found in a classification in a previous study. After the prominent linguist Matsushita classified wa as a feminine feature, other linguists followed suit. The gendered categorization of linguistic features, in short, is often constructed and legitimated by the academic tradition of referring to previous studies, another metalinguistic practice.

Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 181



Second, grammar textbooks published for use in Japanese colonies emphasized gender differences much more than those published for use in Japan. Book (15) in Table 8.1, Japanese: Standard spoken grammar of the Co-prosperity Sphere, by Fujiwara Yoichi (1944), was intended as a language textbook for people in Manchuria and China who were forced to learn Japanese. Of the 16 textbooks in Table 8.1, this one classifies the greatest number of features according to gender of the speaker. Fujiwara states: “Kimi, boku, and ore are called men’s words” and “Men do not use wa … because the sentence-final form wa … is a woman’s word.” About the use of ka in interrogative form, Fujiwara holds that “women ask [a question] without adding ka” (Fujiwara 1944: 18–20, 40, 54, 111). He divides many of the sentence-final forms according to gender and describes in detail differences according to age, social class, and gender of the speaker, suggesting that these different usages prove the peculiarity and superiority of the Japanese language. As discussed in Chapter 7, with no single Japanese national language inside Japan, the myth of such a language was promoted in the colonies. Similarly, with no clear gender distinction of linguistic features, the myth of a gendered Japanese national language had to be created in the colonies.5 Third, Table 8.1 shows that schoolgirl features, teyo, dawa, and noyo, which were severely criticized during the prewar period, were included in standard grammar textbooks. As seen in Chapter 5, these features had become symbols of frivolous female students and feminine sexuality, and were excluded from the national language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the wartime grammar textbooks, however, schoolgirl features appeared as legitimate standard language for women and were not criticized. Textbook (6) by Nagata (1976[1935]: 95) in Table 8.1 simply presents wa as a woman’s word: “teyo aside, wa became a woman’s word in general use.” Nagata also presented teyo simply as a feminine form without any criticism (1976[1935]: 114). The grammar textbook (10) by Sakuma (1983 [1940]: 78) even defends woman’s use of no, te, and koto as substitutes for ka 5. This tendency to emphasize linguistic gender differences in teaching Japanese to non-native speakers of Japanese is also observed in recent Japanese language textbooks such as Mizutani and Mizutani (1977: 208), which presents the following as a model conversation: Husband: Wife: Husband: Wife: Husband: Wife:

Aa, tsukareta. (Oh, I’m tired.) Ofuro ga waite iru kedo. (The hot bath is ready.) Atode hairoo. Sutoobu wa tsuiteiru? ([I’ll take a bath] later. Is the stove on?) Ee, tsukete aru wa. (Yes, I turned it on). Konban Kawakami-san ga kuru soo dayo. (Tonight, Kawakami is coming.) Soo. Hisashi buri ne. (Is that right? It’s been a long time [since I met Kawakami].)

I n addition to the surprisingly patriarchal roles assigned to husband and wife, the speech of the wife is distinguished by the use of the feminine sentence-final forms wa and ne.

182 Gender, language and ideology

in interrogative forms: “they were all created to soften the demanding connotation implied in ka.” Textbook (14) by Mio (1995 [1942]: 404–405) also refers to teyo as an “ending form of women’s language,” without any criticism. In addition to the textbooks cited above, books written by linguists for general Japanese readers during the period also supported the inclusion of schoolgirl features into standard Japanese. Hoshina (1936: 224), in his book, Kokugo to Nihon seishin [National Language and Japanese Spirit], emphasizes gender differences in saying that wayo, noyo, and wa “are for female students and male students should not use them,” but he does not criticize the use of these forms by women. The book, Utsukushii Nihongo: Josei shinsho [The Beautiful Japanese Language: Women’s Book], written by Ishiguro (1943: 234–235), simply enumerates wa(ne), no(ne), and no(yo) as women’s language, also without criticism. Why did schoolgirl speech, continuously criticized in the pre-WWII era, suddenly gain standard status during the war? In answering this question, it is useful to consider that linguists of the same period rigorously criticized some other usages of female students, such as the use of masculine pronouns kimi and boku. Hoshina (1936: 225) rejects such usage: “Recently, some schoolgirls use personal pronouns of [male] students such as kimi and boku. However, it is a kind of metamorphosis and, in our country, men’s and women’s usage has always been strictly distinguished.” Kikuzawa (1940: 303) concurs: “If we recognize the difference between men’s and women’s language, we should not let women use the masculine kimi or boku.” Kieda (1943: 85) even claims, somewhat grandiloquently, that “women should never use [boku]. If a young woman uses boku or kimi … I should say that such a woman is not a Japanese woman.” In other words, these writers reinforced gender distinction in their grammar textbooks by incorporating schoolgirl features into standard Japanese, while simultaneously criticizing those features that crossed the border of gender distinction. This is ample evidence that the writers of these textbooks were strongly focused on constructing a gendered national language. In so doing, they thus adopted the language of “educated” female students, which would be easily accepted as standard language, rather than the language of non-Tokyo or “uneducated” women. These writers adopted schoolgirl features into standard Japanese not because schoolgirl speech had gained status, but because it enabled them to emphasize gender differences within the national language. Teaching gender differences in national language readers As discussed in Chapter 6 (cf. Table 6.4), national language school readers – from the first state textbook in 1904 to the fourth in 1933 – increasingly incorporated schoolboy features into the national language, while excluding features associated

Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 183



with women and schoolgirls. Thus, this section analyzes the fifth state textbook, Asahi tokuhon [Sunrise Reader], used from 1941 to 1945. Asahi tokuhon was compiled by the Ministry of Education with the purpose of “especially teaching the glory of the imperial realm, fostering the nation’s spirit, and making them [students] realize the responsibility of being the emperor’s subjects” (Kaigo 1964b: 710). It includes many materials emphasizing the divinity of the emperor, respect for soldiers, and admiration for Japan as the leader of East Asia. It is composed of nineteen volumes, two volumes each of Yomikata [Readings] and Kotoba no okeiko [Language Lessons] for first and second graders, another four volumes of Yomikata [Readings] and Kotoba no okeiko [Language Lessons] for third graders, eight volumes of Shotooka kokugo [Elementary School National Language], and three volumes of Kootooka kokugo [Higher Elementary School National Language]. I will analyze four of them, Yomikata 2, Yomikata 4, Shotooka kokugo 2, and Shotooka kokugo 4 (Monbushoo 1964[1941]). The first characteristic of Asahi tokuhon is that it teaches the first-person pronoun, boku as a boy’s pronoun, in contrast with watashi as the more general firstperson pronoun used by both girls and boys. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show whether a girl or a boy uses boku and watashi in the four volumes of the school reader I examined. Boku-tachi and watashi-tachi are plural forms of boku and watashi respectively. Boku and watashi in Tables 8.2 and 8.3 include those words written in the three Japanese orthographies, katakana, hiragana, or kanji. In Table 8.2 and 8.3, a check indicates that the speaker uses the pronoun irrespective of the number of times; (c) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in conversation; and (n) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in narrative description. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 do not present the first-person pronouns of adults. Most adults use watashi, and there were no occurrences of boku used either by an adult man or an adult woman. Table 8.2  Speakers of boku in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Speaker Girl

Boy

Title of Readers Yomikata 2 Yomikata 4 Shotooka kokugo 2 Shotooka kokugo 4 Yomikata 2 Yomikata 4 Shotooka kokugo 2 Shotooka kokugo 4

boku (c)

boku (n)

boku-tachi (c)

boku-tachi (n)

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓

184 Gender, language and ideology

Table 8.3  Speakers of watashi in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Speaker Title of Reader Girl

Boy

Yomikata 2 Yomikata 4 Shotooka kokugo 2 Shotooka kokugo 4 Yomikata 2 Yomikata 4 Shotooka kokugo 2 Shotooka kokugo 4

watashi (c) watashi (n) watashi-tachi (c) watashi-tachi (n) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Notes: A check indicates that the speaker uses the pronoun irrespective of the number of times; (c) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in conversation; and (n) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in narrative description. Boku-tachi and watashi-tachi are plural forms of boku and watashi respectively.

Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show four points. First, boku, and its plural form bokutachi, are used in almost all volumes in both conversation and narrative. Boku appears in the title of Unit 12, Boku no booenkyoo [My Telescope] of Shotooka kokugo 2. Second, the use of boku is strictly confined to boys. Third, girls never use boku but use watashi in both conversation and narrative. Fourth, boys sometimes use watashi. They call themselves watashi when they talk to older persons. The boy character of a well-known great man uses watashi even in his childhood. Over all, Asahi tokuhon taught children the gendered use of the first-person pronouns boku (for boys only) and watashi (for both boys and girls). The second characteristic of Asahi tokuhon is the gendered use of sentence-final forms and interjections. Although the school reader uses these linguistic features differently depending on the speaker’s age and social class, the gender of the speaker is an important determinant of the choice. As shown in Figure 8.1, Lesson 16 of Yomikata 2, Heitai gokko [Play Soldiers], presents conversations between boys and girls who play soldiers. The boys declare one after another what kind of soldier they will be playing, saying, “Boku wa hohei dayo (I will be an infantryman),” “Boku wa kihei dayo (I will be a cavalryman),” “Boku wa hoohei dayo (I will be an artillery man),” “ Boku wa eihei dayo (I will be a guard),” and “Boku wa senshahei dayo (I will be a tankman),” all using the sentence-final form, dayo. Then two girls finally declare that, “Watashi tachi wa kangofu ni nari mashoo (We will be nurses),” using mashoo rather than dayo. The repeated use of dayo by boys followed by the use of mashoo by girls explicitly told the children that women and men should use different sentencefinal forms.



Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 185

Figure 8.1  Lesson 16 Heitai gokko [Play Soldiers] of Asahi tokuhon (1941) (Kaigo 1964b: 368).

To see whether such tendency is observed throughout Asahi tokuhon, Table 8.4 shows how the sentence-final forms and interjections are used differently, according to the gender and age of the speaker in the four volumes of Asahi tokuhon I examined. In Table 8.4, I divide the sentence-final forms into eight groups, from (1) to (8), according to the gender and age of the speaker using the feature. Interjections are shown in (9) of Table 8.4. The “Girls” column indicates female children of various ages, including younger and older sisters; “Women” indicates adult women, including mother, grandmother, and aunt; “Boys” includes male children of various ages; and “Men” includes father, grandfather, and uncle. A check indicates that the speaker uses the feature, irrespective of how frequently. Each volume of Asahi tokuhon contains several different kinds of reading materials, such as conversation, story, old myth and descriptive essay. I analyzed the use of sentence-final forms and interjections only in conversation. I excluded from the data conversations conducted by animals and natural objects, since their gender could not be determined. I did not include conversations within old myths because the speakers were talking in old Japanese. Different pragmatic functions of each feature have been extensively studied. Table 8.4 is not concerned with pragmatic effects caused by using different features but presents some features used exclusively according to the speaker’s gender.6 Table 8.4 verifies that some sentence-final forms and interjections are used differently according to the gender of the speaker. The features in (1) and (2) show differences between adult women and men. Sentence-final forms desu and masu in 6. Grammar textbooks during the war period, as seen in the previous section, often referred to the three schoolgirl features, teyo, dawa, and noyo, as typically feminine features. These features were not used in the school reader under analysis. It is especially interesting to note that the most typically feminine particle nowadays, wa, does not appear in the school reader.

186 Gender, language and ideology

Table 8.4  Sentence-final forms and interjections used differently according to the speaker’s gender in Asahi tokuhon (1941). Group of features Linguistic features (1) desu-form masu-form (2) desu,masu+yo desu,masu+ne (3) da-form

(4) Masculine

(5) Hortative +ne (6) yo-form

(7) ne-form

(8) Feminine

(9) Interjection

desu, deshita masu, mashita, masen desu-yo masu-yo desu-ne masu-ne noun+da adjective+da koto-da noda dayo, tayo dana,danaa dane daroo tamae zo sa na mashoo, deshoo ikoo, miyoo, shiyoo mashoo-ne, deshoo-ne noun+yo adjective+yo verb+yo noun+ne adjective+ne verb+ne none da-koto desu-mono maa ara oo oyaoya oya

Girls

Women

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓ ✓

✓

Boys

Men

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓

Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 187



(1) are used by all speakers except adult women. Instead of desu and masu, adult women use desu yo, desu ne, masu yo and masu ne, adding yo or ne, as shown in (2). The sentence-final forms categorized into the groups (3) and (4) show clear linguistic gender differences. The various da-forms in (3) are used only by boys and men and what I call masculine sentence-final forms in (4) are also used only by boys and men. While mashoo and deshoo in (5) are used by all speakers, the sentence-final forms in the second line of (5), ikoo (let’s go), miyoo (let’s see), shiyoo (let’s do), are used only by boys and men, and the forms with ne in the third line of (5), mashoo-ne and deshoo-ne, are used only by girls and women. Where boys and men say, ikoo (Let’s go), girls and women say, iki-mashoo or iki-mashoone. Among the yo-forms in (6), girls use noun+yo, while boys use the other forms. The sentence-final forms in (7) and (8) include features mostly used by girls and women. Although adult men use verb+ne of ne-forms in (7), boys never use any of the ne-forms in (7). The features in (8), none, koto, and mono, are used only by female speakers, so I call them feminine sentence-final forms. (8) shows that, since only boys and men use the da-forms as shown in (2), when girls and women use daforms, they say da-koto adding koto after da. Finally, the exclamations in (9) are used mostly by girls and women. Table 8.4 shows, in short, that the school reader Asahi tokuhon taught children the gendered use of sentence-final forms and interjections. Unit 18 of Shotooka kokugo 2 of Asahi tokuhon, Ume (Apricot), demonstrates exactly how the school reader presented the different uses of sentence-final forms and interjections by the speaker’s gender: (2)

Unit 18 Ume (Apricot) A ume da. Ume ga saite-iru to oh apricot sfp apricot top bloom-sfx quot Isamu-san ga ii mashita. boy’s name top say vef-past ‘“Oh, an apricot tree. The apricot tree is in bloom,” said Isamu.’



Maa ureshii. Haru ga kita none to oh happy spring top come-past-sfp quot Haruko-san ga ii mashita. girl’s name top say vef-past ‘“Oh, I’m happy. Spring has come,” said Haruko.’



Mada samui noni kanshinna hana dakoto to yet cold inspite good flower sfp quot Yuriko-san ga ii mashita. girl’s name top say vef-past ‘“It’s still cold. What impressive blossoms,” said Yuriko.’

188 Gender, language and ideology



Hana mo kirei dakeredo nioi ga ii none to flower also beautiful but scent top good sfp quot Harue-san ga ii mashita. girl’s name top say vef-past ‘“The blossoms are beautiful but their fragrance is good, too,” said Harue.’



Ume wa hana yorimo nioi ga saku nodesu to apricot top flower more scent top bloom vef quot Masao-san ga ii mashita. boy’s name top say vef-past ‘“Apricot trees flower more in their fragrance than in their blossoms,” said Masao.’

In this unit, three girls, Haruko, Yuriko, and Harue, and two boys, Isamu and Masao, talk about the same subject, an apricot tree, in a very similar pattern. The repetition of the same pattern highlights their gendered use of linguistic features. The girls use the sentence-final forms, none and koto, and interjection, maa, while the boys use da and desu. The purpose of this unit was not to teach children how to talk about apricot blossoms but to teach them the norm of linguistic gender differences. Widely used during the war period, Asahi tokuhon taught students that girls and boys should use language differently. Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that academic discourse, such as grammar textbooks and school readers, published during the war years from early to mid-twentieth century began actively referring to linguistic gender differences and women’s language. Linguists, intellectuals and the military government emphasized the importance of maintaining linguistic gender differences of Japanese national language. The grammar textbooks and school readers published before the war period, as seen in Chapter 6, excluded linguistic features associated with women and schoolgirl speech from Japanese national language. The grammar textbooks of the war period, in contrast, not only classified linguistic features by gender, but also included schoolgirl features in the national language. The school readers of the war period also taught children that women and men should speak differently by letting the fictional characters in their model stories use different personal pronouns, sentence-final forms and interjections. Women’s language, in short, was incorporated within the national language for the first time. That change parallels the enormous social change in the status of Japanese women, highlighted by female leaders being appointed to governmental committees



Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 189

and many women for the first time began participating in various social activities outside their homes. Thus the shift observed in the relationship between women’s language and national language was directly reflected the shift that occurred to the status of female citizens. The change, however, did not render women’s language as a legitimate part of the national language but located it at the margin of the national language, as an exception. The wartime linguists, by stating that women’s language was not in “general use” or “general usage,” defined men’s language as standard Japanese and women’s language as an exception of standard Japanese. As suggested in the first section of this chapter, the National Mobilization issued by the government required intellectuals to accomplish the dual tasks of simultaneously incorporating women’s language into the national language, while maintaining the explicit gender distinction. The analyses of this chapter demonstrate that academic discourse successfully accomplished its goal of incorporating women’s language at the margin of the national language. Women’s language, therefore, became part of the legitimate national language for the first time, and the notion of a gendered Japanese national language – the belief that the Japanese language contains women’s language – was established. The ideology of a gendered national language was created to reproduce in the language the patriarchal family system crucial to the war effort. By the term, “gendered,” I mean that the national language was not simply divided into women’s and men’s languages according to gender, but that national language was asymmetrically divided into the unmarked, legitimate men’s national language and the marked, exceptional women’s language. “Gendered” implies not only distinction but also asymmetrical power relations. The gendering of a national language symbolically enhances the gendering of Japanese citizens. It reproduces the ideology that men are the legitimate, unmarked standard of primary citizens and women are exceptional, marked, secondary citizens. During the war, when national mobilization was promoted by expanding patriarchal aspects of the family to the state itself, it was crucial that the national language, the linguistic symbol of the nation state, be gendered. In the following discussion, I will conclude the two chapters in Part 3 and discuss the implications of their respective analyses. Women’s language as an imperial tradition originating with the emperor, discussed in Chapter 7, and the gendered national language, analyzed in this chapter, reinforced each other to underline the close connection between the Japanese emperor system and the patriarchal family system. The construction of women’s language as imperial tradition linguistically established the historical justification of both Japanese national language and the emperor system. The Japanese national language functioned as a linguistic representation of the Japanese imperial state during the wartime, as shown in Chapter 7. Since women’s language, redefined as an imperial tradition, was incorporated into the national language, it could now embody the traditional aspect of Japanese

190 Gender, language and ideology

national language. At the same time, a gendered national language linguistically gave shape to the patriarchal family system, in the sense that women’s language was incorporated at the margin of the national language as a marked exception. Nevertheless, the notion of a gendered national language sounds absurd, if we consider that the ideology of a national language generally develops by denying and excluding variations, such as regional and class varieties. Why did academic discourse suddenly begin to include women’s language into national language, while still excluding regional varieties and the speech of uneducated speakers? It was because incorporating women’s language into the national language was essential to the nationalization of women. Wakakuwa Midori (2000[1995]: 57) discusses the fundamental difference between racism and sexism: Both racism and sexism share the same ideology of synthesizing a national identity by excluding others. Racism and discrimination against women, however, cannot be carried out using the same method. As is clear in the example of Nazi Germany, they could not destroy women in the same manner as they destroyed the Jews. If they had tried that, they would have ended up destroying their own race altogether. The essential point is, therefore, not to destroy them [women], but to keep them in an inferior place and let them fulfill their own particular tasks.

Only women can produce the next generation of workers and soldiers. It becomes crucial, therefore, in nationalizing women, “not to destroy them, but to keep them in an inferior place and let them fulfill their own particular tasks.” That is why linguists, intellectuals, and the government, major producers of grammar textbooks and school readers, suddenly began to incorporate women’s language into their national-language prescriptions. Women’s language was not destroyed but was incorporated at the margin of the national language and was given the particular task of linguistically representing the superior imperial tradition. Women’s language was assigned the value of a superior imperial tradition to incorporate women into the imperial state as second-class citizens. Another reason why linguists, intellectuals, and the government, chose women’s language, rather than regional varieties, to be a tradition of the imperial state and patriarchal system was that nationalism often tries to solve its temporal discrepancy by assigning the past to femininity and the future to masculinity (McClintock 1995; Robertson 1998; Sievers 1983; Yuval-Davis & Anthias 1989). Nationalism necessarily embraces the temporal contradiction of simultaneously looking to both past and future. The nation state cannot be imagined simply by possessing a certain space of land. It is necessary to look to the past to invent its shared history and tradition and look to the future to visualize the present as a process yielding the glorious days to come. And the temporal incongruity of nationalism is often resolved by metaphorically applying gender distinction:



Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 191

[T]he temporal anomaly within nationalism … is typically resolved by figuring the contradiction in the representation of time as a natural division of gender. Women are represented as the atavistic and authentic body of national tradition (inert, backward-looking and natural), embodying nationalism’s conservative principle of continuity. Men, by contrast, represent the progressive agent of national modernity (forward-thrusting, potent and historic), embodying nationalism’s progressive, or revolutionary principle of discontinuity. (McClintock 1995: 358–359)7

If nationalism necessarily connects tradition, nature, and continuity from the past to femininity, and modernity, progress, and discontinuity to masculinity, it was a logical consequence that women’s language was chosen during the war as the symbol of the imperial tradition and patriarchal family system. This suggests that women’s language played a crucial role in the political process of nationalization and National Mobilization, and it was the promotion of an academic discourse by linguists that accomplished it. The belief that the Japanese language contains women’s language was born from the necessity to promote and legitimatize imperial Japan’s war and accompanying aggression elsewhere in Asia. Women’s language, believed by many nowadays to be a beautiful tradition of the Japanese language, was assigned such value of tradition, closely interrelating with the national mobilization and colonialism during the war years. The incorporation of women’s language into the national language during the war was a significant turning point in the historical generation of women’s language. Figure 8.2 presents genealogy of gender-related linguistic ideologies I have analyzed in previous chapters in three different time periods: premodern (1603–1867), modern (1868–1926) and wartime (1914–1945). In Figure 8.2, the two-way arrows (⇔) between gender-related political ideologies and linguistic ideologies indicate that they reflect and reinforce each other. The three phrases, Confucian ideology, Gendered nationalization, and Nationalization of women, under the column of “Gender-related political ideologies,” are intended to include other political ideologies of each period discussed in preceding chapters. Linguistic 7. The association between femininity, tradition and past in nationalism has also been pointed out by other researchers. Yuval-Davis and Anthias (1989: 7) categorize symbolic roles of women in nationalism into five: 1) a mother who biologically reproduces national members, 2) a reproducer of national boundaries by marriage, 3) a successor and creator of national tradition, 4) a symbol of national differences, and 5) a participant in national struggles. The third of these roles, “a successor and creator of national tradition,” shows that women are symbolically expected to preserve and create tradition in nationalism. Sievers (1983: 15), noting that the Meiji government allowed men short hair while it banned short hair for women, states that “it can be seen as a symbolic message to Japan’s women to become repositories of the past, rather than pioneers, with men, of some unknown future.” Robertson (1998: 125) also points out a strong tie between native land and mother, arguing that “By collapsing native place and mother, nostalgic men … can proclaim the inclusion of precisely what they exclude from the process of nation-making today.”

192 Gender, language and ideology

ideologies before the war were clearly gendered. Chapter 1 has demonstrated that Confucian women’s conduct books from 1180 to 1867 produced the ideology of feminine speech, a women’s ideal style of speaking ([1] in Figure 8.2). Chapter 4 has shown that the ideology of feminine speech was maintained through the early modern period of the Meiji era (1868–1912) by conduct books and moral textbooks in schools ([2] right in Figure 8.2). In the same period, the ideology of (men’s) national language was constructed to synthesize a nation state ([2] left in Figure 8.2). The term “Men’s” of men’s national language is put in parentheses to indicate that the masculinization of the national language was accomplished without being explicitly stated, so that it was often (mis)recognized as the national language for all citizens including women (Chapter 3). The construction of feminine speech and (men’s) national language reinforced, and was reinforced by, gendered nationalization, the political ideology during Japan’s modern nation-state building. Academic discourse during the war period, however, dissolved the gendered distinction and incorporated the language of educated Tokyo women into the margin of the national language ([3] in Figure 8.2). The process reinforced and was reinforced by the political ideology of the nationalization of women, which made women secondary citizens of the military regime. The incorporation of women’s language into the national language during the war broke down the gendered linguistic ideologies. It was the establishment of a gendered Japanese national language during the war period that constructed the belief prevalent among contemporary Japanese that the Japanese language has women’s language. This change accounts for two significant characteristics of women’s language today. First, it accounts for the fact that the normative aspect of Japanese women’s language today is concerned with both stylistic as well as linguistic features. Okamoto Shigeko and Janet Shibamoto Smith (2008: 105) distinguish two kinds of norms that constitute the speech norms for Japanese women today: (1) general stylistic features, such as polite, gentle, and refined (the first-order norms), and (2) specific linguistic forms, including phonological, morphological and lexical features (the second-order norms). The authors argue that the indexical process through which the second-order normative forms are linked to the first-order norms of gentleness, politeness, and refinement is ideological. Figure 8.2 demonstrates exactly how the stylistic features and the linguistic features were related within the different political and linguistic ideologies of the three periods. The ideal feminine speech constructed by normative discourse in the pre- and early modern periods (right of [1] and [2] in Figure 8.2) included stylistic features such as speaking politely, gently and in a refined manner. In the early modern period, linguists produced a massive amount of academic discourse, such as grammar textbooks and school readers, in their attempts to prescribe Japanese national language (left of [2] in Figure 8.2), and those academic discourses began to refer to specific linguistic

Chapter 8.  Gendering of the national language 193



Time

Gender-related political ideologies

Linguistic ideologies constructed by academic discourses

[1] Premodern (1603 Confucian ideology ⇔

Feminine speech

1867)

[2] Modern (1868 1926)

[3] War (1914 1945)

Gendered nationalization

⇔

Nationalization of women ⇔

Linguistic ideologies constructed by conductbook discourses

(Men’s) National language

(Men’s) National language

Feminine speech

Women’s language

Figure 8.2  Genealogy of gender-related linguistic ideologies.

features. During the war, the same academic discourses incorporated women’s language into the national language by referring to specific linguistic features and to general stylistic features ([3] in Figure 8.2). This simultaneous reference to both stylistic and linguistic features by academic discourse, I argue, enhanced the construction of indexical association between specific linguistic features with a particular affective stance, such as the politeness, gentleness, and refinement required of ideal feminine speech. Women’s language in Figure 8.2 [3] of the war period, in short, consisted of both the modern ideology of feminine speech in [2] and particular linguistic features associated with women by the academic discourses during the modern and war periods. And these academic discourses became possible and meaningful in specific political ideologies in each period – the prescription of the national language and gendered nationalization in the early modern period,

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and the nationalization of women and the gendering of the national language in the war period. Here again, as demonstrated in Chapter 5, indexicality was not created by repeated use by women themselves, but by the political ideology of nationalizing women, which, in turn, enabled and enhanced academic discourse to include women’s language within the national language by simultaneously referring to both stylistic and linguistic features. Second, the analysis in this chapter accounts for the explicit distinction between women’s language and men’s language only in standard Japanese today. Some researchers have claimed that women’s language is found only in standard Japanese, because the speech of middleclass women in the uptown section of Tokyo constituted women’s language. (Note that this is an essentialist-evolutionary argument, in assuming that the speech of middleclass women in the uptown section of Tokyo naturally became women’s language.) Nevertheless, the analysis in this chapter suggests a reversed process. During the war, as nationalization of women promoted the incorporation of women’s speech into the national language, academic discourse began to refer to linguistic features related to women. Such references, however, were confined to those features fulfilling the definition of the national language, the language of educated Tokyo residents. As shown in this chapter, among linguistic features associated with women, linguists included in the national language those features corresponding with the definition of the national language such as schoolgirl features, rather than the features associated with non-Tokyo or uneducated women. Since then, the ideology of women’s language has been maintained by incorporating features of standard Japanese. Uptown linguistic features are typical examples of standard Japanese. Some features of uptown speech are found in women’s language today, not because the speech of Tokyo uptown women became women’s language but because academic discourse has been including the features of Tokyo uptown women as women’s language. Part 3 has shown that, during the war period, discourses of linguists and intellectuals established women’s language as the symbol of imperial tradition, the tradition originating with the emperor system. Contemporary Japanese, however, do not connect women’s language to the emperor system at all, but rather interpret women’s language as a natural reflection of women’s femininity. In Part 4, I will show how the ideology of Japanese women’s language was separated from the emperor system, by analyzing the discourses produced during the American occupation period after the end of WW II.

part 4

Essentializing women’s language The postwar U.S. Occupation

After its unconditional surrender on August 14th, 1945, Japan was to transform itself from a military regime to a democratic nation. On August 30th, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), Gen. Douglas MacArthur, arrived in Japan to launch the next seven years of the US occupation (I will henceforth refer to the American Occupation Administration located in Tokyo after the war as GHQ [General Headquarters]). The first of the five reform orders MacArthur announced to Prime Minister Shidehara on October 11th concerned the liberation of Japanese women by giving them suffrage.1 Japan at that time followed the Imperial Constitution, promulgated in 1889, in which women were legal nonentities without the right to vote or to possess property. In families, the male head was given absolute power to determine property, inheritance, divorce and children’s marriages. The equality policy of women and men promoted by GHQ dramatically changed the legal and institutional rights of Japanese women, who had been expected to serve in the war as second-class citizens. In 1946, the vote was extended to women over twenty years old and women’s liberation movements emerged. The new Constitution of Japan, issued on November 3rd, stipulated fundamental human rights, including two articles, Article 14, “Equality of the sexes,” and Article 24, “Equality of husband and wife.”2 The women’s equality and rights guaranteed in these articles “went far beyond what the U.S. Congress, the state 1. The five reforms ordered by MacArthur were “to extend the franchise to women, promote labor unionization, open schools to more liberal education, democratize the economy by revising ‘monopolistic industrial controls,’ and in general eliminate all despotic vestiges in society” (Dower 1999: 81). 2. It was Beate Sirota Gordon, one of the members of the Civil Rights Committee, who wrote Articles 14 and 24 on women’s rights. Her draft, revised by the Constitution Steering Committee, sparked a great controversy in the Japanese government and was finally promulgated on November 3, 1946. Article 14 states: “All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin” (Takayanagi et al. 1972: 446). Article 24 states: “Marriage shall be based only on the natural consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the

196 Gender, language and ideology

legislatures, and many Americans are willing to accept in their own country” (Pharr 1987: 222). An amendment to the Civil Law the next year dissolved the patriarchal family system and allowed equal inheritance for women and men. This does not mean, however, that the Japanese government and people all welcomed the gender equality policy promoted by GHQ. “Japanese authorities made a persistent effort to dilute, omit, or change the intent of SCAP’s women’s rights provisions. Their main target was Article 24” (Pharr 1987: 231). Beate Sirota Gordon, the only female member of the Civil Rights Committee, wrote the drafts of Articles 14 and 24 on women’s rights. She testifies that, at the meeting between the Constitution Steering Committee and representatives of the Japanese government on March 4th, 1946, “the Japanese side strongly opposed women’s equality” and their argument was “as heated as in the matter of the emperor system” (Doi and Gordon 1996: 19–20). The Japanese government, this indicates, was opposed to the idea of women’s rights presented in Articles 14 and 24 of Japan’s new constitution. Despite such opposition, the U.S. draft was promulgated with almost no revision, principally because the Japanese government was afraid that the emperor might be tried as a war criminal.3 General Whitney asked the Japanese government to accept the draft stating that: [The Supreme Commander wants to] defend your emperor against increasing pressure from the outside to render him subject to war-criminal investigation…. He feels that acceptance of the provisions of this new Constitution would render the emperor practically unassailable. (Shimizu 1962: 326–328)

It was an irony of history that the government had to give up the patriarchal family system, though it was virtually inseparable from the emperor system, to protect the emperor. The seven-year occupation by GHQ, in short, was the period when equality between women and men in Japan became a crucial social issue. Since the ideology of women’s language during the war period functioned as the iconic representation of female citizens who served the war as secondary members family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes” (Takayanagi et al. 1972: 450). 3. The largest concern of the Japanese government under the Occupation was kokutai no goji (the preservation of the emperor system), which GHQ seemed to know, considering that the US military had avoided attacking the emperor during the war because: “the Japanese regarded their sovereign with religious awe and would be even more inclined to fight to the death if he were attacked….” (Dower 1999: 281). MacArthur first asked the Japanese government to draft the new constitution. However, as the Japanese draft by State Minister Matsumoto left “substantially unchanged the status of the Emperor with all rights of sovereignty vested in him” (Takayanagi et al. 1972: 40–42), he concluded on February 3, 1946, that GHQ should draft a new constitution. Work soon began on the new constitution with the aid of Japanese who also hoped to change Japan into a democratic country.



Part 4.  The postwar U.S. Occupation 197

in the patriarchal family system, the women’s rights defined in the new Japanese constitution must have changed the ways linguists and intellectuals produced discourses concerning women’s language. What effect did these legal and institutional changes giving equal rights to women and men have on the ideology of women’s language? Did the equality policy of the Occupation make Japanese intellectuals find it problematic to have women speaking differently from men? By “the matter of the emperor system” in the above citation, Beate Sirota Gordon referred to the definition of that system in the new constitution. Even as the Allied Powers sought to have the emperor take responsibility for the war, MacArthur was planning to proceed the occupation through the emperor system, mainly because he believed that “retaining the emperor [system] was crucial to ensuring control over the [Japanese] population” (Bix 2000: 545). To get rid of his militaristic image, the emperor declared, over national radio in January 1946, his transformation from “god” to “human.” The Showa Emperor, generally known outside Japan as Hirohito, who, as Japan’s sovereign, had been worshipped as a living god during the war, declared his humanity, and the new constitution reformulated him as the “symbol” of the State. As a result, Hirohito was not designated a war criminal in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. His transformation from divine head of the Japanese patriarchal family system to the symbol of Japan further confirmed GHQ’s dismantling of the patriarchal family system. This fundamental change, I maintain, could only have had profound effect on the discourses of linguists and intellectuals involving women’s language, since, during the war period, as seen in Part 3, women’s language functioned as the symbol of imperial tradition, originating with the emperor system, and the ideology of a gendered national language linguistically gave shape to the patriarchal family system. The purpose of Part 4, therefore, is to examine the shifts in definition and interpretation occurring in the ideology of women’s language by analyzing the discourses of linguists and intellectuals produced during the Occupation, from 1945 to 1952. Chapter 9 investigates what effect the gender-equality policy promoted by GHQ had on the discourses concerning women’s language and how those discourses redefined women’s language. Chapter 10 examines the academic discourse of grammar books and school language readers to reveal the extent to which linguists and intellectuals modified their prescriptions for women’s language under GHQ’s gender-equality policy.

chapter 9

Women’s language as reflection of femininity Features of women’s language based on differences in social class or education – social conditions – will fade away…. However, those features based on women’s psychological, physiological conditions – natural conditions … such as pronunciation, voice, sentence-final particles, and interjections, will ultimately remain. Nagano Masaru (1955) Danjo dooken de nai Nihongo [The inequality of men and women reflected in Japanese] In 1955, ten years after WWII, a linguist, Nagano Masaru, wrote a chapter entitled, Danjo dooken de nai Nihongo [The inequality of men and women reflected in Japanese], in a book edited by Kindaichi Haruhiko (Nagano 1955: 81). The title obviously indicates the author’s belief that Japanese language discriminated against women, implying that some Japanese linguists during the Occupation began considering Japanese language from the perspective of how it was related to gender equality in Japan. In the excerpt cited above, however, Nagano proposed to separate features of women’s language into two categories, one based on social conditions, the other on natural ones, and claimed that the latter would never change. Why would Nagano argue that certain aspects of women’s language would never change, while at the very same time he apparently was seeking to criticize the gender inequality in the Japanese language? Why did he have to make the distinction between social and natural linguistic features of women’s language? What postwar processes made him write such a seemingly contradictory statement? This chapter thus analyzes the discourse of linguists and intellectuals produced during the Occupation (1945–1952), attempting to answer these questions. Discursive conflict over women’s language The democracy, human rights, and equal rights of women and men, introduced by GHQ into Japan after the war, stimulated arguments linking speech differences with class and gender differences. Women’s language was also criticized as a factor keeping Japanese women from gaining social status. The discourses of criticism against women’s language can be divided into two groups. The first group of

200 Gender, language and ideology

discourses argued that linguistic gender differences produced gender differences of social positions and rights. A journalist, Suzuki Bunshiroo (1948: 60–61), develops an early example of the first type of discourse: “Although people talk about equality of individuals or equal rights among the sexes, as long as men’s speech differs from women’s speech so clearly, women themselves cannot help but violate equality on a daily basis.” Although some writers and literary academics praise women’s language as a beautiful feature of Japanese, he continues, “it simply proves that they are not even a step away from the old belief that women are ultimately ornaments and should live to serve men” (Suzuki 1948: 64). A socialist, Takakura Teru (1951: 38), regards women’s language as a symbol of women’s lower social status: “The status of men and women is completely different. That has been a major characteristic of Japanese society. The sex difference in speech is its mere linguistic representation. And it goes without saying that sex differences in social status are a characteristic of the feudal age.” A critic, Furuya Tsunatake (1953), considers the decline of women speaking women’s language as a symptom showing that those women “are in the process of growing up to be independent persons.” He criticizes women’s language by stating that “the past ‘soft women’s language’ is the language of weak, unconfident women who, their power deprived by men, had to live assiduously studying the pleasure of men and trying painfully to show coquetry and flirtation…. It is the language of slaves.” Nagano Masaru (1955: 71), in his essay cited at the beginning of this chapter, warns: “We should not overlook the ideology of the predominance of men over women implicit in the differences between the speech of men and women.” The other group of discourses also criticized women’s language, arguing that women’s language prevented women from speaking up. Kugimoto Hisaharu (1952: 25), a linguist, argues: “Women’s language has grown to become the language of the whole society…. The old-fashioned virtue of Japanese women, such as becoming speechless in front of people, should be abandoned.” Ookubo Tadatoshi (1956: 109), another linguist, states that the norm for women to speak more politely keeps women from speaking freely. “Those who claim, ‘It’s nothing if you are used to it,’ or ‘Honorific language is beautiful,’ ignore the troublesome burden they impose on minds, especially those of women…. More complicated, logical discussion requires greater care and women won’t be able to talk…. The troublesome language of women does not allow them to speak casually and restrains them.” These discourses demonstrate that both Japanese linguists and intellectuals identified problems with Japanese women’s language and even proposed to abandon women’s language to realize a gender-equal society in Japan. It is worth noting that many Japanese linguists and intellectuals, even though they started criticizing women’s language only after GHQ proclaimed the gender-equality policy, developed their arguments specifically about women’s language. Since GHQ

Chapter 9.  Reflection of femininity 201



did not problematize Japanese women’s language, this implies that these linguists and intellectuals had already been aware of the problems of asking women to speak women’s language. The gender equality policy of GHQ enabled those discourses to emerge. Essetialization of women’s langauge To compete with those discourses in denying women’s language, several discourses vindicating women’s language emerged. The most prevalent among them concerned essentialization. By this, I mean the process by which a socially-constructed ideology of women’s language is reinterpreted as a naturally determined, biological construct – i.e., merely an outgrowth of women’s innate nature. Restated, essentialization is the process that turns a phenomenon related to gender into one based on biological sex distinction (cf. Chapter 4, note 1). As seen in Chapters 4 and 8, the essentialization of linguistic gender differences also occurred during the modernization and war periods. In the postwar period, however, a larger number of essentialization discourses was produced and accepted. A typical example of the essentialization discourse emerges in Mashimo Saburoo’s book Fujingo no kenkyuu [A Study of Lady’s Language], published in 1948. Before analyzing Mashimo’s discourse, I would like to emphasize that he wrote this book to argue against the criticism of women’s language produced by the linguists and intellectuals during the Occupation. He was fully aware that many linguists and intellectuals were criticizing women’s language, when he stated at the beginning of his book, “Some call [women’s language] the representation of feudal, subordinate personalities [of women]” (Mashimo 1948: 1). Ishikawa Ken, who wrote the introduction for Mashimo’s book, was also aware that intellectuals were criticizing women’s language as the result of the feudal system, when he said: “Lady’s language has a flash of quality and strength [brought out by] women’s nature, so that we should not abandon it under the name of ‘the feudal system’” (Mashimo 1948: 3).1 This suggests that Mashimo developed his essntialization argument not based on empirical studies but to counter the criticism of women’s language. In the book, Mashimo first claims that women’s speech in the past was feminine speech reflecting women’s innate nature and the loss of feminine speech during the war means that “women lost femininity” (Mashimo 1948: 131). He argues 1. Mashimo was not the first who associated women’s language with innate femininity; the essentialization discourse is also found outside Japan. Jespersen (1922: 246), for example, states that “There can be no doubt that women exercise a great and universal influence on linguistic development through their instinctive shrinking from coarse and gross expressions and their preference for refined and (in certain spheres) veiled and indirect expressions.”

202 Gender, language and ideology

Table 9.1  Characteristics of and reasons for women’s language in Mashimo (1948). Characteristic of women’s speech

Reason for the characteristic (page)

(1)  Women’s vocabulary is small

[because] they have an innate, conservative nature to preserve moderate, neutral words (32). [because] they do not speak from intelligence or intention, but from emotion and feeling (33)…. The teaching [of avoiding Chinese words] has been continued…. The cumulative result is that it has inevitably formed women’s innate nature (34). [because] they have gradually come to believe that, without the use of prefixes, femininity and politeness cannot be expressed (38). [because] they have a strong consciousness not to express immodesty (42). [because] they hate being immodest; in other words, they want to express femininity (45).

(2)  Women avoid Chinese words

(3) Women use polite prefixes, o, go, and omi (4) Women avoid vulgar, indecent words (5) Women create words different from men, e.g. court-women’s speech

(Emphasis added)

for the connection between women’s language and women’s “innate femininity” most clearly in a section titled “Lady’s vocabulary.” Table 9.1 shows the characteristics of women’s speech and the reasons for the characteristics Mashimo cites in the section. Characteristics from (2) to (5) in Table 9.1 correspond with what Kikuzawa (1929) called four characteristics of court-women’s speech during the war period. As seen in Chapter 7, Kikuzawa (1929) assumed that characteristics of women’s speech could be traced back to court-women’s speech in the fourteenth century, which was characterized by 1) use of polite speech, 2) use of elegant speech, 3) an indirect way of speaking, and 4) avoidance of Chinese words. Characteristic (5) in Table 9.1 also takes court-women’s speech as a typical example of “different words women create.” To argue that women’s speech in the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries shares similar characteristics, however, is to argue that women’s speech is determined by women’s innate nature, the only common point between court women in the fourteenth century and women in the 1940s. The reasons given in Table 9.1, such as “innate nature” and “femininity,” show, furthermore, that Mashimo apparently argued that women used language based on “women’s innate femininity.” Mashimo states: Women use a small vocabulary because they are “innately conservative”; women avoid Chinese words because they speak from “emotion and feeling”; women add prefixes because “they cannot express femininity without them”; and women avoid vulgar words because “they want to express femininity.” Mashimo develops here very strong arguments of essentialization, reinterpreting a socially-constructed women’s language as speech

Chapter 9.  Reflection of femininity 203



created by “innate femininity.” The phrase, “innate femininity,” sounds contradictory, since numerous gender studies have demonstrated that femininity is a socially-constructed and culturally-varied ideology. Mashimo, however, conceptualizes femininity as women’s innate nature. Mashimo’s argument basing women’s language on women’s “innate femininity,” nevertheless, causes serious contradictions, when he claims to teach feminine speech at school and at home. Mashimo (1948: 125) argues that, though regional varieties are corrected at school, “we should distinguish varieties that should be definitely corrected … from those that children should be encouraged to use. The linguistic sex difference – i.e., the distinction between men’s speech and women’s speech, is the only and last variety of the latter type.” Yet, a few lines later, he states that linguistic sex differences are observed “as early as the speech of three-yearolds.” If three-year-old boys and girls already speak differently, why do they need to be taught to speak differently at school? His argument for women’s language based on women’s innate femininity further contradicts his claim that the role of the mother in language teaching is important because “language is completely non-innate” (Mashimo 1948: 152–153). To conceal such a glaring discrepancy, he introduces the distinction between social equality and biological differences:

(1) We should not equate women’s use of men’s speech with the equality of the sexes or democracy. Although men and women are originally equal in the sense that they are both invaluable human beings, they have different natures and distinctive roles according to the differences…. For example, love, tenderness, modesty, and prudence are characteristics with which women are endowed, and they constitute that which we call femininity. Therefore, humble, respectful speech, which flows naturally from femininity, represents women’s language. In other words, speech without a modest attitude represents a poor mind lacking natural femininity. For a woman to use such [immodest] speech, therefore, means that a woman has lost the woman inside of her. (Mashimo 1948: 132)

Here, Mashimo assiduously separates women’s language from social inequality and attempts to connect it to natural femininity. Men and women are socially equal but biologically different. This biological difference comprises women’s innate femininity. And such innate femininity is the source of women’s language. As a result of connecting innate femininity to women’s language, however, he has to claim that a woman who does not use women’s language has lost “the woman inside of herself ” – a strange argument. If femininity is innate, how can a woman lose her “innate” femininity?

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Mashimo’s strategy to distinguish social equality from biological differences had great effect. Following his lead, subsequent essentialization discourses developed, distinguishing linguistic features of women’s language into those based on social conditions from those based on biological differences. The authors often started their arguments by stating that women’s language had a detrimental effect on the equal treatment of the sexes. Nevertheless, by making distinctions between features of women’s language based on social conditions from those based on women’s nature or physiological characteristics, they argued for abandoning the former but keeping the latter. Suzuki Bunshiroo (1948: 62), as cited above, declared that women should stop speaking women’s language. Later in the same book, however, Suzuki states that “although [I argue] to neutralize women’s language, as long as there is sex distinction, men’s and women’s speech naturally differ,” presupposing “natural sex difference” in speech. An anonymous essay in a women’s magazine, “Josei wa utsukushiku [Women should be beautiful]” (“Josei wa utsukushiku” 1951: 144), also argues: “We should abolish the distinction between men’s language and women’s language…. Even if men and women use the same words, however, as men and women have different types of voices, men’s speech sounds masculine and women’s speech sounds feminine.” By claiming that a difference, such as voice quality, cannot be erased, the article proposed “a new, beautiful distinction” of linguistic gender differences that reflected such natural sex differences. Kugimoto Hisaharu (1952: 180–181) first argues that “it is not fair to ask only women to use polite, elegant speech different from men,” but continues: “However … if we merely pursue equal rights and equal opportunity in speech, it would be a lot of trouble for women to have to always speak like men. It would make it difficult for women to effectively express the social, inner desire peculiar to women,” assuming that women have “inner desire” peculiar to them. Yazaki Genkuroo (1960: 210–211), a linguist, also first denies gender differences stating: “The distance between women’s and men’s … speech is getting closer. It is a good tendency. As Japan has equality of the sexes … too much difference is undesirable,” but he continues to argue that “[but I would like women] to use feminine sentence-final forms and soft speech peculiar to women and expect them to express femininity.” These essentialization arguments, rather than directly asserting the natural, innate foundation of women’s language, first distinguished features of women’s language based on social conditions from those based on nature, then proclaimed that the Japanese would and should preserve the latter features. Such strategy was necessary because simply to promote and compel the use of women’s language did not work under the democratization policy of the Occupation. To develop a laudable argument under such social change, the linguists and intellectuals had to show their recognition of the problem of women’s language first. Yet, by creating

Chapter 9.  Reflection of femininity 205



the distinction between “natural” and “social” features of women’s language, some of those features were defined as irrelevant to social inequality of gender. The distinction between “natural” and “social” features was necessary to separate women’s language from social inequality between women and men, and to make it possible to preserve the ideology of women’s language as a natural phenomenon that continued irrespective of social change. By making the distinction between “natural” and “social” women’s language, linguists and intellectuals succeeded in preserving the ideology of women’s language in spite of the drastic social changes after the war. Accordingly, Nagano Masaru entitled his chapter Danjo dooken de nai Nihongo [The inequality of men and women reflected in Japanese], as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, precisely because it was necessary for him to show that he had no intention to oppose the gender equality promoted by the Occupation. After presenting himself as an intellectual intelligent enough to accept the gender equality of democracy, Nagano distinguished features of women’s language into two categories based on social conditions and on natural or innate characteristics – a strategy already prevalent and proven effective in preserving, maintaining and legitimating women’s language. The prevalence and effectiveness of that strategy is proven concretely by the fact that it has continued to preserve and legitimate women’s language until today. Sugimoto Tsutomu, a prominent linguist on modern Japanese, states:

(2) I want to note here that there are two types of women’s language. The first type has been constructed by men who believe that women are inferior to them both as human and as social beings. The second type of women’s language has been created by the authentic feminine physiology, psychology and spirit. I believe that the second type of women’s language is what women’s language should be. We should distinguish women’s language based on social, artificial conditions from women’s language based on human, natural conditions. (Sugimoto 1975: 30)2

Conclusion Right after the war, therefore, a conflict between two types of discourses on women’s language emerged, one criticizing its negative effect on equal rights between women and men, and the other advocating women’s language, claiming that it was based on “women’s innate femininity.” The second type of discourse, distinguishing 2. The reprint of this book was published in 1997 with another title, Onna to kotoba konjaku [The Present and Past of Women and Language] by the same publisher.

206 Gender, language and ideology

between the features of women’s language based on social conditions and those emerging from women’s “innate femininity,” argued that Japanese should preserve women’s language. This second type of discourse developed the essentialization argument by reinterpreting socially-constructed women’s language as biologically-based natural speech. Many linguists reproduced similar discourses and ultimately redefined women’s language as speech reflecting the innate femininity of women, which was irrelevant to social issues such as gender equality. The redefinition enabled the linguists to preserve, maintain and legitimate women’s language. Although Japanese women gained legal rights incomparable to the prewar period, the equally important ideology of women’s language assumed an unchangeable nature. It is worth noting here that the essentialization argument was not advanced to assert a natural foundation of women’s language but was developed to compete with the criticism of women’s language as an obstacle to gender equality. Under the Occupation, some Japanese intellectuals argued for gender equality and they came to recognize the domination of women by the gendered national language as a social problem. It was under such circumstances that a group of discourses redefining women’s language as based on biological sex distinction became meaningful and acceptable. These discourses emerged under the social processes in which the Occupation fostered women’s liberation, women’s rights became a socially crucial issue, and many intellectuals questioned the ideology of women’s language. These discourses became possible and meaningful, in short, when people came to recognize the ideology of women’s language as a social problem. The political measure of gender equality advanced by the Occupation, this suggests, paradoxically promoted and enabled the emergence of essentialization discourses defining femininity as based on biological sex differences. This shows that, when gendered power relationships become a social problem, gender often becomes essentialized, redefined as based on natural, biological sex, to counter the ensuing criticism (cf. Chapter 4, note 1). That is exactly the process in which gender is “the discursive/cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘prediscursive,’ prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts” (Butler 1990: 7) (emphasis original). In the case of women’s language, when the Occupation set the policy liberating women and a gendered national language was criticized as causing gender inequality, that is, when the ideology of women’s language was on the verge of extinction, the essentialization discourse emerged and redefined women’s language as based on “women’s innate femininity.” To maintain women’s language without denying the equality policy supported by both the Occupation and many Japanese women and men, it was necessary to de-politicize and essentialize women’s language as speech based on natural femininity.



Chapter 9.  Reflection of femininity 207

Why did the essentialization discourse gain predominance in the discursive conflict during the postwar period and successfully enhance the survival of the ideology of women’s language? The next chapter attempts to answer that question by analyzing another type of discourse produced in the same period, academic discourse related to women’s language, such as in grammar textbooks and school readers.

chapter 10

A gendered Japanese national language Symbol of patriarchy

Taroo: Yukidaruma-kun, konnichiwa. Hanako: Yukidaruma-san, konnichiwa…. Snowman-address form hello ‘Dear Snowman! Hello!’ Hanako: Doko e ittan deshoo. Taroo: Doko e ittan daroo…. where to go-past sfp ‘Where did it go?’ Taroo: Kawaisoo danaa. Hanako: Kawaisoo nee…. pitiful sfp ‘That’s pitiful.’ Taroo: Yukidaruma -kuun me o wasureteiru yoo. Hanako: Yukidaruma-saan o-meme o wasureteiru wayoo. Snowman-address form eye obj forget-past sfp ‘Dear Snowman! You left your eyes.’  Unit 7 Snowman in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon 1954[1950] In 1950, the national language school reader, Taroo Hanako kokugo no hon [National Language Reader for Taroo and Hanako], was approved by the Ministry of Education. It was the first school reader whose volumes for all grades passed the inspection of the Ministry of Education after the war. Taroo and Hanako are, respectively, typical male and female first names. The above citation is from Yuuyake [Sunset Glow], one of the three volumes for the first grade of Taroo Hanako kokugo no hon. In Unit 7, Yukidaruma [Snowman], Taroo and Hanako make a snowman together and talk about it. In the model dialogue cited above, they say the same thing using different linguistic features, foregrounding the gendered use of linguistic features. While Taroo calls the snowman with the address form, kun, Hanako calls it with san. In saying, “Where did it go?” Taroo uses the hortative, daroo, and Hanako uses deshoo. Taroo uses the sentence-final form, danaa, to say, “That’s pitiful,” and Hanako ends the same sentence with nee. To express eyes, Taroo uses me and Hanako uses o-meme, adding a honorific prefix

210 Gender, language and ideology

o. Taroo ends the sentence, “You left your eyes,” with yoo, and Hanako ends the same sentence with wayoo. According to the teacher’s manual for Taroo and Hanako, children were expected to memorize the conversation until they could perform it in a play, as shown in Figure 10.1. Clearly, one of the goals of Taroo Hanako kokugo no hon was to teach children that girls and boys should speak differently. Does it mean that the Ministry of Education approved this school reader despite the gender-equality policy of GHQ? How did linguists change their discourses to reflect the gender-equality policy? This chapter thus aims to reveal how academic discourse in grammar texts, books about Japanese national language and school language readers changed their prescriptions of women’s language under the Occupation from 1945 to 1952. I will start by describing the educational reform promoted by the Japanese Ministry of Education under the gender-equality policy of GHQ.

Figure 10.1  Unit 7 Yukidaruma [Snowman] in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (Nihon shoseki kokugo henshuu iinkai 1954[1950]: 85).



Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 211

Language education and linguists under the U.S. Occupation During the Occupation, gender equality became a crucial issue in educational institutions. Following the gender-equality policy of the Occupation, the importance of gender-equal education gained wider recognition and reform of the educational system proceeded. In December 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Education issued the Plan for Reform of Women’s Education, aiming to “provide equal educational opportunity and equal education for men and women” (Mitsui 1977: 899). The Plan for Reform proposed to teach the same subjects at both women’s and men’s secondary schools and make universities co-educational. The Constitution of Japan, issued in 1946, declared “Equality of the sexes” (Article 14) and “Equality of husband and wife” (Article 24). Accordingly, the Ministry of Education issued the Organic Law of Education in 1947, which prohibited gender discrimination in educational opportunity and approved co-education. As for school textbooks, the Japanese Ministry of Education, assuming that GHQ would regard school language readers as the root of military education, had already launched the reform of school language readers, even before GHQ issued the order to do so. The national language school reader used as the war ended in 1945 was the fifth state textbook, compiled by the Ministry of Education in 1941 and called Asahi tokuhon [Sunrise Reader]. As seen in Chapter 8, this reader contained many stories about the emperor’s divinity, emphasizing militarism and ultra-nationalism. It was obviously unacceptable for use under the Occupation. On September 15, 1945, the Ministry of Education, lacking time to compile completely new school readers, issued a notice to teachers to be very careful using the old school readers and advised that “parts of the textbooks which should be corrected and deleted will be shown” (Yoshida 2001: 27). On September 20, the First Note on Ink-erasure was issued. Ink was to be used to cross out words and stories in school readers that (1) emphasized the national defense force, (2) whipped up war sentiment, (3) disturbed international relations, (4) were remarkably removed from the reality of war closure, and (5) others (Yoshida 2001: 34). As GHQ did not consider the First Note on Ink-erasure good enough, the Ministry of Education issued the Second Note on Ink-erasure in January 1946, which ordered erasure of stories about state-Shintoism from school readers.1 Based on the two Notes, teachers asked children to erase words and stories perceived as linked to militarism, ultranationalism, and state-Shintoism in elementary school language readers. Children 1. Shintoism is the indigenous spirituality of Japanese people, its practice already described in the country’s ancient written documents in the eighth century. State-shintoism refers to shintoism utilized by the Japanese government as a major force for mobilizing loyalty to the emperors in the period 1868–1945.

212 Gender, language and ideology

had to cross out, cut out, or cover with paper parts of the school readers, that, to be sure, they had been taught to treat with special care. Sunrise Reader, reformed by these procedures, was called suminuri kyookasho (the ink-erased school reader). The Ministry of Education under the Occupation focused in this way on reforming national-language readers among many other school textbooks, used during the war period. While the Ministry of Education was reforming school language readers, linguists were initiating reforms of Japanese language. The governmental committee of linguists, Kokugo shingikai (The Japanese National-Language Council), proposed a sequence of new language policies immediately after the war. In 1946, the Council submitted the modern kana (phonetic orthography) system and a list of Chinese characters for daily use. In 1947, the Council submitted a list of Chinese and Japanese pronunciations of Chinese characters for daily use, a separate list of Chinese characters for daily use and, in 1948, a list of the revised forms of Chinese characters for daily use. These were all originally based on two proposals made by the Japanese National-Language Council in 1935 and on one of the principles of Kokugo choosa iinkai (the National-Language Research Committee) originally advanced in 1902. The main concern of linguists, therefore, was to realize their longstanding desire to reform kana and decrease the number of Chinese characters in regular use, problems that had been pending since long before the war. Kurashima Nagamasa (2002: 31) notes: “These national-language policies were implemented simply by following proposals made before the war. [Linguists could promote them because] of the wave of drastic postwar social changes.” These language policies had nothing to do with the corruption of the military government or the introduction of democracy by the Occupation. This apolitical attitude was aided in part by GHQ, which said little about the Japanese language, except for the Second American Education Delegation that, in 1950, advised writing Japanese in Roman letters. Japanese linguists were certainly not unaware of the notions of human rights and democracy brought into Japan by the Occupation. After the war, linguists began to re-evaluate dialects, often suppressed and discriminated against in the near frantic, confusing effort to establish standard Japanese in the early twentieth century. Imaizumi Tadayoshi (1954: 20), in his grammar textbook, emphasizes the importance of dialect: “Dialects are the mother’s womb of our national language. If we despise dialects, it is hardly possible to think about improving our national language.” Yamaguchi Kiichiroo (1951: 222), in his book about national-language education, argues against prohibiting the use of dialect at school: “Students speak dialects in their everyday lives. [Teachers] should not prohibit them from speaking their dialects when they are not studying in the classrooms and when they are playing.” Ishiguro (1951: 129) regards standard Japanese and dialects as having

Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 213



equivalent values: “[We should not] contrast standard language and dialect in terms of good standard, bad dialect. The relationship between standard language and dialect is the same as the relationship between international language and national language.” Fujiwara (1962: 119) even argues for the complete restoration of dialect: “Some people think that dialect is bad. How about you? It is such thinking that is bad.” These discourses of re-evaluation and restoration of dialect show that linguists gradually realized that the denial of a dialect could deny the human rights of the people who speak it – i.e., linguists became aware of the effect of language on human rights. During the Occupation, therefore, the Ministry of Education was promoting education-system reform, based on gender equality, and reforming school language readers. Linguists were not deprived of initiating language reforms; they were not simply forced to follow Occupation policies. Some linguists were certainly aware of the potential impact of denigrating dialects on the human rights of dialect speakers. Furthermore, as seen in Chapter 9, women’s language was criticized for having an ill effect on gender equality. Within that context, teaching linguistic gender differences in grammar textbooks and school readers could have been considered an obstacle to gender-equal education. What effect did the notion of linguistic gender equality make on academic discourses? Previous research on academic discourse under the Occupation has focused on negotiation between the Ministry of Education and GHQ. This chapter analyzes the effect of gender-equality awareness of both the Ministry of Education and Japanese linguists on the treatment of linguistic gender differences in academic discourse. Grammar textbooks during the Occupation period Preservation of a gendered national language Grammar textbooks published during the Occupation showed little difference from those published during the war. This is particularly clear in that well-known grammar textbooks published during the war by prominent male linguists were reprinted afterwards. Yamada Yoshio’s Nihon bumpoogaku gairon [Introduction to Japanese Grammar], first published in 1936, came out in a third edition in 1948, three years after the war, and a sixth edition appeared in 1954. It describes features associated with men as the national-language standard, without mentioning any gender differences. Yamada lists the male first-person pronouns, boku and ore, as the personal pronouns of standard Japanese and uses the address form, kun, the male first-person pronoun, boku, and the masculine sentence-final form, zo, in the model sentences without noting that they were used by men (Yamada 1936: 129,

214 Gender, language and ideology

471, 528). This grammar textbook, in sum, consistently prescribed man’s language as standard Japanese. Kieda Masuichi’s Kootoo kokubumpoo shinkoo: Hinshi hen [New Lectures on High School National Grammar: Parts of Speech], first published in 1937, saw its twelfth edition in 1940, fifteenth in 1942, and was reprinted in 1948 by another publisher. It, too, lists the male personal pronouns, boku, washi, ore, and kisama, as standard Japanese (Kieda 1937: 96). In teaching usage of the feminine sentencefinal forms, wa and dawa, Kieda explicitly states that they are women’s words. Kieda mentions the masculine sentence-final form, ze, however, without noting its use by men. This grammar textbook describes features associated with men as the national-language standard but includes features associated with women as exceptions, with explanatory notes such as “female usage.” Sakuma Kanae’s Gendai Nihon gohoo no kenkyuu [A Study of Modern Japanese Usage], written in 1940, was revised in 1952, seven years after the war. The revised edition continued to emphasize gender differences. In teaching usage of sentence-final forms, Sakuma states: “Only men use zo and ze now. Wa is used mostly by women” (Sakuma 1940: 61–62). Sakuma also points out that the sentence-final form, wa, expresses the speaker’s femininity (Sakuma 1940: 68). Kindaichi Kyoosuke’s Nihongo no shinro [The Course of the Japanese Language] was less a grammar textbook than a book about the national language written for general Japanese readers. It was published in 1948, but it contained the speech he had given at Japan Women’s University in 1944, a year before the war ended. In the speech, he criticizes women’s use of men’s language – “[We should not allow] the masculinization of contemporary women’s speech” – declaring the importance of the gendered national language (Kindaichi 1948: 78). Taken together, these books repeated the arguments that the national-language standard was men’s speech, while women’s language constituted an exception to that standard. As shown in Chapter 8, grammar textbooks during the war established the ideology of a gendered national language by incorporating women’s language at the margin of the national language, as exceptional. That these wartime books continued to be published after the war testifies that the ideology of the gendered national language and the belief that the Japanese language has women’s language were also preserved throughout the defeat in the war and during the Occupation. Postwar grammar textbooks preserved the gendered national language by paying no attention to the argument that linguistic gender differences produced gender inequality in Japanese society. Neither the war’s end nor the subsequent Occupation appeared to affect the discourse of these linguists.

Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 215



The separation of women’s language from the imperial tradition Linguists during the war, as seen in Chapter 7, defined court-women’s speech as the origin of women’s language. Postwar discourses about women’s language show two changes concerning the ways they described court-women’s speech. First, although linguists still mentioned court-women’s speech in discussing women’s language, some linguists began to state that, as court-women’s speech prevailed outside the imperial court, both men and women were now using it. Mashimo Saburoo (1948: 72) states: “Although few [court-women words] are used only by women today, by having become words for both men and women, they are deeply rooted in Japanese.” Iwabuchi Etsutaroo (1948: 101) also refers to men’s use of court-women speech: “Court-women words were first used as substitutes for words that were taboo. As this form of speech was used by court ladies, it was considered an elegant style of speaking; women in general began to use it as women’s language and, later on, men began to use it, no longer considering it to be women’s language.”2 Second, in discussing the relationship between women’s language and court-women’s speech, they no longer mentioned the emperor system. As seen in Chapter 7, linguists during the war strongly associated court-women’s speech with the emperor system. In the above discourses about court-women’s speech, however, neither Mashimo nor Iwabuchi refers to the emperor. During the Occupation, furthermore, linguists stopped mentioning the emperor not only when discussing court-women’s speech but also women’s language and Japanese language. Nagao Masanori, who during the war had most clearly praised women’s language as an imperial tradition, apparently stopped writing after the war.3 As discussed in the previous section, the Ministry of Education had ordered the deletion of school materials linked to militarism, ultra-nationalism, and state-Shintoism, even before GHQ ordered such action. Under such circumstances, it was likely that linguists also voluntarily decided not to refer to the emperor in their discussions about women’s language. The non-reference to the emperor in postwar academic 2. In relating women’s language with court-women’s speech, academic discourse started referring to a specific feature such as the polite prefix, o, as a feature still used mainly by women. Imaizumi (1950: 221) argues that the o of court-women’s speech is the origin of the o of women’s language: “In modern spoken language, the polite word o is found in the speech of urban areas and that of women…. The Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary compiled at the end of the Muromachi era [14th–16th centuries] shows that the polite word o originally appeared as a woman’s word.” Kunita Yuriko (1964: 48) also states that even though most court-women words are already used by both women and men, the polite prefix o and the polite suffix moji are still used mainly by women: “In modern Japanese, many court-women words are not recognized as such any more. Many are recognized as general terms, not related to the speaker’s gender. But the polite words o and moji are still considered to be elegant words and found more frequently in women’s language.” 3.

There is no record of any postwar publication by Nagao.

216 Gender, language and ideology

discourse separated both court-women’s speech and women’s language from the emperor system. This de-politicization of women’s language by separating it from the imperial tradition certainly helped preserve women’s language after the war. Yet, postwar linguists continued referring to Kikuzawa’s (1929) four characteristics of women’s language and its relation to honorific language. As shown in Chapter 7, Kikuzawa had argued that women’s language was characterized by (1) use of polite speech, (2) use of elegant speech, (3) an indirect way of speaking, and (4) avoidance of Chinese words. Mashimo Saburoo (1948), as seen in Chapter 9, cites all four as characteristic of women’s language in the book he wrote during the Occupation. Yoshida Sumio (1952: 34) echoes Mashimo: “[Women’s language is characterized by,] first, use of elegant or special feminine words, second, frequent polite speech, third, an indirect way of speaking and fourth, the avoidance of Chinese words.” Yazaki Genkuroo (1960: 209) follows suit: “Women’s language uses words specific to women, avoids vulgar, violent words, prefers elegant, polite expressions, and an indirect way of speaking. Thus, women’s language frequently uses honorific language.” As shown in the Yazaki’s citation, linguists also continued to associate honorific language with women’s language, following the argument proposed by Kindaichi Kyoosuke (1942) during the war. Mashimo (1948: 168), citing Kindaichi (1942), states: “Women and polite expressions are inseparable.” Kindaichi (1948: 91) himself maintains his argument: “Polite usage is inseparable from women’s language.” By contrast with the argument that considers court-women’s speech the origin of women’s language, the honorific-language argument was not avoided after the war. Linguists continued referring to honorific language in their discussions of women’s language, mainly because the main proponent of the argument, Kindaichi, did not associate honorific language with the emperor but with language taboo. According to Kindaichi, a language taboo between women and men caused the emergence of women’s language and this, in turn, became honorific language: “Taboos between the sexes were strictly adhered to in ancient society…. It was a strong taboo for a wife to call her husband by his given name…. From such taboos emerged speech specific to women…. This is the origin of honorific language in an uncivilized society” (Kindaichi 1949: 118). Under the Occupation, with references to the emperor strictly censored, linguists referred to honorific language. Women’s language after the war, therefore, while separated from the emperor, was still considered to be the tradition of the national language, characterized by politeness, indirectness, and elegance. As a result, both the ideology of a gendered national language and the belief that the Japanese language has women’s language were maintained.

Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 217



School readers during the Occupation period While grammar textbooks and books about Japanese national language maintained the ideology of women’s language, did linguists change their prescriptions of women’s language in school readers during the Occupation? I will start my analysis from the first school reader used after the war, the Ink-erased school reader, actually titled Asahi tokuhon [Sunrise Reader], compiled in 1941, with words and stories linked to militarism, ultra-nationalism, and state-Shintoism erased. The data used here are four volumes of Asahi tokuhon, Yomikata 2 (for first graders), Yomikata 4 (for second graders), Shotooka kokugo 2 (for third graders), and Shotooka kokugo 4 (for fourth graders) (Monbushoo 1985[1941–1942]). The procedure for ink-erasure differed by region and time period (Yoshida 2001). I chose the four volumes because the First Note on Ink-erasure issued by the Ministry of Education gave clear instructions concerning which units of the four volumes should be ink-erased and the reprint of the ink-erased four volumes has been published (Oozorasha 1985).4 The result is that there was no data in the Ink-erased Readers showing that teaching linguistic gender differences was considered problematic. As seen in Chapter 8, Asahi tokuhon taught the contrastive use of the masculine first-person pronoun boku and general first-person pronoun watashi. In the Ink-erased Readers, the gendered use of the first-person pronouns was not deleted. Similarly, the gendered use of sentence-final forms and interjections observed in Table 8.4 was not erased. In Chapter 8, I cite Unit 18, Apricot of Shotooka Kokugo 2, as an example of teaching gendered use of the national language. According to Yoshida 4. Table 10.1 shows the percentage of units erased in the four volumes. Unexpectedly many units were deleted. The higher the grade, the more units were erased. Seventy to eighty percent of Shotooka kokugo 4 was deleted. Table 10.1 shows only the cases in which whole units were erased. It does not include other cases, in which a word or a phrase related to militarism or ultranationalism was deleted.

Table 10.1  Number and percentage of units erased by ink in the Ink-erased Readers. Textbook title Yomikata 2 Yomikata 4 Shotooka kokugo 2 Shotooka kokugo 4

Number of units erased/number of all units

Number of pages erased/number of all pages

3/24 (12.5%) 9/25 (36%) 12/24 (50%) 19/24 (79.2%)

12/108 (11.1%) 34/126 (27%) 74/146 (50.7%) 91/138 (65.9%)

Note: The percentages are rounded off to the nearest tenth.

(From Oozora Sha 1985: 46)

218 Gender, language and ideology

Hirohisa (2001: 154), no case has been found in which this unit was ink-erased. Right after the war, therefore, teaching linguistic gender differences was not considered to be a problem in terms of gender-equal education. The above results are not surprising, given the purpose of ink-erasure to delete lessons concerning militarism, ultra-nationalism, and state-Shintoism. Gender equality and its relation to linguistic gender differences were far beyond their concern. Furthermore, as shown in Chapter 9, the criticism of women’s language, based on its effect on women’s lower social status, began to appear around 1948. Therefore, we shall here analyze school readers widely used and published later than 1948. In 1946, Zantei kokugo kyookasho [Temporary National Language Textbook] was compiled by deleting the ink-erased parts of Sunrise Reader. In 1947, the sixth state national language textbook was published by the Ministry of Education. However, GHQ ordered that the first two volumes for first graders be reformed, so newly edited volumes were introduced after 1949. The Organic Law of Education in 1947 reformed the system of school readers. During the war, the Ministry of Education had published all school textbooks. According to the Organic Law of Education, any textbook could be used if approved by the Ministry of Education. However, in 1948, when the first multi-volume school readers were submitted for approval, no school reader with volumes for all grades received approval. The school reader Taro Hanako kokugo no hon [National Language Reader for Taro and Hanako] (henceforth, Taro and Hanako), cited at the beginning of this chapter, was the first to finally pass inspection, on its third submission, by the Ministry of Education. The main editor, Inoue Takeshi, was not included among the contributors (Yoshida 2001: 627). Of Taro and Hanako’s thirteen volumes, three were for first graders and two each for second to sixth graders. The set was used for a full decade, from 1951 to 1960. I will analyze gender differences in the three volumes for first grade, Ohayoo [Good Morning], Akai tori [Red Bird], and Yuuyake [Sunset Glow], published by Nihon shoseki kokugo henshuu iinkai in 1954. Table 10.2  Speakers of boku in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954). Speaker Girl

Boy

Title of reader

boku (c)

boku (n)

Good Morning Red Bird Sunset Glow Good Morning Red Bird Sunset Glow

✓

✓

Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 219



Table 10.3  Speakers of watashi in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954). Speaker Girl

Boy

Title of reader Good Morning Red Bird Sunset Glow Good Morning Red Bird Sunset Glow

watashi (c)

watashi (n)

✓

✓

Notes: A check indicates that the speaker uses the pronoun irrespective of the number of times; (c) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in conversation; and (n) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in narrative description.

Tables 10.2 and 10.3 show whether a girl or a boy uses the male first-person pronoun, boku, and the female first-person pronoun, watashi, in the four volumes of Taro and Hanako I examined. Plural forms of boku and watashi, boku-tachi, boku-ra and watashi-tachi, do not occur in any of the readers. Boku and watashi in Tables 10.2 and 10.3 include those words written in the three Japanese orthographies, katakana, hiragana, or kanji. A check mark indicates that the speaker uses the pronoun irrespective of the number of times; (c) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in conversation; and (n) indicates the speaker uses the pronoun in narrative description. Tables 10.2 and 10.3 demonstrate two points. First, use of the first-person pronoun is observed only in the volume Sunset Glow. The other two volumes contain such little conversation that the first-person pronoun does not appear. Second, in spite of the small number of occurrences, gender difference of girls using watashi and boys using boku is clearly maintained in both conversation and narrative description. Table 10.4 shows how Taro and Hanako uses the sentence-final forms differently according to the speaker’s gender. It does not include usage by adult women and men, since the textbook mostly consists of conversation between children. A check mark indicates that a speaker uses the feature irrespective of the number of times. I divide the sentence-final forms in Table 10.4 into nine groups, from (1) to (9), according to the gender of the speaker using the feature. In groups (1) and (2), I categorize features used only by boys. The da-form of (1), such as in Mari da [noun+da] (It’s a ball) and Ippai da [adjective+da] (It’s full), are used only by boys. When boys use the da-form, girls use other forms, emphasizing contrastive use according to gender. When a boy uses the adjective+da form, Ijiwaru da (That’s cruel), for example, girls use the adjective+wa and dawa form of (9), such as Hidoi wa (That’s cruel) and Kawaisoo dawa (That’s pitiful). Similarly, when a boy says Sabishisoo dana (That looks lonely), a girl answers Kawaisoo ne (That’s pitiful), making a contrast between dana and ne of (5). When a boy says Momiji no ha dane

220 Gender, language and ideology

Table 10.4  Sentence-final forms used differently according to the speaker’s gender in Taro Hanako kokugo no hon (1954). Group of features

Linguistic features

(1)

da-form

(2)

Masculine

(3)

Hortative

noun+da adjective+da da yo, da-tta yo da na, da naa da ne da roo da mono da gana Imperative zo adjective+sa adjective+na verb+ka naa mashoo, deshoo ikoo, miyoo, shiyoo mashoo ne, deshoo ne ikoo ne, miyoo ne noun+yo adjective+yo verb+yo -no yo -wa yo -te yo adjective+ne(e) dawa+ne wa ne desu mono choo dai na no ta no verb+no adjective+wa verb+wa dawa, tawa

(4)

+ne +ne yo-form

(5)

ne-form

(6) (7) (8)

mono-form choo dai no (interrogative)

(9)

wa-form

Girls

Boys ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓



Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 221

(It’s a maple leaf) with the dane form, a girl responds Kirei da wa ne (It’s beautiful) with dawane of the group (5). When a boy asks Doko e ittan da roo (Where did it go?), a girl asks Doko e ittan deshoo (Where did it go?), contrasting da roo and deshoo. A girl says Datte watashi me o tojite itan desu mono (I closed my eyes) and a boy says Boku ni kiiroi ha o aterun da mono (You gave me a yellow leaf), distinguishing desu mono of (6) and da mono of (1). The group (2) in Table 10.4 also shows sentence-final features used only by boys. Here again, when boys use these features, girls use other features emphasizing gendered use. For instance, when a girl claims that Taroo eki nante okashii wa (Taro Station sounds strange) with wa of (9), a boy insists that Okashiku nai sa (It’s not strange) using sa of (2). A girl says Ureshii wa (I’m happy) and a boy repeats that Ureshii na (I’m happy) contrasting wa of (9) and na of (2). The hortative features in (3) are also gender-differentiated in that mashoo and deshoo forms are used by girls, while ikoo and miyoo forms are used by boys. When a boy says Jyaa hajime yoo (Let’s begin), a girl responds Ee hajime mashoo (Yes, let’s begin). The groups from (4) to (9) show features mainly used by girls. Among them, only four forms are used both by girls and boys, adjective+yo and verb+yo of (4) and ta no and verb+no of (8). When boys use verb+yo in (4), girls use verb+wa in (9). A boy says Boku tako ni naru yo (I’ll be a kite) and a girl says Watashi ume ni naru wa (I’ll be an apricot). In Taro and Hanako, therefore, first-person pronouns and sentence-final forms are used differently according to the speaker’s gender. In addition, Taro and Hanako further emphasizes gender differences by repeatedly showing girls and boys talking about the same things in different ways throughout the main texts, as shown at the beginning of this chapter. This section has demonstrated that the ink-erased school readers used immediately after the end of WWII and Taro and Hanako used from 1951 to 1960 both continued to teach linguistic gender differences, especially of personal pronouns and sentence-final forms. The gender-equality reform of the educational system had no influence on gender differences in national language school readers. School readers during the Occupation kept reproducing the norm in schools, that women and men should use language differently or that women and men should be linguistically distinguished. The language school readers continued to support the ideology of a gendered national language after the war. The Japanese Ministry of Education under the Occupation, this indicates, had no intention of changing the distinction between (men’s) national language and women’s language.

222 Gender, language and ideology

Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that postwar academic discourse concerning women’s language was hardly different from the war period, except for the separation of women’s language from the emperor system. Chapter 9 covered conflict between two types of discourse on women’s language, the criticizing discourse and the essentialization discourse; the latter type successfully redefined women’s language as a reflection of femininity. Why were discourses criticizing women’s language as an obstacle to gender equality not accepted, circulated or prevalent? One reason, this chapter shows, is that linguists writing grammar books and school readers ignored the criticism of women’s language and kept reproducing the ideology of the gendered national language. The discourse that they produced was not only assigned academic privilege, but also grammar books and school readers enjoyed overwhelmingly lucrative circulation channels by being printed in massive numbers, distributed to schools nationwide, and taught as the norm. It was not deemed necessary for such a privileged discourse to take the trouble to refute the criticizing discourse. By completely ignoring the criticism of women’s language and simply repeating the time-honored discourse of the war years, linguists could enhance the redefinition of women’s language as a symbol of femininity. This chapter’s analysis also has demonstrated that, under the Occupation, when the question of the emperor became highly sensitive, linguists stopped mentioning the emperor in discussing not only Japanese language but also women’s language. This explains why the contemporary notion of women’s language is unrelated to the emperor system. I pointed out at the end of Chapter 8 that the contemporary notion of Japanese women’s language has little connection with the emperor system but rather is interpreted as a natural reflection of women’s femininity. As shown in Chapter 9, postwar linguists, while halting references to the emperor, redefined women’s language as speech based on “innate femininity.” The essentialization discourse, by separating women’s language from the social inequality between women and men, de-politicized women’s language. Although references to the emperor disappeared, linguists continued to mention the four characteristics of women’s language and its association with honorific language, maintaining the recognition that women’s language is a tradition of the Japanese language. By taking away anti-democratic meaning from women’s language, linguists de-politicized and naturalized it. John Dower (1999) cites a letter Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru wrote to his father-in-law Makino Shinken, a former keeper of the privy seal, acknowledging that he saw a sliver of hope in the emperor’s transformation from divine sovereign to politically detached symbol of State. Yoshida Shigeru writes that the emperor’s “‘position within,’” – by which, Dower notes, Yoshida is probably referring to the emperor’s spiritual role – “‘will become

Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 223



that much more enlarged, and his position will increase in importance and delicacy’” (Dower 1999: 390). Just as the emperor survived defeat by giving up sovereignty and becoming the symbol of State, women’s language survived radical postwar social change by abandoning its association with the emperor and becoming de-politicized and naturalized. Accordingly, detached from politics and newly associated with feminine nature, the notion of women’s language grew in importance and delicacy, becoming a tradition of Japanese language and transcending any social and political changes. Here I will conclude the two chapters in Part 4 and argue that the redefinition of women’s language as integral to the tradition of Japanese language, based on women’s “innate femininity” and the maintenance of gendered national language by academic discourse, came to assign specific symbolic function to the ideology of women’s language. The symbolic function thus assigned, I maintain, accounts for why women’s language became such a socially salient category in Japan after the war. The defeat in war and the Occupation denied the emperor system, which had been the center of Japanese tradition, pride and social order during the war years. So the Japanese government, while reluctantly accepting the U.S. draft of the new Japanese constitution, which reformulated the emperor as the symbol of the State, strongly opposed the destruction of the patriarchal family system, which was inseparably intertwined with the emperor system. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the ideology of state-as-family, connecting the patriarchal family system to the emperor system, had been among the most dominant ideologies controlling the Japanese nation. The strong tie between the patriarchal family system and the emperor system becomes evident in the controversy in the Japanese government surrounding the U.S. draft of the new constitution, when the seemingly unrelated issues of women’s liberation and the emperor system were understood nevertheless to be closely linked. Article 24, therefore, guaranteeing the equality of husband and wife, received the strongest objections. At a plenary session of the House of Representatives on June 26, 1946, a member of the Diet, Hara Fujiroo states:

(1) It is needless to say that the family system and the emperor system in Japan are very closely related ancient customs…. The family system can be referred to as God’s road for our nation, the system we have maintained since the beginning of the world. We believe that it is our family system that leads us along the wide road to the foot of the emperor.  (Shimizu 1962: 501) For those who believed in the inseparable connection between the two systems, as Kawashima Takenori (1950: 175) asserts, “even to give the slightest doubt to the preservation of the patriarchal family system… may be interpreted as blasphemy.”

224 Gender, language and ideology

Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru described the liberation of Japanese women by GHQ as the destruction of “a good, refined custom peculiar to Japan” (Shimizu 1962: 501). The patriarchal family system leading to the emperor had two characteristics. First, women were given no rights concerning property, divorce, or inheritance. As Susan Pharr observes: “An early Japanese rewrite of Article 24 dropped all of its concrete guarantees of equality for women in matters of divorce, inheritance, and so on” (Pharr 1987: 231). Second was the gendered division of labor – women were expected to stay home as wives and men were expected to work outside. At a committee session of the House of Representatives on July 5, 1946, Miura Toranosuke argued that gender equality and the gender-differentiated division of labor did not contradict each other:

(2) Men and women are equal and they have the same rights. But in a family, they each have their own duties. Women have the duty of wife at home. Men have their jobs…. They should keep their own duties and that does not impede equality between the sexes. (Shimizu 1962: 503)

The belief in gendered citizens was so natural and persistent, these arguments indicate, that some Japanese intellectuals could not even imagine that the notion of gendered citizens was incompatible with the realization of gender equality. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that those intellectuals, even after the new Japanese constitution abolished the patriarchal family system, made great effort to keep citizens gendered by preserving other institutions. One of these was the ideology of national language gendered by women’s language. Being de-politicized by the separation from the imperial tradition and naturalized by the association with “innate femininity,” women’s language became one of the few ideologies which had used to represent the imperial tradition and patriarchal family system but survived the defeat in the war and the Occupation. The Japanese government and intellectuals, in seeking to recover and rebuild the stability of Japanese society and identity after the war, thus translated the historical trajectory of women’s language into the expectation and anticipation towards women’s language to represent, symbolize and sustain Japanese tradition, pride and social order. As pointed out at the end of Chapter 8, a nation facing such drastic social change often attempts to maintain social order by associating tradition with femininity. Song Youn ok (2009: 201), in discussing close relationships between colonialism, sexism, and racism in Korea, comments: “[Sexist] tradition is often invented, reinterpreted, or reinforced by those males whose pride has been damaged after the domination by different races.” It was through the historical process in which women’s language survived the total loss of Japanese tradition, pride, and order in the war that Japanese intellectuals found a felt space of



Chapter 10.  Symbol of patriarchy 225

possibility and potentiality to recover Japanese social order and identity at the intersection of women and language (Nakamura 2014a).5 As Lisa Mitchell (2009: 214) has argued, “emotional attachments to language, far from being naturally inherent in speakers’ relationships to the words that they use, are historically situated.” Ultimately, through that very historical process, the Japanese people came to possess emotional attachment to women’s language and women’s language became a socially salient category in Japan. The postwar ideology of women’s language was created by the ideological struggle between the American-led Occupation, democratization, and liberation of women, on the one hand, and the attempt of the Japanese government to maintain control of the nation by the ideology of state-as-family and the effort of linguists to defend the tradition of the Japanese language, on the other. I should conclude that the linguists’ attempt to de-politicize and essentialize women’s language was successful, because the new definition of women’s language as “a tradition of the Japanese language that many Japanese women have been speaking based on their natural femininity” corresponds with the essential-evolutionary view of women’s language outlined in my Introduction.

5. Some observers have pointed out that, after the war, male scholars of Japanese literature also associated femininity with tradition. Suzuki Tomi (1999) argues that, during the postwar period, Japanese male intellectuals invented the genre of diaries written by noble women in the tenth century as traditional classics of Japanese literature. By defining the literary genre of female diaries as classic, Suzuki argues, postwar male intellectuals invented a Japanese literary tradition to psychologically get over the defeat in war. Along with women’s language, this indicates, the genre of women’s diaries was created as a symbolic means to recover Japanese tradition, pride and social order.

Conclusion Going beyond the gendered linguistic ideologies

This book has demonstrated that Japanese people have always been criticizing, praising, referring to, citing, and talking about women’s speech in a long history of metalinguistic discourse in Japan. The relationship between women and language has constituted one of the major interests of the Japanese. Women’s language became a socially salient ideology in Japan, exactly because there have always been political and economic conditions making metalinguistic discourse on women’s speech possible, acceptable and meaningful. Part 1 showed that, during the premodern period, when the andro-centric lessons of Buddhism and Confucianism were imported from China, the norms of feminine speech were invented to dominate and censor women’s speech. Part 2 demonstrated that, from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, when the Japanese government enforced gendered nationalization to build a modern nation state, the norms of feminine speech and the ideology of schoolgirl speech were produced as negative counterparts to justify and intensify the legitimacy of a men’s national language. Part 3 showed that, during WWII, women’s language was linked with the imperial tradition originating with the emperor system to legitimatize the colonization of East Asia, while simultaneously being incorporated at the margin of the national language, gendering Japanese national language. Under the Occupation after the war, as Part 4 demonstrated, women’s language, being associated with “innate femininity,” became a symbol of the Japanese tradition and order. Women’s language should not be thought of as an apolitical tradition of the Japanese language, but an ideology loaded with political and economic meaning. Women’s language has been constructed, transformed and effectively utilized to reinforce, and be reinforced by, the gendered power relationship in each historical juncture. Although the present study has analyzed only a portion of the metalinguistic discourse in each period, it highlights three implications concerning the construction of linguistic ideologies. First, gender has played a crucial role in structuring linguistic ideologies in Japan, reinforcing each other with oppositions such as Japan/West, state-family-nation/individual, modern/tradition, and future/past. In the modern period, the gendered asymmetry between the marked, exceptional, marginal woman and the unmarked, standard, central man was mapped onto the

228 Gender, language and ideology

marked, exceptional, marginal ideologies of feminine speech and schoolgirl speech and the unmarked, standard, central ideology of men’s national language. During the war, gender was mapped onto the distinction between modern and traditional, enabling the redefinition of women’s language as the tradition of the imperial state. Gender is often used to create asymmetrical relationships of different linguistic categories, because many people do not distinguish the social notion of gender from the natural notion of sex and consider gender to be a natural power relationship not open to change. Accordingly, by mapping gender onto a linguistic opposition, it becomes possible to turn the opposition into a natural asymmetry not open to change. It is crucial, therefore, to refer to gender when studying linguistic ideologies and to refer to linguistic ideologies when studying gender. Second, the relationships between linguistic ideologies change as politics, economics, and society change. At the same time, as those relationships change, particular stylistic and linguistic features associated with each ideology of linguistic variety change, as do the political function and cultural value assigned to each of them. Chapter 8 demonstrated that, during the war, the assimilation policy of turning people in the East Asian colonies of Japan into Japanese resulted in emphasizing linguistic gender differences, defining women’s language as a symbol of imperial tradition. Chapter 9 revealed that women’s language, located outside the national language in the prewar period, was included in the national language during the war, making women’s language representative of female citizens fighting behind the gun. Chapter 10 showed that women’s language was essentialized in response to the Occupation army’s policy on equality, becoming an apolitical notion based on women’s innate nature. Third, the features and values assigned to linguistic ideologies can be ambiguous, inconsistent, and contradictory. People do not have the same understanding concerning what stylistic and linguistic features constitute women’s language or feminine speech. While the ideology of a national language is associated with masculinity, it is also associated with maternity, as exemplified by the well-known term, bogo (mother tongue). These ambiguous, inconsistent, and contradictory constitutions, however, function as the perfect ideology to completely repress voices of the dominated speakers. To criticize any woman’s speech is acceptable exactly because the ideology of women’s language embraces two contradictory ideologies, the norms of feminine speech and the belief that women’s language is what women speak. The logical contradiction contained within the discourses effectively and systematically functions to impair the dominated groups. Considering women’s language as an ideological construct brings new insights into our understanding of the relationship between language and domination. As women’s language was equated with women’s linguistic practices, previous studies have focused on analyzing the speech women use in concrete situations. In



Conclusion 229

discussing the relationship between language and domination, therefore, the gendered power relationship was directly connected to particular usages. In an extreme case, some sociolinguists argued that, as women’s sentence-final forms wa and yo were less affirmative than men’s forms da and zo, women could not speak persuasively. Nevertheless, the pragmatic function of a particular linguistic feature changes, depending on the context in which it is used, and it is completely possible to persuade others by speaking with wa and yo. The analysis in this book, in contrast, presents the possibility of examining the relationship between language and domination from two different perspectives. One is to analyze how metalinguistic practice categorizes, assigns value, and locates a particular local linguistic practice. We have seen that metalinguistic discourse, particularly academic discourse, created the ideology of women’s language by defining, adopting, and exploiting women’s creative speech. Chapter 2 showed that the normative discourse of conduct books turned the innovative speech of court women in the fourteenth century into the norms of feminine speech in the premodern period. Chapter 5 demonstrated that the modern writers of novels turned “teyo dawa speech,” created by female students to express their own identity, into schoolgirl speech, a symbol of sexuality. Metalinguistic practices fueled the ideology of women’s language by transforming women’s creative linguistic practices and incorporating them into women’s language. This indicates that, in studying the relationship between language and domination, it is important to analyze metalinguistic practice as data. It is necessary to pay more attention to metalinguistic practice in examining how the speech of young people, non-heterosexuals, non-Japanese, and regional speakers as well as women, is dominated. The other perspective is to analyze the ways linguistic ideologies both provide resources for and restrict linguistic practice. Japanese speakers can use the knowledge of women’s language, stylistic and linguistic features associated with women, as linguistic resources to express a particular femininity (cf. Introduction, note 20). Linguistic ideologies, however, latently restrict speakers’ choices so that they are willing to make the restricted choice. Chapter 1 showed that the norms of feminine speech were later imbued with the notions of elegance, prudence and discretion, promoting women themselves to follow the norms. We have seen in Chapter 9 that linguists redefined women’s language as speech based on “innate femininity.” Since women’s language was imbued with discretion and femininity, women were not only expected to speak politely if they want to prove their femininity, but also to be evaluated on their femininity based on their speech. In fact, in Japan, if a female victim of sexual harassment uses rough language, her lack of femininity, rather than the act of the assailant, may be considered as the source of the problem. What dominates women’s linguistic practice here is the connection between women’s language (linguistic ideology) and femininity (gender ideology).

230 Gender, language and ideology

By looking at women’s language as ideology, it becomes possible to analyze such a form of ideological dominance. Finally, I would like to propose a three-part strategy to reform the gendered linguistic ideologies. The first part would be to emphasize that women’s linguistic practice is far richer than we believe. Women’s speech has varied and changed in a variety of ways and will continue to do so. To homogenize the varieties of speech into a single category of women’s language and to talk about, criticize, and normalize it, as if all women use language in a similar way, therefore, constitutes a very political act of dominance over women’s linguistic practice. The second part of the strategy would be for women to produce metalinguistic discourse, as I have begun to do in this book. It is especially important to talk about the relationship between language and masculinity; men’s speech, after all, acquired its unmarked, standard, and central privilege by not being discussed. Chapter 3, by revealing the covert connection between the national language and masculinity, questions its unmarkedness. The third part would be to watch and supervise the process by which metalinguistic practice utilizes women’s creative linguistic practice to reinforce hegemonic gender ideologies, as shown in the cases of court-women’s speech and schoolgirl speech.

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Index A Aeba, Kooson  122 Ama no mokuzu [Seaweed of a Mermaid]  56, 57, 164 Anthias, Floya  190, 191 Asahi shimbun  10–12, 14, 18, 53 B Barrett, Rusty  21 Bauman, Richard  30 Borker, Ruth  19 Briggs, Charles  30 Bucholtz, Mary  21, 24 Butler, Judith  20, 21, 91, 206 C Cameron, Deborah  5, 19, 23, 24 Coulmas, Florian  77 D Dai Nihon teikoku kempoo (The Great Japan Imperial Constitution)  74, 171, 173 Daitooa kyooeiken (The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere)  161 Dan, Michiko  165, 167 Doi, Kooka  89, 90 Doi, Takako  196 Dower, John  195, 196, 222, 223 E Echeverria, Begoña  78, 154 Eckert, Penelope  20, 21 Enloe, Cynthia  78 essentialization (of gender)  91, 92, 162, 178, 201, 202, 204, 206, 207, 222 F Fairclough, Norman  51 Fishman, Pamela  19 Foucault, Michel  29

fu-gen (female-language)  43, 46, 47, 89, 98, 99, 150, 152 Fujin yashinaigusa [Book to Educate Women]  50, 65-68 Fujiwara, Yoichi  180, 181, 213 Fukaya, Masashi  100, 106, 109, 124 Fukuzawa, Yukichi  87, 93–96, 99 Furuya, Tsunatake  200 Futabatei, Shimei  80, 118, 119, 128 G Gaku sei (The School System Law)  96, 104, 139 Gal, Susan  19, 23, 24, 153–155 genbun itchi (The unification of speech and writing)  78, 79, 81–84, 118, 122, 139, 148, 149, 156 Genji monogatari [The Tale of Genji]  16, 17 Gordon, Beate Sirota  195–197 Go shoo san shoo (Five troubles and three obediences)  43, 47 H Hall, Kira  21, 24, 155 Halperin, David  85 Hani, Motoko  172, 174 Hara, Fujiroo  223 Hashimoto, Shinkichi  176, 179, 180 Higashikuze, Michitomi  99 Hiraishi, Noriko  111 Hiratsuka, Raichoo  88 Hirokoo, Ryoozoo  164, 180 Hobsbaum, Eric  165 Hokama, Shuzen  80 Honda, Masuko  105, 108–111, 116, 128 Horii, Reichi  4 Hoshina, Kooichi  142, 143, 146, 161–163, 167, 182

I Imaizumi, Sadasuke  150–152 Imaizumi, Tadayoshi  212, 215 Inoue, Miyako  15, 18, 22, 27, 31–33, 117, 130 Inoue, Tetsujiroo  74, 99 Irvine, Judith  24, 26, 153–155 Ishiguro, Yoshimi  163–167, 178, 182, 212 Ishii, Kendoo  106, 108 Ishii, Shooji  161, 167 Ishikawa, Ken  201 Ishikawa, Matsutaroo  39, 40, 42, 43, 45–50, 69, 88–93 Ishikawa, Tadanori  116, 120 Ishimori, Nobuo  166 Iwabuchi, Etsutaroo  215 Iwai, Yoshio  179, 180 Iwamoto, Yoshiharu  112–114, 117, 122 Iwaya, Sazanami  116, 120, 122 J Jespersen, Otto  201 Jugaku, Akiko  71, 72 K Kaburagi, Kiyokata  122 Kagomimi [Basket Ears]  63, 64 Kaibara, Ekiken  39, 40, 47, 48 Kan, Satoko  125, 126 Kanai, Keiko  74 Kanai, Yasuzoo  140, 142–144, 146 kango (Chinese words)  3, 16, 17, 65 Karasawa, Tomitaroo  105, 108 Kasuga, Masaharu  178 Katakoto [The Other Language]  43, 44 Katz, Jonathan  85 Kawaguchi, Kazuya  85 Kawamura, Kunimitsu  129, 130 Kazama, Takashi  85

252 Gender, language and ideology kazoku kokka kan (The state-asfamily ideology)  73, 74, 92, 96, 97, 99–101, 173, 223, 225 Kieda, Masuichi  169, 176, 180, 182, 214 Kikuzawa, Sueo  162, 163, 178, 182, 202, 216 Kindaichi, Kyoosuke  1, 163–167, 169, 179, 180, 214, 216 Kiyuu shooran [Glimpses of Edo Ludic Life]  64, 71 Kobayashi, Chigusa  17 Kokka soodooinhoo (The National Mobilization Law)  160, 171 Kokugo choosa iinkai (The National-Language Research Committee)  79, 80, 139, 142, 143, 146, 147, 161, 212 Komatsu, Sumio  104, 112, 116, 145 Komori, Yooichi  24, 161 Koojien [Wide Garden of Words]  3 Kootoo jogakkoo rei (Women’s Secondary School Act)  100, 109, 123, 125 Kosugi, Tengai  125 Kotthoff, Helga  22 Koyama, Shizuko  74, 92, 93 Kroskrity, Paul  24, 26, 27, 30, 156 Kugimoto, Hisaharu  200, 204 Kulick, Don  24, 85 Kume, Yoriko  155 Kunita, Yuriko  5, 57, 62, 63, 68, 215 Kurashima, Nagamasa  212 Kusa musubi [The Grass Tie]  57, 70, 164 Kyoogaku seishi (The Imperial Will on Education)  73, 96, 97, 108, 112, 115 Kyooiku chokugo (The Imperial Rescript on Education)  74, 96, 97, 99 L Lakoff, Robin  5, 19 Lee, Yeounsuk  24, 78–80, 139, 160, 161 Levy, Indra  119 M MacArthur, Douglas  195–197 Maltz, Daniel  19

Maruyama, Rinpei  176, 179, 180 Masaki, Seikichi  81, 82 Mashimo, Saburoo  3, 201–204, 215, 216 Masubuchi, Tsunekichi  139 Matsumoto, Shigeko  159, 161 Matsushita, Daizaburoo  142, 143, 146, 176, 177, 179, 180 Matsuura, Keizoo  180 McClintock, Anne  190, 191 McConnell-Ginet, Sally  21 McElhinny, Bonnie  22 Menoto no sooshi [The Book of the Nursemaid]  17, 41, 42 Mihashi, Osamu  127 Milroy, James  23 Milroy, Lesley  19, 23 Mi no katami [Half of the Body]  41, 42 Mio, Isago  2, 176, 180, 182 Mitchell, Lisa  225 Mitchell, Margaret  14 Miura, Toranosuke  224 Miyake, Kaho  120, 121, 128 Miyazaki, Ayumi  27, 29 Mori, Arinori  81, 139 Mori, Senzoo  122 Morita, Tama  163, 167, 177 Mosse, George  78 Muta, Kazue  73, 93 N Nagano, Masaru  142, 145, 199, 200, 205 Nagao, Masanori  61, 163, 164, 166, 167, 171, 215 Nagata, Yoshitaroo  176, 180, 181 Nagel, Joane  78 Nakae, Choomin (Tokusuke)  81, 82, 94 Nakagawa, Kenjiroo  106, 148, 149 Nakagawa, Kojuuroo  81, 82 Nanba, Tomoko  108 Narita, Ryuuichi  155 Natsume, Sooseki  124, 128, 129 Nichi-ho jisho [Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary]  64, 65, 215 Nichiren  62 Nichols, Patricia  19, 20 Nicholson, Linda  91 Nishihara, Keiichi  167, 168 Nishimura, Shigeki  97

Niwa no oshie [The Lessons of the Garden]  41 Nyooboo hippoo [How Women Should Write]  63 O Ochs, Elinor  131 Oda, Nobunaga  62 Oguri, Fuuyoo  103, 127 Ohiyashi [Water]  61, 71 Okada, Yachiyo  118 Okamoto, Shigeko  10, 29, 32, 192 Okano, Hisatane  83, 85, 138, 140 Onna choohooki [Women’s Encyclopedia]  44, 45, 50, 55, 66-68 Onna daigaku takara bunko [The Treasure Box of Women’s Learning]  47–50, 68, 90 Onna daigaku [Women’s Learning]  47, 50, 88, 90, 98 Onna imagawa nishiki no kodakara [Women’s Imagawa Brocade Treasure of Children]  46 Onna jitsugo kyoo/Onna dooshi kyoo [Women’s Practical Language Lessons/Lessons for Female Children]  46, 50 Ooe, Sazanami  140 Ooe, Shinobu  173 Ookubo, Tadatoshi  200 Ooshima, Kaori  15 Ootsuki, Fumihiko  18, 77, 82, 83, 85, 161 Osa, Shizue  24, 78, 80, 160, 169 Ozaki, Kooyoo  103, 114–116, 120, 127, 133 Ozaki, Yoshimitsu  10 P Pharr, Susan  196, 224 Philips, Susan  22 R Reihoo yookoo [Gist of Manners]  166, 177, 178 Renhoo  53, 54 Robertson, Jennifer  190, 191 Rodriguez, João  65, 72 Rowling, J. K.  14

Index 253

ryoosai kenbo (good-wife-wisemother) in education  82, 109, 115–117, 134 as identity  115, 116, 133, 134 as ideology  73–75, 82, 101, 104, 148, 149 in school readers  150-152 as role  94–97, 100, 101 S Saeki, Junko  125 Sakuma, Kanae  161, 179–181, 214 Satoo, Haruo  119, 120 Satow, Ernest  142, 143, 146 Seken musume katagi [The Nature of Common Young Women]  58, 59, 61, 71 shi koo (Four behaviors of women)  43, 47 Shibamoto Smith, Janet  32, 192 Shikitei, Samba  58–60, 70, 71 Shimpoo, Iwaji  137, 147–151 Shinmura, Izuru  166, 167, 177 Shoreishuu [Collection of Manners]  63 Sievers, Sharon  190, 191 Silverstein, Michael  25, 30 Song, Youn ok  224 Spender, Dale  52 SturtzSreetharan, Cindi  27 Suematsu, Kenchoo  98 Sugimoto, Tsutomu  4, 5, 56, 63, 68, 71, 205

Sunaoshi, Yukako  10, 27 Suzuki, Bunshiroo  200, 204 Suzuki, Tomi  225 Suzuki, Yuuko  172, 174 T Takakura, Teru  200 Takata, Giho  89, 90 Takeuchi, Hisaichi  115, 116 Tanizaki, Junichiroo  165, 177 Tannen, Deborah  19 Teyo dawa monogatari [The story of teyo dawa]  122, 123 Tokieda, Motoki  164, 179, 180 Toogoo, Masatake  94 Totsugi bunshoo [A Primer on Marriage]  46, 50 Toyotomi, Hideyoshi  62 Tsubouchi, Shooyoo  116, 118–120, 145 Tsubouchi, Yuuzoo  150, 151

Wakakuwa, Midori  74, 173, 174, 190 Washi, Rumi  32, 162, 172, 173, 176 West, Candace  19 Wodak, Ruth  22 Wong, Andrew  23, 24 Woolard, Kathryn  27, 30, 77

U Uchida, Roan  118, 119, 129 Uchida, Yuuya  53 Ueda, Kazutoshi  78, 79, 83, 138, 139, 160 Ueno, Chizuko  74 Usuda, Suekichi  83, 142, 143, 146

Y Yamada, Bimyoo  79, 83 Yamada, Yoshio  142, 143, 146, 176, 180, 213 Yamaguchi, Kiichiro  212 Yamamoto, Masahide  80–82, 145, 149 Yanagi, Yae  163, 167 Yasuda, Toshiaki  24, 78, 160, 161 Yazaki, Genkuroo  204, 216 Yokoi, Tokio  94 Yomiuri shimbun  111, 116–119, 125, 126 Yoshida, Hirohisa  211, 217, 218 Yoshida, Sumio  216 Yoshida, Shigeru  222, 224 Yoshioka, Kyooho  140, 142–144, 146, 147 Yuval-Davis, Nira  190, 191

V Vincent, Keith  85

Z Zimmerman, Don  19

W wago (Japanese words)  17, 65