Japansk språkhistoria ur ett idéhistoriskt perspektiv

Apart from the readings given below, a selection of excerpts from historical Japanese texts will also be assigned.

Week 1: Introduction

Frellesvig, 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Excerpt: “Introduction”, p. 1-8] (8 pages)

Takeuchi, Lone. 1999. The Structure and History of From Yamatokotoba to Nihongo. Essex: Longman Linguistic Library. [Excerpt: “Language in Japanese Culture” pp. 1-40] (40 pages)

Week 2: Writing Japanese

Frellesvig, 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Excerpt: “Early Writing in Japan and Old Japanese Sources” & “The Sinification of Japanese”, p. 11-25, 258 293] (51 pages)

Lurie, David. 2011. Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. [Excerpt: “Writing and poetry in early Japan” pp. 300-311] (12 pages)

Kin, Bunkyō. 2021. Literary Sinitic and East Asia: A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. [Excerpt: “What is kundoku” pp. 8-15] (8 pages)

Week 3: Edo period and proto-nationalism

Frellesvig, 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Excerpt: Variation in Modern Japanese, pp. 377-383] (7 pages)

Kin, Bunkyō. 2021. Literary Sinitic and East Asia: A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. [Excerpt: “Kundoku in the Edo period” & “Debates about the Abolition of kundoku: Tōgai 東涯 and Sorai 徂徠” pp. 67-71] (5 pages)

Bushelle, Emi Foulk. 2020. Philology for an Enchanted World: Motoori Norinaga and the Study of Japanese Language and Literature in Early Modern Japan. Philological encounters. 161-189. (29 pages)

Week 4: (Re)encountering Europe

Frellesvig, 2010. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Excerpt: “The westernization of Japanese: Loanwords and borrowings”, p. 403-412] (10 pages)

Kawato Michiaki. 2014. “Genbun itchi and Literary Translations in Later Nineteenth-Century Japan: The Role of Literary Translations in Forming the “De-aru” Style”. In: Judit Árokay, Jadranka Gvozdanović & Darja Miyajima (eds.). Divided Languages? Diglossia, Translation and the Rise of Modernity in Japan, China, and the Slavic World. New York, NY: Springer. 89-103. (15 pages)

Lee, Yeounsuk. 2010. The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. [Excerpt: “The Japanese language before kokugo: Views of Mori Arinori and Baba Tatsui”, p. 7-20] (14 pages)

Week 5: Kokugo and state-building

Lee, Yeounsuk. 2010. The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. [Excerpt: “The creation of kokugo”, p. 54-69] (16 pages)

Nakamura, Momoko. 2014. Gender, language and ideology : a genealogy of Japanese women’s language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. [Kapitel 6: “Masculinizing the national language”, pp. 137-156] (20 pages)

Holca, Irina. 2016. Insularity and imperialism: the borders of the world in the Japanese and Taiwanese kokugo readers during the Taishō era. Japan Forum 28 (1): 32-73. (42 pages)

Week 6: Script reform before and after World War II

Shockey, Nathan. 2016. Toward a New Word Order: Early Twentieth Century Orthographic Reform and Its Discontents. Journal of Japanese Language and Literature 50 (2): 303-345. (42 pages)

Unger, J. Marshall. 1996. Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading between the lines. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. [Excerpt: “SCAP steps in” pp. 59-85] (26) pages