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(★)(This book surveys the history of the Japanese written language, which began with the introduction of the Chinese script in the seventh century. The difficulties of writing the language in the script of another language --one totally different in phonology, syntax, and vocabulary-- set in motion a search for a ´native´ style of writing that was to extend into this century. The development of hiragana and katakana, the native syllabaries, was begun in the ninth century, and a native writing style free of Chinese influence was perfected by the eleventh century. The influence of the spoken language, as well as the use of Chinese vocabulary, gave birth to a variety of modified versions of the native style, but until the end of the nineteenth century and the movement to unify the written and spoken languages, the grammar was to remain basically that of the eleventh century. The author approaches her subject through the developments in writing style and grammar : syntax, vocabulary, pronunciation, and such grammatical functions as sentence endings, honorifics, and inflections. The evolutionary process can be clearly seen in the major classical works --literary, historical, and religious-- written between the seventh and twentieth centuries ; and these classic texts provide the framework for historical analysis of written Japanese. The chapters, besides surveying significant literary works, provide glimpses of social history. Exercising literary skills had been the privilege of the leisured aristocrats of early Japan, but with the decline of aristocratic society at the end of the Heian period, the diffusion of reading and writing to a broader society took place. For the general public, poetry, humor, juvenile literature, and popular fiction slowly replaced the oral traditions of earlier times when stories and epics were recited to an illiterate populace. The rush of books published in the Edo and Meiji periods gives a particularly good picture of what people of the times were reading. A major feature of this volume is the forty reading selections in Japanese. The readings, selected to best exemplify the varieties of writing styles, can be used in conjunction with the text or alone as a reader for courses in classical Japanese. The index giving kanji for all Japanese terms and works will be extremely useful for students of both language and literature. Yaeko Sato Habein is instructor in Japanese at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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