Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Language and Identity Workshop · Acedra
Home
Explore
Languages
Language and Identity Workshop
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
251 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:01
Hello.
0:10
Hello everyone. And thank you very much for joining us today for the kickoff event of the Language and Identity workshop series.
0:21
Before we give a word to our main speaker, professor at Princeton University and also author of "Language, Nation, Race: Linguistic Reform in Meiji Japan" Professor Atsuko Ueda, I would like to say a couple of words about the flow of today's event. Well, first of all, my name is Maria Telegina. I'm a Project Assistant Professor here at Tokyo College and one of the organizers of this Language and Identity Series.
0:52
In the series we discuss interaction, connection, and relationship between language and identity from various perspectives. And today, Professor Ueda will give a lecture entitled "Becoming 'White': The Japanese Language in the Modern Global Order" with a special focus on tropes of racialization in Ueda Kazutoshi's national language reforms. First, Professor Ueda will give a lecture. Then we will have a
1:25
commentary from my colleague Michael Facius, and then we will have time for discussion.
1:35
So dear viewers, please find the Q&A button in the middle of your zoom panel.
1:46
And if you have questions for Professor Ueda, please write them in the Q&A section. We accept questions both in English and in Japanese. Also, please find interpretation tab in the menu somewhere on your right, if needed. Please note that recording this event is prohibited.
2:13
And now for the main part of today's event. Professor Ueda, the floor is yours.
2:25
Thank you, Maria. Let me just share screen before I begin.
2:43
Okay, first off, I'd like to thank Maria for organizing this event and inviting me to give this talk.
2:53
Second, I should apologize, but I'm still very old school and I'm not very good at creating slides. I'm sure it'd be very obvious to you soon as I begin, but since it's a Zoom forum, I figured that it's better that we have something to hold on to while you listen to my talk.
3:29
First, the overview. So the main objective is for me to introduce my book "Language, Nation, and Race" with a specific focus on the tropes of racialization.
3:43
And so, here is basically the order that I am going to proceed. I will first discuss the trends in Japan studies on language reform studies. I will then talk about my attempts at intervention,
4:02
and then I will provide a brief history of race as it became a major index of identity, and then proceed to my discussion of the tropes of racialization in Ueda Kazutoshi's national language reforms.
4:21
Maybe I don't really need to say this, especially for the audience in Japan, but in the United States people ask me this all the time, so I'll just say it from the beginning. I am not related to Ueda Kazutoshi.
4:48
So, this book is about a variety of language reforms that occurred in Meiji, Japan.
4:55
It's certainly not at all comprehensive in this endeavor, but is rather an attempt to intervene in the vast scholarship of language reform that has defined the last three decades. In thinking about linguistic reforms, it is of course vital that we consider issues of nation formation, as many scholars have done in the past.
5:16
It is not a coincidence that with the proliferation of postcolonial and nationalization theories in the 1990s, scholarship began to adopt a new focus with regard to the production of national language and its ideological implications.
5:33
Many works engaging with Foucault's theory of systems of power and governmentality began to focus on the structure of violence constitutive of any nation within which the construction of language, especially national language, played an integral role.
5:51
This trend of postcolonial and cultural studies accompanied by various studies of imperialism and nationalism is worthy of reflection as it extends far beyond the scholarship of major language reform. As early as 2000, scholars such as Harry Harootunian issued an apt warning regarding the link between postcolonialism and area studies.
6:17
In his "History's Disquiet," Harootunian discusses the trap of postcolonial theories as follows:
6:27
"Postcolonial theories promised to supply a critique of Eurocentric conceptions of knowledge and provide a forum for the hitherto excluded to speak in their own voice from the margins where domination and power had held them silent since the beginning of modernity-- now reread as colonialism--stands as a true successor of area studies, which can be seen as their prehistory. Yet the search for the excluded voice often leads to a futile pursuit of
6:57
authenticity and restores the Eurocentric claims of the sovereign subject it wishes to eliminate."
7:06
What Harootunian incisively demonstrates here is that what began as a critical examination of the ideological nature of knowledge produced in area studies turned into something slightly but crucially different
7:21
posts colonialism and cultural Studies instead discovered in new studies that work to relieve the frustrations that many felt about Eurocentric tendency of theoretical discourse.
7:35
As a result, focus shifted to the recovery of the voices of those unjustly oppressed. This resulted in a scholarly surge towards identity politics which, despite its historical importance, contains an intrinsic trap: the discourse of identity inherits the culturalism inscribed in area studies, one that postcolonial studies and cultural studies set out to criticize in the first place. In other words, scholars tend to seek out
8:07
unique voices of the oppressed and as such, end up essentializing identity, whether this be the identity of the subaltern or the oppressed non-West. Furthermore, what is symptomatic of such trend is a naive opposition posed between the oppressor and the oppressed. The desire to give voice to the oppressed, however just and moral it may sound, tends to demonize the oppressors of operating within the system of authority.
8:38
I, of course, understand this sentiment that demonizing these figures ultimately attributes an excess of power to them, ratifying the very thing that it seeks to undermine. I am entirely sympathetic with such desire, but I also want to be vigilant against inadvertently strengthening the system that one attempts to criticize.
9:01
I raised this issue in order to reflect on the ways in which nation, a structure of modernity within which we live, had been approached by a scholarship in the last three decades or so. I, of course, believe that nation is a system of violence, and it is imperative that we explore the ways in which such violence is implemented. However, it is one thing to expose the ideological structure by which the nation sustains itself,
9:28
but it is quite another to suggest that such awareness can open up a space in which the oppressed voices can be redeemed and given their rightful equal status.
9:42
National language scholarship was not free of this trap. This is apparent in the focus of Ueda Kazutoshi, the father of Japanese linguistics who trained many scholars who went on to institute language reforms in Japan's colonies. Here, Ueda is situated as an evil nationalist or an imperialist whose project entailed the oppression of local dialects and colonized subject as, for example, Okinawans, Ainu, Koreans and Taiwanese.
10:13
I do not doubt that these minorities and their languages were oppressed in light of Ueda's kokugo reform, and it is certainly important to study these minority languages that are too often disregarded.
10:27
But what we must pay attention to is precisely what the scholarship that demonizes with us takes for granted, which ultimately contributes to the oppression of these minority voices. For example, such binary thinking of oppressor and oppressed make us lose sight of the fact that a nation, in order to sustain itself, needs minorities. That is to say, no one is inherently an authentic citizen. Such a fictive group, in Japan's case yamato minzoku, needs to be constantly
11:03
fabricated. Yamato minzoku does not exist. It is only through constant reproduction of minorities that authentic citizenry can be sustained. Authentic citizenry, in other words, can only be defined by the various minorities that make it authentic. Structurally speaking, anyone can be designated as as a minority, as anyone is prone to markers of difference. Just as no one is inherently an authentic citizen, no one is inherently a minority.
11:38
In effect, the simple binary of the oppressor and oppress cannot sustain itself. As one is invariably defined and contaminated by the other, and to vulnerize minority identities, without critically understanding the system can only reinforce the system that is the nation.
11:58
So in this book, I make interventions with such a scholarly trend from two different angles, which coincide with the two parts of the book. The first part, entitled "Prenation: A Linguistic Chaos," examines the first two decades of the Meiji Period prior to the emergence of Ueda Kazutoshi.
12:19
What is symptomatic of the scholarship that focus on Ueda is that nation appears to preexist the nation in the effort to condemn the nation and its creators. The nation is posited as a preexisting telos to which the leaders aspired. In such a paradigm, the formulaic discussions that seemingly trace the nation-building process often end up as self-fulfilling processes. Now, that's the part of the book I'm not going to talk about today.
12:48
In part two of the book entitled "Race and Language Reform," I address race. Meiji was a race war, and it is crucial to inscribe race in our examination, since no analysis of imperialism or nationalism is possible without race.
13:09
I will now provide a brief history of race, how it began to denote what it is in the modern world order. As many historians of race have remarked, it was only in the 18th century that race appeared as a concept to categorize human beings through physical characteristics, primarily through skin color. Prior to this, social status by birth and religion provided a far more prevalent form of self-identity. Through their
13:45
encounter with Africa, Europeans had of course recognized that they had lighter pigmentations. But race did not become the dominant taxonomy of classification. In effect, the idea of whiteness as indicative of a pan-European superior race was slow to develop before the 18th century.
14:06
The events of enlightenment and science marked the beginning of change as a means to turn away from religion. Race became one of the defining indexes to organize humans as a part of the animal kingdom rather than the children of God.
14:25
The well-known father of physical anthropology, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that name, published on the natural varieties of mankind in 1776. There he introduced the authoritative classification of race, which he divided into five: caucasian, mongolian, ethiopian, american and malay.
14:50
"Mongolian" refers to those in Asia, including China and Japan, "ethiopian" refer to the dark skinned inhabitants of Africa, "american" refer to the natives of the New World, and "malay" refers to the Polynesians and the Aborigines of Australia. Once such form of classification took form, the hierarchizing of the categories to follow load. In the 1798 work "Outline of History of Humanity," German philosopher Christoph Meiners aestheticized
15:27
whiteness as beautiful, which he further linked with intelligence. In the same vein, darker people were designated as ugly and semi-civilized. Such categorizations set the stage for the full blown biologism and racism fueled by Social Darwinism. In the 19th century,
15:51
such racial taxonomy was inextricably connected with the emergence of Europe, a civilized center through which the world was defined. In the 15th to 16th centuries, Europe emerged as a self-conscious unit. Despite many internal differences within Europe, it began to identify itself as a continent. There can be seen a gradual shift in this world order as Europeans identify themselves as the West vis-a-vis the non-Europeans or "the Rest," as Stuart Hall famously described.
16:31
The privileged side of whiteness, although in appearance tied to Europeans, was thus tightly linked toward colonial expansion and the ideological world order that it produced. In this regime, the whiteness of the West became the standard regulating this world order, while the Rest was viewed as the deviation from the standard.
16:56
It is important to keep in mind that this notion of the west is not at all monolithic. For example, Britain colonized Ireland and the Irish were not considered white in the United States until the late 19th century. Similarly, Jews and the Italians were not considered white. It is not difficult to see that the category of the West is highly unstable. Precisely because of this, however, many forces have come to reproduce and reify the structure of the West and the Rest.
17:26
The West and the Rest is furthermore a structure of desire. The West will always present itself as a goal to which the Rest aspires. But Central West remains ultimately inaccessible, which is a necessary condition for its status as the object of desire.
17:48
The racial taxonomy produced in the 18th century Europe was transmitted to Japan even before the Meiji Restoration. However, the most influential work on racial taxonomy appeared after the Restoration, especially through the writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi. In "Shochu bankoku ichiran" or "All Countries at a Glance," he defines the five races in the following manner: "White race: They have the fairest skin... they are the most intelligent and capable of attaining the highest
18:22
level of civilization. Yellow race: The skin is yellow like oil.... They are capable of endurance and diligence, but are limited in intelligence and slow in making progress." You basically get the gist. I don't think I need to go through the five races here. One can clearly see the racial hierarchy organized. By the framework of Social Darwinism, the racial hierarchy was inextricably tied to geography. The white race is Europe, the yellow race is Asia,
18:58
the black race in Africa and so forth. Such classification also shapes Fukuzawa's "Sekai kuni zukushi" or "The Countries of the World," which was used as a school geography text book. In effect, the study of geography marked the very internalization of such racial hierarchy.
19:20
The race war in Meiji Japan was very much a pursuit of whiteness in this racial order. The power struggle in East Asia, in other words, reflected their desire to assume the status of the West. As a result, Japan soon strove to become a colonial power itself. Force was not the only means Japan used to emulate the West. In fact, Japan presented itself as the object of desire for East Asian countries. Japan quickly became the center of East Asia through
19:52
which to gain Western knowledge, resulting in the large influx of students from China and Korea. Japan defined itself as the educator of East Asia. As I will show, it was precisely in this context that where Kazutoshi attempted to define Japanese as the common language of Asia, in this way, Japanese could gain recognition as one of the few imperial languages, such as English. Learning Japanese, therefore, was seen as a means to acquire access
20:27
to the modern and so Western forms of knowledge. When we think of modern Japanese literary studies, many scholars have discussed Japanese imperialism, colonialism ethnocentrism, but it is very rare for them to discuss race. Of course, there are definite exceptions. Naoki Sakai, for example, has consistently written on race. I would like to follow his lead and try to inscribe race in places that are not often discussed.
21:06
As Sakai has pointed out very succinctly in an essay entitled "Reishizumu sutadiizu e no shiza" or "Perspectives on Racial Studies," racialization needs to be understood as a system of social categorization by which a given individual's physical traits, chosen selectively yet dogmatically, define his or her place in the community to which he or she belongs. Race, in other words, is fabricated in a double sense of deception and construction.
21:40
It is imagined or constructed, and yet appears to be real, as if it existed somewhere. Whiteness, for example, only appears to exist and is in fact constructed as an object of desire, a vehicle for belonging to the most civilized community by which the modern order is defined.
22:01
It is important to keep in mind that indexes of identity, such as the national community, national language, or race, must be constantly reconstructed. As with the notion of authentic citizens I discussed earlier, the boundaries that determine the indexes of identity are constantly in flux and hence in need of repeated reinforcement.
22:25
Furthermore, any index of identity is in itself insufficient. It needs to depend on other indexes in order to be what it is. In effect, race is not something that can be separated from categories of ethnicity or nationality. It is impossible to say that race is biological and physical, that ethnicity is cultural, and that nationality is political, despite the fact that municipalists have attempted to distinguish these categories.
22:55
These notions are all conflated, contaminated and mutually invasive. The basic premise of this gesture to inscribe race into current studies is that that racism is integral to our understanding of modernity, with all its slippages into ethnocentrism and nationalism.
23:15
It is crucial to know that my primary interest is in the process of racialization, which occurs discursively in realms that, on the surface, it appears, have nothing to do with race. As Etienne Balibar reminds us, "racism has nothing to do with the existence of objective biological 'races.'"
23:37
Furthermore, it's important to understand that civilization, and hence race, involves at its core a teleology, a movement towards whiteness. Whiteness, constructed as a tea loss, is intimately related to privilege, including but not limited to the west in all its incarnations, wealth, social status, cultivated taste, and the proper use of language such as pronunciation, grammar and so forth. Franz Fanon suggested in "Black Skin, White
24:10
Masks," as he discusses the Negro of Antilles as becoming proportionately whiter, that is, he will come close to being a real human being in direct ratio to the his mastery of the French language.
24:26
The many cultural standards of the civilized, including proper use of language, are means to racialize and hierarchize people within the global order of modernity, without conceptioning race in this manner, we cannot begin to understand how racial categories have changed throughout history.
24:48
I'm now finally ready to specifically examine whether Kazutoshi and his reforms had all the tropes of racialization. I want to focus on the logic of equality and naturalization, which are two of the defining characteristics of modernity that reify and foster racism.
25:08
And I would like to do so in light of how Ueda posits the Japanese language with kokugo and show how his reform is complicit with the project of racialization.
25:19
So in his "Kokugo to kokka to" or "National Language and Nation," an essay based on a series of talks he gave in 1895, Ueda that defines the relationship between a nation and its national language in the following manner: "A language, for the people who speak it, is the symbol of the spirit of compatriots, just like the blood shared by their bodies. Taking the Japanese national language as an example, the Japanese language is the spiritual
25:50
blood of the Japanese people. The nation of Japan is maintained by this spiritual blood, and the Japanese race is unified by this most potent and long-preserved chain. Therefore, when visited by a crisis, as long as this voice resonates, our 40 million compatriots will listen to it and come to help one another... On learning of good news of victory, the celebration song for the emperor echoes from Chishima through Okinawa."
26:20
In this infamous passage where Ueda posits a logic of equality among the 40 million people, which includes those from Chishima currently Kuril Islands north of Hokkaido, to Okinawa, the boundaries of which were still very much contested at the time. On the one hand, this appears democratic, as he argues against the production of language that is controlled solely by the upper class or intellectuals. Yet on the other hand,
26:51
there's a danger in this logic of equality. Equality provides a grounding by which individuals are compared and differences produced. If one speaks a dialect, one is mocked as a minority. The facade of equality, which can never sustain itself, always produces excess and or lack. The dominant regulative idea will then be used explain the excess or lack.
27:18
Positing kokugo as the spiritual blood of the Japanese people, Ueda also mobilizes the logic of naturalization: these 40 million people "naturally" speak this Japanese language. A given person that belongs to this community necessarily is endowed with certain abilities "naturally." As many scholars have remarked, Ueda did not believe in one race speaking one language. Despite this, however, he states, and again from "Kokugo to kokka to," "for a nation to be
27:55
established, we must acknowledge that there must be one race that is a pillar of the nation.... In order to realize our movement, we need the yamato spirit of loyalty and patriotism, and the yamato minzoku that possesses this nation's language."
28:12
Ueda's ethnocentrism has often been pointed out, but it is worthwhile noting the very common logic of national community at play here, which is complicit with the logic of equality and naturalization that was posited earlier. Among the 40 million people, equality is inextricably linked to the need for assimilation. Because of the logic of naturalization, equality, which fundamentally be about rights, slips into a need to be equal.
28:43
It is not that we're simply equal, but that we need to become the same. Take one's language ability, for example. One is naturally endowed with such an ability. However, our language ability is an individual ability. One person is better at Japanese than I am, or vice versa. But when one's ability becomes the source of judgment regarding whether one rightfully belong to a given national community, a hierarchy is inevitably instituted among the speakers.
29:18
The standard by which such judgment is made by the imagined majority, in this case yamato minzoku.
29:28
This is also one of the defining characteristics of a national community, a part of a whole functioning like a synecdoche that defines the nation. In other words, nation will always have an imagined and dominant majority,
29:45
a part of a whole that sets the standard by which a given nation is defined. The majority is allegedly somewhere, like the yamada mintoku in Japan, whites in the United States, which can only be imagined and thus in need of continuous type of fabrication. This is precisely why anyone can be suddenly marked as a minority in this framework.
30:13
Having thus established a powerful majority, Ueda then claims the following in "Kokugo kenkyu ni tsuite" or "On the Study of National Language":
30:25
"we, the members of this research group, are ones who show great respect and love for the kokugo of the great Japanese Empire. We are the ones who have made a lifelong commitment to creating a common language of Asia (Asia, "Touyo zentai no futsuugo": a language that anyone involved in scholarship, politics, and business in Asia, whether this person be Korean, Chinese, European, or American would need to know. This "touyo zentai no futsuugo"
30:55
is later renamed to "Touwa kyoutsuugo," a language common to all of Asia, the education of which he and his disciples later tried to implement in Japan's colonies. Despite his fanatic nationalism, Ueda never conceptualized kokugo as a language that belonged only to the Japanese. In fact, he attempted to conceptualize kokugo as a language equivalent to French, English, and Spanish that would be spoken beyond a single nation. In short,
31:29
he conceptualized Japanese as an imperial language and thus he conceptualized it as white.
31:36
At the onset of modernity in Meiji Japan, the marker of whiteness consisted in possessing a nation-state; nation formation was thus an utmost necessity. As the desire to be white was inevitably frustrated it needed to further find ways to reinforce its whiteness. In effect, Japan had to possess an empire in which Japan was the center. The Japanese language that Ueda conceptualized was an imperial language which could be spoken by anyone in the Japanese Empire.
32:10
It was thus not simply a national language--to a degree, of course, it was, as the yamato minzoku is the true master and authentic speaker to some of the Japanese language--but it had to be reborn not as a national language, but as an imperial language, which is always already racialized.
32:32
Thinking about kokugo this way, Ueda's conception of race becomes rather suggestive,
32:39
he claims, and this is again from "Kokugo to kokka to," "any nation has one or a few races. Therefore, I do not believe that national subjects should be limited to one race. For example, among the Westerners, there are Italians, French, and Germans, just as among the Japanese people, there are people of imperial descent, descendants of Amatsukami and Kunitsukami, as well as the descendants of the feudal domains."
33:08
One can easily see that the terms "nation" and "race" are in flux here, but perhaps most interestingly, his "jinshu" is conflated with class. The imagined whiteness is in many ways a matter of class or privilege. Those who belong to the most civilized, privileged community do so precisely by laying claim to what is imagined and civilized.
33:36
So what is involved in such a construction of kokugo as whiteness? How can Ueda produce such kokugo with any sense of reality? In order to unravel this complex process, I wish to focus on one element in Ueda's reform: his obsession with the present. But before elaborating on his focus on the present, I wish to very briefly discuss the forms of literary history that his contemporaries were compiling, all in the name of nation formation.
34:11
This will help show what with Ueda's conception of kokugo was responding to, and it will also allow me to highlight how he radically departs from the nation to produce his white imperial language.
34:28
In early Meiji Japan, the term "bungaku" was equivalent to language, and it is not thus not a coincidence that language textbooks featured literary histories. The literary histories that Meiji ideologies took as their model arose in early 18th century Europe. In such models, literary texts were deemed as an expression of the social, political, and cultural environment of a given work's production.
34:56
Perhaps the most far-reaching work in this vein is "The History of English Literature" by Hippolyte Taine, known as the father of the sociological study of literature, positing the famous "race-milieu-moment" as a formula that constructs literary history. Taine sought to identify the national vogue expressed through text, capturing the vogue as a product of its political, social, and natural environments.
35:26
Literary historians in Japan started compiling histories closely following Taine's model. In 1890, they began to read text as a reflection of time, of social organization, and of the people's inner spirits. We thus see many references to words like "jinsei no kagami" in situating works of literature. Literary historians further linked the text to people's "shinteki seikatsu" or internal lives and "kanjou shisou" or
35:59
"emotions and thoughts." Haga Yaichi, for example, compiled "Kokubungakushi jikkou" or "Ten Lectures on National Literary History." He says that literary history traces the thoughts and feelings of our ancestors expressed through our national language. As many critics have noted, among the many objectives that literary historians had was the production of a national collective with a shared history by identifying the Japaneseness inscribed in literary works.
36:32
Now let us compare this to Ueda's project. In defining kokugo, Ueda retained the internal focus, one that is similar to the literary historians. This is his "Kokugo to kokka to" again, Ueda claims the following: "the language that a given citizenry speak and their characteristics are very intricately connected. What one citizenry feels via a phenomenon, or what the citizenry thinks about anything is reflected in its language. Thus I do not hesitate to designate
37:07
language as a manifestation of the speakers' thoughts and emotions in their spiritual life."
37:15
His definition of language is almost identical to the way that literary historians situated literature. Yet Ueda departs radically from that perspective by focusing on the present.
37:29
And this is "Nihon gengo kenkyuuhou," and I'm going to start skipping reading the quotes in the interest of time. So here, what he is promoting here is the focus on what currently exists rather than going back into the past. Like literary historians, literary history of the time typically began in antiquity and proceeded to the present, tracing the Japaneseness that seemingly existed from antiquity,
37:58
whereas insistence on the present went directly against such a method of producing Japan.
38:06
The implication of Ueda's rejection is rather radical in the creation of kokugo, when the constructive continuity of a nation is of utmost importance. Kokugo in Ueda's conceptualization severs itself from the past. It features a revolutionary view, an attempt to nationalize by rejecting the past, or perhaps more accurately, the past by which Japan is constructed until now is rejected.
38:36
In many ways, it is precisely because he conceptualized kokugo as a language that ought to be spoken by those beyond Japan that he had to sever his kokugo from the Japaneseness that was created by literary histories. This Japan was too limited, as literary histories through the privileging of the milieu, posited the link between language and the political, the social and the natural environment. In such a paradigm, the share of
39:05
Japan is geographically and socially bound. In order to posit kokugo as the unifying force of Asia, Ueda needed to sever kokugo from the literary history model. Ueda negates one form of the national and nationalism to reform it within a more expansive view in conceptualizing an empire.
39:27
Yet, as we have seen, he retains a part of the Taine model, the internal focus that is further evidence of the logic of naturalization that we saw earlier.
39:38
This is inextricably linked to his privileging of yamato minzoku. In this paradigm, yamato minzoku always be the most authentic and natural speakers of the Japanese language. In order to sustain the center, everyone else will be racialized or marked as a minority that can only fall short of linguistic mastery.
40:02
The link to kokugo and Japanese thoughts and emotions needs further elaboration, especially in light of how such discourse was later used in the colonies to justify a Japanese language education. On the one hand, it is something internal and has limited to so-called the Japanese people. But it's also a "shisou" or "thought" that Japan attained through its effort to modernize since the Meiji Restoration. The language embodies the development of "shisou" or "thought" that
40:33
is precisely Japanese modern thought that ought to be disseminated in the colonies.
40:41
Ueda's curriculum in "hakugengaku," which is a term for linguistics then, at Tokyo Imperial University, through which he produced a great many linguists who were deployed to the colonies to implement Japanese language education, was primarily comparative linguistics. Now, I certainly cannot do justice to the details of the studies of comparative linguistics, but what is important to note here is that such comparative linguistics
41:11
presented a structure of knowledge that was always already racialized, making kokugo the embodimented progress among the East Asian languages.
41:22
Such paradigm-manifesting claims, such as the following by Ootsuki Fumihiko, this is for his preface in "Kougo houbekki" or "Additional Grammar of Spoken Language," and again, I'm going to skip to the end of the quote where he talks about Taiwan and Korea, "Taiwan and Korea have entered our honorable country." In order to make the vulgar natives of Bujin like those of us like those of us in this honorable country, it is first important to
41:58
teach our spoken language. The clear assumption in this passage is that Taiwanese and Korean natives are less developed and that the only way for them to enter our honorable country and be like us is through the language of kokugo, the Japanese language embodies civilization. Such discourse was rampant at the time of annexation.
42:24
The more authentic speakers of kokugo they can create, the more authentic the imagined dominant majority become, that is to say, continuing to produce minorities. And the less civilized other, the more white the authentic yamato minzoku become.
42:45
Whiteness, which can never be fully accessed, can only be reaffirmed through the continuous reproduction of the less white.
42:52
Now, the need for such inauthentic speakers is inextricably linked to the fact that kokugo, as defined by Ueda, has no fixed or concrete existence.
43:05
Take, for example, his "Hyoujungo ni tsukite" or "On Standard Language."
43:11
Here he set forth the need for a standard language based on an extensive study of currently-used language. And here's a quote where he defines a standard language. But again, I'm going to skip reading it. Ultimately, he and his followers select the Tokyo dialect of the educated men to produce such a standard language. But most importantly, there is an obvious contradiction in this passage that stems from the impossibility of what Ueda seeks.
43:43
On the one hand, he claims that standard language is an ideal form of language that can be understood by people in the country. It is something that is artificially produced, one that transcends all local languages. Yet it is also something that has to be spoken by someone somewhere in the present, as it is a language that is collected. Ueda falls into a bind. Here he must acknowledge the nonexistence of standard language,
44:13
as it has to be artificially produced. Yet it must be an existent language.
44:24
The paradox is an interesting one that requires unpacking. As Ueda himself admits, such standardized language does not exist; it can only be an ideal form. Spoken language varies infinitely, and it's constantly changing. Any attempt to halt the changes, which is ultimately what standardization signifies, can only fall short. And yet it must also be said that it is precisely this gap between the ideal and the
44:54
actual that allows Ueda to empower kokugo. Kokugo is an idea that is empty. It is an ideal form to which one aspires, and yet one can never actually reach.
45:08
There is also a regional specificity in standard language; Ueda, along with Ootsuki earlier claims that it ought to emulate the Tokyo dialect. Interestingly, however, the many collection of spoken language volumes that they compiled often designate Tokyo Dialect as a potential standard. But they must spend more time in space collecting not the Tokyo dialect, but other local dialects. In effect, here, too, we find a gap between the ideal and the actual. Tokyo dialect,
45:44
which is presumably the model of ideal, remains empty while the actual collection is centered on local dialects, the ideal form, that is the Tokyo dialect, is being produced precisely through local dialect. It is a formation through the identification of deviation. Once the deviation is identified, so is the standard form.
46:09
Ueda may not have been conscious of this, but the emptiness of kokugo is precisely what allows him to empower kokugo as the object of desire. This is precisely the structure of racialization; it is not present, but it appears to be present. It is an object of desire that can never be possessed, but it is supposed to be somewhere. The many subsequent reforms in the colonies thus feature production of imperfect, inauthentic Japanese speakers,
46:39
the invariably hierarchized subject who desires to belong to the Japanese Empire.
46:48
The scholarship that is focused almost exclusively on ethnocentrism in Ueda's language reform loses sight of racialization and falls complicit with the project of racialization itself.
47:01
I cannot overemphasize the importance of reinscribing race in our work to critically engage with our field. The very fact that Japan studies exist in this current form is already a product of racialization. We don't have to look too far. Western philosophy presents itself as a normative philosophy, while Japanese philosophy is merely a yellow version of that. If we simply ghettoize ourselves in the study of Japan as an object, without calling
47:31
attention to how such object becomes constituted in the first place, and without calling attention to the always already structured raciality inscribed within it, we can only become complicit with the structure of racialization. Thank you.
47:53
I hope that wasn't too long.
47:56
No, of course not. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your amazing lecture. And now we will have a commentary from my colleague, Michael Facius, Associate Professor here at Tokyo College. Michael, please.
48:17
Yes, thank you very much. First of all, thank you very much, Professor Ueda, for this very fascinating lecture and the case you make for the inclusion of race
48:28
as an important topic in the history of language and linguistics. So I wanted to, I hope you can see my slides, I wanted to make three comments, and these comments are just my intellectual engagement with with your presentation. And of course, I don't
48:52
assume that you would answer to all of them, but perhaps you could respond to those of the comments that you find most interesting or relevant or where you want to say something. So, the first would obviously be about race and racial and other hierarchies in your presentation.
49:12
The second comment would be about language purification and the issue of kanji, specifically in the Japanese case and the period you are talking about and what we can learn from that regarding this discussion of race in language and linguistics and linguistic thought. And the third would be the impact of that structure of racialization inherent in that
49:41
language thought of that period and the impact of linguistics as an academic endeavor, perhaps even contemporary, like, what can we learn from that case study, if you will.
49:53
So, first of all, so in your talk, you state that the modern conceptions of language are based on a logic of racialization and demand that teleological push towards whiteness,
50:05
specifically, of course, focusing on Ueda, but I think it's a general statement that you're making there. And of course I agree with that in general. But I wondered if, and you also said that there are the different categories of nationality, if ethnicity and racialization, that they kind of intrude on each other, that they are not clearly separate, and I totally agree with that. But I also wonder if it's not a bit too strong, especially in the Japanese case,
50:32
to say that they are kind of identical. The different hierarchies of civilization progress of the 19th century, then race, the idea of the West and becoming more Western and then race becoming more white, if these should not be separated a bit more in the case of Japan
50:53
specifically, like this idea of the push towards Western whiteness in language and language hierarchies. And I just wondered about that because of the so-called indigenous Japanese traditions of thinking about these issues of the connection of language to Japaneseness. And that goes back to a period before the influence of Western racial and linguistic thought
51:21
that's just like very old tradition of the, as you of course know, right, I just wanted to point that out and ask you to expand a bit more on what you think about that and that relationship, the notion of the Japanese "kotodama," the connection of language and Japanese spirit. And then of course, the whole tradition of Japanese kokugaku, which is both a political program and that linguistic program, to recover that purely Japanese language and
51:49
spirit by purging it of Chinese influences. And of course, there is also a political program of purification and of creating a national entity, but through the means of philology, of the study of language and to find that pure origin of Japaneseness.
52:12
So I just wondered what you think about that relation between the previous modes of ethnocentrism, even if a proto-national and proto-racial thought in Japanese
52:28
thought before the impact of the West.
52:32
And then also another question I had is, is this notion of progress automatically racialized and static? You talk, of course, about the desire, of an unfulfillable desire, of the push towards more whiteness. But I felt like that especially early Meiji period Japan thinkers were convinced that Japan could catch up and even overtake the West in the race towards civilization. Like, that there was no inherent superiority of the West, but it
53:02
was just a superiority that could be witnessed in the contemporary world of the late 19th century.
53:08
But Japan couldn't just acquire that, but even overtake and go towards the top of that hierarchy.
53:18
And precisely, of course, then in later periods, precisely without becoming more white, but by highlighting Japaneseness and also like the idea of Pan-Asianism and Asianness. So I just wondered how, in your mind, these two go together with the notion of this push towards whiteness. The second question I had, oops, what's going on here? The second question I had or comment I had was relating to kanji. So in the case of Japan, this discourse that Ueda
53:52
and so on presented met with a very peculiar problem, I fear, that of Sinitic characters, of kanji. And I wondered what we can learn from the history of kanji and kanbun in the Meiji Period about the issue and specifically also the limits of that racializing thought. Of course, you were focusing on Ueda, but he was speaking in that political and discursive setting of the turn of the century, late Meiji Period language issues. And one of those issues was,
54:23
of course, that of what to do with kanji. And I think comparing it becomes particularly interesting, or like also salient when comparing it to other cases of language reform that are based on like a very strong racializing, nationalizing, ethnocentric idea of language. And the Turkish case is, of course, the most extreme case that happened a bit later in the 1920s, right, where there were very strong programs backed by the state to really purge
54:52
the Turkish language of foreign influences and even find retrospectively, for example, find
55:00
etymologies and genealogies of words that seem to be Persian, right? Or seem to be Arabic, but in fact quote unquote. So that's the work of those etymologists in that period. In fact, they were actually based on a Turkish root. Like it was all about showing that even the foreign influences were in fact Turkish originally. So in Japan, this kind of cleansing which would be based on this ethnocentric and racializing idea never really was successful.
55:32
And I think the main reason is that of course, kanji were, of course so embedded in everyday life at that point and also in the intellectual discourse that they couldn't easily be removed. But that also meant that there had to be an intellectual reason to be found for not abolishing the kanji.
55:54
And the interesting thing is, of course, that the earliest case for the abolishment of kanji made by Maejima Hisoka already in the 1860s, even before the Meiji Period, it did have this explicit Western viewpoint and it had that racial connotation, so I totally agree with your analysis. Maejima in his "Kanji o-haishi no gi," he was writing about
56:19
why it is necessary to abolish kanji to make Japan stronger, but he also explicitly refers to a conversation he had with a Western, I think probably it was American missionary in China. And he relays that story about that missionary in China, making comments about
56:42
how impractical kanji are and how stupid the education method of learning kanji is in China. And he was asked by this missionary like, why does Japan have it? Japan has kana. Japan doesn't need kanji. So why do you copy the mistake and mistakes and stupidity of the Chinese system, right? Even though you could do better in Japan? So there's this explicit external Western view
57:09
of racial difference and hierarchies connected to language. And I think we always find this kind of thought popping up in all of the different
57:20
attempts to remove kanji. Mori Arinori, he has even made
57:30
a case for introducing English, abolishing Japanese altogether and introducing English as a national language in Japan. Also referring to race, of course, in the broader sense, not in a very specific sense, but in the broader sense of the mid 19th century, saying that the English are a race of merchants. So that's why we have to, and they use English, and they are leading the world economically, so we have to abolish Japanese and should introduce
57:58
English so that we can catch up. So that I think there is very clear that we find the structure of desire that you are talking about. Kana movements that existed and so on, and then that theoretical and political movement to abolish kanji in the 1890s that became stronger for a period of time, and where there were really hateful comments about the China that "kanji are like stinking of China." I think it was even made by one of the former
58:21
presidents of Tokyo University, in fact, in that period, saying, okay, we need a national linguistics, a national language that is getting rid of these Chinese influences. So we have all of that, exactly what you're saying. But so why isn't it successful? Because
58:38
there was something about kanji that problematized that and made it more complicated than in other cases where this structure could be, this push was much clearer. So I wonder what you have to say about that, if you have any comments on that. And the last part would be, again, because you're making a statement that goes beyond that specific case of Ueda Kazutoshi and late 19th century Japan.
59:03
So you're showing that his thought is imbued with his racializing and hierarchical thinking.
59:10
But it also implies that you even show how that very specific thought informs the linguistic theorizing right, which is supposedly academic, which is epistemologically on a different level, which is academic, scientific and so on. But of course it's influenced by its times and the value judgments and values of that time. And I think it shows especially, you talk about comparative linguistics, but even language typology, which is of course,
59:44
in a sense also comparative and also structural linguistics itself. Like, how are these academic fields informed by that racial thought and hierarchies?
59:56
So, historically speaking, historical linguistics in the 19th century, in that period was a search for genetic and evolutionary relationships between languages, of course. And much of it was also perhaps not explicitly, but the whole thrust was also one to find the commonality of, you know, white racialized language like in the Indo-Germanic, this whole word that now in English is mostly Indo-European today.
1:00:22
But in Germany, I think it's in part, it's still used. It's this connection between languages that are so deeply connected to the superiority of the quote unquote "superiority" for 19th century thinkers of the people who used those languages.
1:00:39
And in language typology, of course, on the right side, it's Wilhelm von Humboldt, and there's always a debate to what extent he was really interested in the typology and the hierarchy, but of course, he had the whole typology of morphological difference in languages
1:00:55
was based on a hierarchy, on the idea that there are more perfect languages than others. And Latin as an inflecting language and by extension also German, of course, for Humboldt is superior to isolating languages such as Chinese, which doesn't have a morphological system, really. So in that sense, language development and language typology are also this expression of human and racial development. And I think this
1:01:21
is where this goes beyond a political thought, but where the whole idea
1:01:28
of the whole conceptual system of linguistics is colored by this racial thinking as well.
1:01:36
So the focus on morphological complexity itself in typology for a long time as one of the most important markers of typology and research subjects is in that sense, kind of, even though it's, of course, not explicitly racist, it's informed by that.
1:01:52
That kind of thinking and interests. And that's the last point, because you also mentioned Naoki Sakai, the whole assumption of structural linguistics that there are different countable languages, that are closed systems, in a sense, is also based on this idea of the national language, as a racialized language, as a system, as a closed system that then creates all of these differences that you explain and creates its own minorities, minority languages.
1:02:27
So, first of all, I wanted to hear what you think about that. And also, as a last part, is it even possible to go, given that this system still exists of the so-called modern Western nation-state and the related language policies and linguistic thought? Is another language policy possible in the context that we still have today? And if so, how could that look like? That's beyond your topic, of course, but I just wondered if you
1:02:58
have to have any thoughts about that based on that critique that you made. Yeah, these are a lot of different topics, so please feel free to respond to whatever catches your interest. And thank you very much.
1:03:18
Thank you so much. Do I have time to respond? Hopefully it won't take too long.
1:03:29
Of course you do. Okay. Thank you so much for engaging during the talk so much.
1:03:37
I'll take it one by one. I'll try to be short.
1:03:44
I think what you were asking, especially with the first question was that,
1:03:53
and correct me if I'm wrong, that this desire to produce a certain Japaneseness clearly precedes Meiji and that you are referring to
1:04:08
that was trying to develop Japaneseness, especially in relation to Chinese.
1:04:19
I definitely agree that the urge for such Japaneseness precedes the racialization of that we see in Meiji. At the same time, I think that the triangle-- back in the Edo period, specifically, the relationship was a binary, right? It was between Japan and China. But now in the modern period, you have the West as one index of the triangle, and within that, Japan had to reject its Chineseness and then move towards the West, the whiteness.
1:05:09
And I think that there's a huge difference in whether in terms of what it did, in terms of trying to identify Japaneseness, it's certainly not different at all. But the structure of the modern global order with that, the fact that we have to think about the triangles, that changed considerably and that's the context I'm I'm trying to think in.
1:05:42
The purification of kanji is something that I actually took up in the first part of the book that I didn't talk about, and especially within the 1880s, this urge to de-Sinify Japanese languages is very, very strong, as you mentioned.
1:06:05
Maejima was one, of course Mori was another, and then was it Kato, right? Who said that "it reeks
1:06:13
with Chinese and we really need to get rid of this?" And of course, like you mentioned, there were many movements to just simply use kana. There were movements simply use romanization that would have made so many students of Japanese happy now. But then it basically settles with this combination. What's interesting is that I think with the advantage of literary historians, the kokubungaku people, that they feel that they can sort of assimilate kanji into Japanese
1:06:59
and part of that is their effort to focus on like conjugation.
1:07:07
So everything has been already conjugated and that's already part of our language now. So
1:07:13
of course they say that they need to at least reduce the amount of kanji. But idea that they completely purge kanji and the Chineseness begins to disappear already in the 1890.
1:07:32
And I think part of the reason that they win out is, is something like print capitalism.
1:07:41
There are so many people who so try to just simply use hiragana, and it was just the sentence was way too long, first of all, right? And the print capitalism and that sort of, allowing kanji was just much more efficient in producing knowledge, because then these people were also dealing with a very practical issue of how to educate the masses.
1:08:13
The need for print capitalism also, I think, plays a role in keeping kanji. The last part
1:08:26
for the linguistics, historical linguistics, and this, too, I actually treat a bit in the first part of the book, is you're perfectly right. It was this historical linguistics and comparative linguistics that was also happening in the so-called West was entirely racialized. And these linguistic theorists claim that any language that doesn't conjugate is barbaric, and any language that, of course, conjugates is the most civilized and that has access to the civilized thought.
1:09:05
And these were, of course, European languages were the civilized one, and then Chinese was, of course, the most uncivilized. And Japan completely internalized that and said, well, our language conjugates, and they really wanted to focus on the parts of the conjugation and the tenioha. Those things were highlighted as the markers of civilized language. I think that the racialization is occurring at so many different levels, and the language theorists are all trying to sort
1:09:51
of in order to be white, what can they use? How can they identify their language in the most favorable way in the desire for whiteness? I think that there are so many things that's happening,
1:10:08
especially in the first and second decade of the Meiji Period. And I'm sure that that's just completely insufficient to answer all your questions. But
1:10:19
if it's okay, I'll stop there. Unless you'd like me to clarify anything else.
1:10:25
No. Thank you so much. Let's give our audience a chance also to interact. Thank you so much.
1:10:35
Thank you very much for your comment, Michael, and thank you very much for your response, Professor Ueda. And now we have questions from our audience. We have actually quite a lot of them.
1:10:54
And I would like to start with a slightly different angle. I would like to start with a question from one of our attendees about economic impact.
1:11:13
So the question goes that some people point out that linguistic and cultural diversity contributes to economic development. But the cost of public guarantees for educational opportunities and public services is always a point of contention, and if there is not sufficient support to bridge the gap otherwise it will negatively affect the relationship of trust between in people and negatively affect economic development.
1:11:40
So what are your thoughts on the economic impact of this? Do you have--
1:11:50
I'm sorry, I was still looking for the question. Somehow I'm not finding it. For the question itself, I will press answer live.
1:12:08
Does it pop out somewhere? So in the Q&A,
1:12:13
I think it's easier to say that it is four from the top if you scroll to the top, and then...
1:12:30
The fourth one that I see is by a Stephanie Winter. Is that the one? No, I think we are looking at maybe a different order. So... How do we get out of this conundrum? Can you copy and paste chat maybe? Is that--? Yes, of course, that's a great idea. I will do that and send it to you right away. Thank you. Sorry about this, I am awful at these.
1:13:07
Okay, it should be in your chat box right now, Professor Ueda.
1:13:14
Economic development, okay.
1:13:31
I thought maybe reading it, I can make sense more from the... Let me try to paraphrase from how I understand this question. So, we were talking talking about dramatic language reforms,
1:13:50
and that calls the standardization of language, so we can theoretically talk about what kind of potential economic impact standardization of language might pose. And on the other hand, how the expansion of cultural and linguistic diversity affect the economic situation, potentially again.
1:14:17
I see, I see. I guess part of the reason I didn't understand the question is that
1:14:27
I see Meiji as having a certain historical context, and standardization was very much a part, of course, economic stability and economic development because they really had to educate the people, and in order to educate them, they really needed to make them literate.
1:14:55
This, again, I sort of talked about in the beginning, the first part of the book that didn't discuss today, but the spoken languages were so disparate in early Meiji Japan Japan that people, at least in spoken language, of the northern part of Japan and the southern part of Japan, people really could not even communicate. And so they really needed to create a national community. And in order to create a national community, you need people who
1:15:29
actually share a language, share history, and share the contribution to a certain economy. Everything was linked to that. So in that sense, the idea of diversity itself, when we think of diversity, it's a good thing, but in Meiji, it wasn't a good thing at all in some ways, because it was going against a national community. I'm not sure if I am able to answer this question, but I think that the diversity is something that you can actually say that it's a good
1:16:08
thing once a national community is established. And for Meiji Japan, establishing a national community was the utmost importance because otherwise they would have been colonized.
1:16:30
Did you have something to add?
1:16:33
No, let's pick up some more questions. Okay, I was also actually looking at Stephanie Winter's question, and there was also another question in Japanese from an anonymous attendee which somehow intersects with this question. So, first of all, I will just in case, send it to Ueda-sensei.
1:17:18
So, Ueda-sensei, this is a fascinating presentation, thank you very much from Stephanie Winter. Given the pursuit for hegemony in Asia through,
1:17:34
among other means, kokugo or in other words, Japanese as a lingua franca in Asia, did inspiration for this pursuit stem from European texts discussing the same concepts? Which of any European nations were prominent role models for Japan in the study of race and language? Or did Japanese consideration towards its geographical neighbors precede European involvement and inspiration? There was also the next question that
1:18:07
asks in the same context about the role of Japanese or kokugo in relation to historic relationship with China and then development in encountering European influence.
1:18:38
Could you please tell us what do you think are the relationships that
1:18:48
any prominent role models? If you're referring to the Japanese question, is it the one that begins with "gengo kenkyuu hou ni oite?" Yes, I think if we could combine the answers to Stephanie Winter's question and this question...
1:19:12
Sure. At least let me first try to engage with Stephanie's question. So Ueda himself studied in Germany, and he actually studied the cutting-edge German linguistic theory. At the same time, I think that many theorists prior to him also studied linguistic theories in England or the British, who-- that was also an important gesture, because they needed to create "English gentlemen" out of Scottish and Welsh or the Irish.
1:20:01
What did they do? They actually started to compile the textbooks for rhetoric, and they taught the literature in Scotland and Ireland. Just a side note. This is exactly the time that Soseki was studying in England, and he wanted to study English literature, but he was in London, and he couldn't find any program to actually enroll. But if he had gone to Scotland, he would have had more literary training. And so I think there are, of course, many theories seen
1:20:49
engaging with European counterparts, but when Ueda was specifically Germany, and also the English theories and the rhetoric composition, they do look to England for that. Now, I wasn't able to read the other question.
1:21:19
Okay,
1:21:26
that's interesting, because then this is also a part that I cut out from my talk.
1:21:32
So in many ways, on the one hand, Chinese was considered a barbaric language by the Western linguistic theories precisely because it doesn't conjugate and it doesn't, there were many, and it doesn't also have a phonetic alphabet. Those things were considered to be
1:22:03
very civilized or markers of civilized language, and Chinese lacked both of that. And so while mobilizing that kind of linguistic theories, the comparative linguistics, especially Ueda and his disciples, started to talk about how the Japanese and the Koreans are actually closer together
1:22:36
because Korean conjugates more or-- they were creating a narrative that the Okinawan language was more like a sibling to kokugo in Japanese, which is completely untrue. I mean, even now, some people need translators, right? These things were-- the narrative that they produced was based on Western linguistic theories and trying to also manipulate certain languages as being less civilized and that they really created the Japanese language as the most important
1:23:28
central language of East Asia. And then, of course, it wasn't just the language
1:23:36
reform, but also the educational reform, and Japan wanted to present itself as a place where Western knowledge can be pursued. And so it's not a coincidence that as early as 1880s, they're bringing in more students from Korea, especially Korea, to study in a Japanese university context so that they can present themselves as a place where you can access Western knowledge. I wonder if that was okay.
1:24:19
Thank you very much. We have a lot of questions, and we wouldn't have time to answer all of them today, but I have one question that is quite dear to me as a linguist. It is a question about
1:24:38
sign language or Braille language. I'm sending it to the chat. So in terms of language, such things as sign language and Braille, they are languages, but how are they treated in terms in relation to national language or in terms of of establishment of standard language?
1:25:15
This is completely beyond me. I cannot begin to answer that question.
1:25:26
I am not going to lie and try to say something about this one. I'm sorry. Maybe Maria, if this is something that you do, can you help us out? As far as I understand this, if you, an expert on the topic, saying that it is beyond your expertise, probably it was not a central topic of the reform, and I think it is not in my expertise to help answer this question in this case.
1:26:08
Could I pick up another question then? Another interesting question, a bit related to these kind of issues is one by Professor Terao from Hitotsubashi University. And he's asking about, so he says that the racial thought of Ueda Kazutoshi is also evident, and even in contemporary Japanese linguistics in the relation to the study of dialects.
1:26:43
So he prompts us and you to think about, or like to speak a bit about the relationship between dialect and language. It reminded me of the old quip that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. So this political impact of that, but apparently there's also this racial construction of it. And he brings the example of, for example, that Okinawa is seen as an endangered language in the UNESCO list and so on.
1:27:12
The language of Okinawa, Amami, Miyako, and so on, but of course, the language of Satsuma is seen as a dialect, right, so we have this-- it's both inside Japan, inside the nation-state of Japan,
1:27:26
but one is designated as a language, one is designated as a dialect. Can we even use dialect, or is it also completely imprecated in this racialized thought? What are your thoughts on the relationship between dialecting language and the context of what you presented?
1:27:46
I was trying to listen and read at the same time. It's just not something that I do very well.
1:28:06
Basically any
1:28:11
thought that you have about language versus dialect in the context of racial thought?
1:28:18
I think part of the reason I'm sort of hesitating here is because I actually don't really believe in this relationship between "hyoujungo" and "hougen,"
1:28:31
because that is already a racialized ideological category.
1:28:38
And I actually don't even believe that there is this thing called "hyoujungo"
1:28:44
or "Tokyo-go" that Ueda and Ootsuki were really trying to develop as the-- and of course we now have Japanese language textbooks that define this issue of "hyoujungo" is not...
1:29:04
we have that. But at the same time, those are also extremely problematic categories.
1:29:14
When I hear there are certain languages that are, what's that word again? That are going obsolete. Endangered. Endangered, and I'm sure that is true and I'm not arguing against the people who actually study those and try to maintain those, and that is probably a very important project. At the same time, the structure of racialization and talking about really is something that, what I'm trying to call attention to, is the ideological nature of those categories themselves.
1:30:03
We really need to think about what we call "hougen" or what we call "hyoujungo" because they already inscribe in themselves the structure of racialization I was talking about. So I'm not sure if I answered the question properly, but the best I could do now.
1:30:24
Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, and it's time to wrap up today's discussion. Before we go, I would like to thank Professor Ueda. Thank you very much for your lecture, for your time, and for the discussion. I'm also grateful to Tokyo College for giving us an opportunity to have these kinds of discussions. And to my colleague Michael, thank you very much for your comment and for your questions. And it wouldn't be as exciting and as educational
1:31:04
for us without our participants, without our viewers, so thank you for your questions. And before we say goodbye, I have a couple of announcements.
1:31:28
So one of the main goals of this Language and Identity Series is to facilitate a dialogue on language and identity between distinguished academics, public and early career researchers. And from our next Language and Identity event, interested researchers are welcome to participate in the dialogue with their papers, too.
1:31:55
So we will open a call for papers for the first workshop on theory and methods of linguistic identity next week. And you can find more information through the QR code or at this webpage. The topics of the next workshops are theory and methods of linguistic identity, language in the media, language and identity in the classroom, and language in public spaces. Please do not hesitate to send us your abstracts when the calls for papers are out. And also, if you enjoyed our Tokyo
1:32:37
College's research and outreach activities, please consider supporting Tokyo College. You can find QR codes on this slide.
1:32:48
And thank you very much for your time and goodbye.
1:33:00
Thank you, goodbye.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat