Language & Literature

The Japanese Language

• 0ver 130 million speakers
• Japanese writing system derives from that of
Chinese
• Chinese characters were introduced in the 6th
century
• The modern writing system is a complex one in
which Chinese characters (kanji) are used in
conjunction with two separate phonetic scripts
(hiragana & katakana) developed from kanji in
Japan. (Cf. JPN book p.118)
e.g. 私の名前は トムです。
ニコラス
真理矢
 Loanwords
• Japanese has absorbed loanwords freely from
other languages, especially Chinese (the 8th -19th
century) and English (later in the 20th century).
e.g. loans from English
waakubukku terebi kawa(=leather)jan
depaato rajio G-jan
posuto famikon T-shatsu
nekutai rimokon Y-shatsu
hankachi pasokon basuke
makudonarudo potechi ame-futo
deji-kame poke-mon ame-kaji
 Onomatopoeic Expressions
• Japanese has several types of onomatopoeic expressions that
describe sounds or actions.
e.g. sounds of falling rain sounds of falling snow
potsu potsu hara hara
shito shito shin shin
zaa zaa boso boso

motion
kuru kuru : small object spinning lightly
guru guru: something spinning round and round
eating sleeping texture noise
paku paku guu guu peta peta ton ton
gabu babu suya suya beta beta don don
gari gari nuru nuru gata gata
pori pori sara sara kachi kachi
bari bari tsuru tsuru doka doka
 Japanese Literature
• Japanese literary art has received foreign influences since
its beginning. (From China up till middle of the 19th century
& from the West after that)

• Kojiki (712, Record of Ancient Matters): written in hybrid

Sino-Japanese
• Nihon shoki (720, Chronicles of Japan): written in classical
Chinese
• Among these collections of myths, genealogies, legends of
folk heroes, and historical records there appear a number
of songs written with Chinese characters representing
Japanese words or syllables – that offer insight into the
nature of preliterate Japanese verse.
• Man’yoshu (late 8th century: the Ten Thousand
Leaves): The first major collection of native poetry,
written in Kanji. (contains 31-syllable waka)

• Development of a native orthography (kana) for

the phonetic representation of Japanese (the
mid-9th century)
contributed to a deepening consciousness of a
native literary tradition distinct from that of China.
led the development of a prose literature in the
vernacular.
Women writers
• Genji monogatari (early 11th century; The Tales of
Genji): a fictional narrative by Murasaki Shikibu
• Makura no soshi (996-1012; The Pillow Book): a
collection of essays by Sei Shonagon.

Medieval Literature (12-16th centuries)

• The chief development in poetry during the
medieval period was linked verse
• The major development in prose literature was the
war tale. E.g. Heike monogatari (ca 1220; The
Tale of the Heike)
Edo Literature (1600-1868)
• Literary works became marketable commodities, giving rise
to the publishing industry.
• Humorous fictional studies of contemporary society.
• Prose works, often elaborately illustrated, were directed
towards a mass audience.
• The 17-syllable form of light verse known as haiku, whose
subject matter was drawn from nature and the lives of
ordinary people, was raised to the level of great poetry.

Koshoku ichidai otoko (1682; the Life of an Amorous Man) by Ihara Saikaku
Modern Literature (1868-)
• The novel became established as a serious and respected
genre of the literature of Japan
• Gradual abandonment of the literary language in favor of
the usages of colloquial speech.
• Though tanka (a 31-syllable poem) and haiku remained
viable poetic forms, a genre of free verse developed under
the influence of Western poetry.
• Early stylistic influences on Japanese literature were
romanticism, introduced in the 1890s by novelist Mori Ogai,
and naturalism, out of which developed the enduring genre
of the confessional novel (I-novel).
• Natume Soseki & short-story writer, Akutagawa Ryunosuke
brought the Japanese realistic novel to full maturity
• Kawabata Yasunari was awarded Japan’s first Nobel Prize
in literature in 1968.
Post WWII
• Some writers were strongly influenced by Japan’s defeat in
WWII. (e.g. Dazai Osamu, Ibuse Masuji)
• After the 1950s, Japanese fiction can no longer be easily
characterized in terms of the early postwar consciousness.
(e.g. Abe Kobo, Mishima Yukio, Endo Shusaku, Oe
Kenzaburo: winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1994)
In the decades of the 20th century
• Young writers such as Murakami Ryu, Murakami Haruki,
and Yoshimoto Banana were writing in a style that had
more in common with their western counterparts.
Folktales of Japan
 Characteristics of Japanese Folktales
• Portray two kinds of beauty: visual & emotional
• The physical beauty of the seasons
• In-depth descriptions of the emotional lives of the
hero and/or heroine
• A feeling of “aware”: sadness is an important
element in the Japanese sense of beauty.
• The core feelings are patience and pity
• Heroines are often tragic figures that
have to endure grief.
(beautiful women who have an aura
of sadness are graceful)
 More characteristics of Japanese folktales
• Often contain animal characters that take the form of
human beings
• The notion irui-kon; that is, a person (usually a man)
marries an animal that has transformed itself into a human
being.
• A man meets a beautiful woman (an animal in reality)  the
woman asks him to marry her  he marries her  he
discovers her true form by breaking a promise or ignoring
some kind of prohibition  as a result, she takes on her
true form as an animal and inevitably leaves him.
• “Nature returns to nature”

• No sense of revenge in Japanese folktales.