[KS] Re: Mori's cockamie ideas

[Robert Ramsey]

REPLY sends your message to the whole list
__________________________________________

abandoning the writing system in favor of romanization -- of course.  In the
Meiji there were a number of serious proposals for reforming the writing system
along these lines, many of which were quite reasonable.  Even before the
beginning of the Meiji period, in 1866, Maeshima Hisoka sent a petition to the
Shogun advocation the abolition of kanji, then later, in 1869, Nanbu Yoshikazu
advocated a complete switch to romanization.  Except for tradition and cultural
bias, proposals such as these were conceivably workable.  But Mori meant
something on another scale entirely.  He meant the language, too--the "spoken
language," if you prefer--and Whitney, after hearing Mori's proposal out,
dissuaded Mori, saying in his understated, gentlemanly way that he had never
heard of a successful language transfer of this kind.
    You're right: it may be a bit unfair to criticize Mori out of historical
context, and we probably shouldn't make too much fun of him from our smugly
modern perspective.  After all, there were a lot of strange and desperate ideas
floated in those times of advancing Western colonialism.  Near the beginning of
the twentieth century, for example, Qian Xuantong proposed abolishing the
Chinese language much as Mori had done for Japanese, and even after WWII, Shiga
Naoya wrote a shocking (and apparently serious) essay advocating that Japanese
be replaced by French.  But even in the context of his time, saying that
Japanese men should marry Western women as an act of patriotism in order that
future generations would grow taller and stronger, and that all the Japanese
people should completely stop speaking Japanese were indeed outrageous,
cockamamie ideas--a great deal more so, I'd say, than adopting a new religion
(they'd done that before) or building railroads.

Jim Hoare wrote:

> REPLY sends your message to the whole list
> __________________________________________
>
> Dear List
>
> Before we go too far down the "wasn't Mori silly" road, remember that the
> idea that the Japanese should give up their incomprehensible language (to
> Europeans anyway), was floating about in the late nineteenth century. F V
> Dickins, British lawyer in Yokohama in the 1870s (involved with the "Maria
> Luz" case) and editor of the Japan Mail for a time, wrote that Japan could
> not expect the revision of the unequal treaties until it had abandoned its
> written language in favour of a romanised one. Mori, both in his enquiry to
> Spencer and his approach about language was merely reflecting some of the
> strands of thought about at the time.
> And were such ideas any stranger than the idea that to become civilised, one
> had to become a Christian, or build railways?
>
> Jim Hoare