The Genbun Itchi Movement
The Genbun Itchi Movement
- Kelly HansenKelly HansenKumamoto University
Summary
Genbun itchi (the unification of writing and speech) was a late 19th- and early 20th-century language movement in Japan. Spurred by their exposure to western languages, proponents sought to abolish the archaic forms of writing in use at the time, and instead establish a form closer to the vernacular. The first overt calls for written reform in the 1860s came from the political realm. As part of the national policy of rapid modernization, many believed that a simpler writing script, one based on a phonetic alphabet rather than ideographical Chinese characters (kanji), was vital to promote the education of the general populace and the rise of Japan as a modern nation state. Script reform would dominate the bulk of early debates on genbun itchi, but by the 1880s, the movement had shifted its focus to the literary community. A flurry of experiments ensued, as aspiring young writers worked to create a new kind of Japanese literature based on Western models. The first genbun itchi writers had a number of language-specific issues to resolve, including the use of honorifics, as well as dialectical and gender differences. Futabatei Shimei’s novel The Drifting Cloud (Ukigumo, 1887–1889) is often said to be the first novel written in genbun itchi, but it is far from having a vernacular-based style. Futabatei drew upon professional oral storytellers and pre-Meiji fiction written primarily in dialogue for inspiration, but in the end, he could not fully avoid archaic writing conventions. Japanese translations of Western literature sometimes came closer to approximating a genbun itchi style. In fact, many critics consider Futabatei’s translations of Russian literature more successful attempts at genbun itchi than his own novels. Outside the literary world, the dissemination of a new genbun itchi style to the general populace was facilitated through the rise of a moveable-type newspaper industry. Publications known as “little newspapers” targeted the less educated with local stories presented in humorous and simple vernacular-based writing. This helped to shift the focus of genbun itchi away from self-conscious language reform policies to the use of vernacular-based writing for practicality. Within the first few decades of the 20th century, the use of archaic written forms rapidly disappeared from all print publications, although some would persist in government documents until the end of World War II. Genbun itchi also became the standard in primary school textbooks in the early 20th century. Debates on orthographic reform continued into the early postwar period, when the writing scripts, spellings, and characters in daily use were standardized.
Keywords
Subjects
- Asian Literatures
- 19th Century (1800-1900)