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Book/Printed Material Language, nation, race : linguistic reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912)

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Title

  • Language, nation, race : linguistic reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912)

Summary

  • "Language, Nation, Race explores the various language reforms at the onset of Japanese modernity, a time when "national language" (kokugo) was produced in order to standardize the Japanese language. Faced with the threat of Western colonialism, Meiji intellectuals proposed various reforms to standardize the Japanese language in order to quickly educate the illiterate masses with the new forms of Western knowledge. This book liberates these language reforms from the predetermined category of the "nation," for such a notion had yet to exist as a clear telos to which the reforms aspired. Atsuko Ueda draws on, while critically intervening in, the vast scholarship of language reform that arose in the 1990s and that engaged with numerous works of postcolonial and cultural studies. She examines the first two decades of the Meiji period, with specific focus on the issue of race, contending that no analysis of imperialism or nationalism is possible without it"-- Provided by publisher.

Names

  • Ueda, Atsuko, author

Created / Published

  • Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]

Contents

  • Competing "languages" : "sound" in the orthographic reforms of early Meiji Japan -- Sound, scripts, and styles : Kanbun kundokutai and the national language reforms of 1880s Japan -- Zoku as aesthetic criterion : reforms for poetry and prose -- Racializing the national language : Ueda Kazutoshi's Kokugo reform -- Tropes of racialization in the works of Natsume Sōseki.

Headings

  • -  Japanese language--Reform--Meiji period, 1868-1912
  • -  Language policy--Japan--Meiji period, 1868-1912
  • -  Nationalism--Japan--Meiji period, 1868-1912
  • -  Japan--Race relations--Meiji period, 1868-1912

Notes

  • -  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  • -  Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Medium

  • 1 online resource.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • PL525.6

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2020046902

Rights Advisory

Access Advisory

  • Unrestricted online access

Online Format

  • image
  • epub

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Rights & Access

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Ueda, Atsuko, Author. Language, nation, race: linguistic reform in Meiji Japan -1912. [Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2021] Image. https://www.loc.gov/item/2020046902/.

APA citation style:

Ueda, A. (2021) Language, nation, race: linguistic reform in Meiji Japan -1912. [Oakland, California: University of California Press] [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2020046902/.

MLA citation style:

Ueda, Atsuko, Author. Language, nation, race: linguistic reform in Meiji Japan -1912. [Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2021] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2020046902/>.