Dueling Dictionaries: Re-Defining Japanese in the Post-War Period

• In Event: Transfers of Knowledge in Japan’s Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Modern dictionaries consolidate national and cultural identity by defining a body of knowledge about a language, packaging it into an easily consumable format, and distributing it to a mass public. In the latter half of the twentieth century, several Japanese dictionaries emerged to claim authority over the vocabulary that would be used in the renewal of the nation. This presentation investigates two such texts that targeted students and were widely adopted in classrooms. In something akin to the challenged posed to tradition in the US with the publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary in 1961, Sanseido's 1960 dictionary under the editorial leadership of Kenbō Hidetoshi promised a fresh, descriptive vision of the Japanese language based on current usage rather than a prescriptive one essentially copied and pasted forward from the past. Kenbō's dictionary was well-received, and Sanseido continued producing new editions of it, but in 1972 the company cannibalized its sales by publishing a new dictionary under Kenbō's colleague, Yamada Tadao. Yamada's idiosyncratic entries, often based on his own experiences, proposed a radically different interpretation of the Japanese language. While previous scholarship has focused on the falling out between Kenbō and Yamada that gave birth to the two works, this presentation argues that their dictionaries also echoed the social and political climate. Specifically, they expressed different responses to a pre-war legacy stretching back to the creation of the modern state in the 19th century.

Author

• Christopher Mayo, Kogakkan University