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JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW
Volume Seventeen
2013
Interdisciplinary Studies of Modern Japan
Steven Heine
Editor
John A. Tucker
Book Review Editor
Editorial Board
Yumiko Hulvey, University of Florida
John Maraldo, Emeritus, University of North Florida
Matthew Marr, Florida International University
Mark Ravina, Emory University
Ann Wehmeyer, University of Florida
Brian Woodall, Georgia Institute of Technology
Copy and Production
Jennylee Diaz
María Sol Echarren
Maria Magdaline Jamass
Kristina Loveman
Gabriela Roméu
JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW
VOLUME SEVENTEEN
2013
A publication of Florida International University
and the Southern Japan Seminar
CONTENTS
Editor’s Introduction i
Re: Subscriptions, Submissions, and Comments ii
ARTICLES
Language Conflict and Language Rights: The Ainu, Ryūkyūans,
and Koreans in Japan
Stanley Dubinsky and William Davies 3
A Bakery Attack Foiled Again
Masaki Mori 29
Consuming Nostalgia in a Bowl of Noodle Soup at the Shin
Yokohama Rāmen Museum
Satomi Fukutomi 51
A Counter Culture of the 1980s: Ozaki Yutaka’s Songs
Shuma Iwai 71
The Effectiveness and Learners’ Perception of Teacher Feedback
on Japanese-as-a-Foreign Language Writing
Nobuaki Takahashi 93
ESSAYS
The Rise in Popularity of Japanese Culture with American Youth:
Causes of the ‘Cool Japan’ Phenomenon
Jennifer Ann Garcia 121
Arousing Bodhi-Mind: What is the ‘Earth’ in Dōgen’s Teachings?
Shohaku Okumura 143
BOOK REVIEWS
Doing Business with the New Japan: Succeeding in America’s
Richest International Market
By James D. Hodgson, Yoshihiro Sano, and John L. Graham
Reviewed by Don R. McCreary 155
Demystifying Pearl Harbor: A New Japanese Perspective
By Takeo Iguchi
Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux 157
The Art of the Gut: Manhood, Power, and Ethics in Japanese
Politics
By Robin M. LeBlanc
Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux 160
The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan
By Ken C. Kawashima
Reviewed by Bernice J. deGannes Scott 163
CONTRIBUTORS/EDITORS
i
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the seventeenth volume of the Japan Studies Review
(JSR), an annual peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the joint efforts of the
Asian Studies Program at Florida International University and the Southern
Japan Seminar. JSR continues to be both an outlet for publications related to
Southern Japan Seminar events and a journal that encourages submissions
from a wide range of scholars in the field.
This year’s journal features five articles. Stanley Dubinsky and
William Davies examine language issues within ethnic minority
communities – the Ainu, Ryūkyūans, and Koreans – in Japan. Masaki Mori
examines the short story by Murakami Haruki, titled “Pan’ya Saishūgeki”
and weaves its meaning into a narrative of postindustrial generalities and
generational transformation. Satomi Fukutomi describes the significance of
the Shin Yokohama Rāmen Museum to the nostalgic representation of the
“rāmen” dish as a national symbol of Japan. Shuma Iwai tells the story of
Ozaki Yutaka’s music career in the 1980s with detailed analyses of his song
lyrics. Nobuaki Takahashi presents the results of a study on corrective
feedback in Japanese-as-a-foreign-language writing.
This issue also features two essays. Jennifer Ann Garcia examines
the causes of the ‘Cool Japan’ phenomenon and the admiration of Japanese
culture among American youth. Shohaku Okumura presents his paper from
a conference held in November 2011 on Zen Master Dōgen’s teachings on
Bodhi-mind.
Included in this issue are four book reviews. Don R. McCreery
reviews Doing Business with the New Japan: Succeeding in America’s
Richest International Market by James D. Hodgson, Yoshihiro Sano and
John L. Graham. Daniel A. Métraux has two book reviews, one on
Demystifying Pearl Harbor: A New Japanese Perspective by Takeo Iguchi
and another one on The Art of the Gut: Manhood, Power, and Ethics in
Japanese Politics by Robin M. LeBlanc. Bernice J. deGannes Scott reviews
The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan by Ken C.
Kawashima.
Steven Heine
ii
Re: Submissions, Subscriptions, and Comments
Submissions for publication, whether articles, essays, or book reviews,
should be made in electronic formats, preferably Word for Windows via
email attachment (please inquire about other formats). The editor and
members of the editorial board will referee all submissions.
Annual subscriptions are $35.00 (US). Please send a check or money order
payable to Florida International University to:
c/o Steven Heine, Professor of Religious Studies and History
Director of the Asian Studies Program
Florida International University
Modesto A. Maidique Campus, SIPA 505
Miami, FL 33199
Professor Heine’s office number is 305-348-1914. Faxes should be sent to
305-348-6586 and emails sent to asian@fiu.edu.
Visit our website at http://asian.fiu.edu/jsr. PDF versions of past volumes
are available online.
All comments and feedback on the publications appearing in Japan Studies
Review are welcome.
ISSN: 1550-0713
Articles
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS:
THE AINU, RYŪKYŪANS, AND KOREANS IN JAPAN
Stanley Dubinsky
University of South Carolina
William D. Davies
University of Iowa
Introduction
Despite (and perhaps because of) a long-maintained myth of the
ethnic purity of Japanese citizenry, ethnic minorities in Japan have been
forced to confront issues of language conflict and language rights. The
Ainu, Ryūkyūan and Korean minorities each exemplify a distinct linguistic
circumstance in this regard. The Ainu are an aboriginal people of northern
Japan, who have had a language and culture imposed upon them through
Japanese territorial expansion. By contrast, Koreans immigrants find
themselves a linguistic minority in an adopted land. The Ryūkyūan
situation, distinct from both, represents an intra-lingual (as opposed to inter-
lingual) conflict, as Ryūkyūan is considered (by some) to be a variety of
Japanese.
In what follows, a brief survey of the ethnic and political history of
each group and the nature of the Ainu, Ryūkyūan, and Korean languages
provide some historical background to the conflicts and a context for
distinguishing the linguistic and paralinguistic properties of them. We then
examine some of the linguistic and language-related human rights issues
that have affected the three groups. Comparisons with the circumstances of
Amerindians, Puerto Rican immigrants, and African-American English
speakers in the United States afford some further insight into the Japanese
situation. In making these comparisons, we find some very salient parallels,
which suggest that particularism of the Japanese and American cases might
be better understood as instances of more general patterns of inter- and
intra-linguistic conflict.
The Origin of Japanese
Before taking up the matter of linguistic minorities in Japan, it is
instructive to situate Japanese linguistically in its region and to understand
the nature of, and motivations for the promotion of, Standard Japanese over
regional dialects.
4 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
There is a range of theories regarding the origin of Japanese, some
of which are more plausible than others. However, there is no firm
consensus regarding any single one of the more plausible theories. Theories
connecting Japanese with North Asian languages include those placing
Japanese with the Altaic or Ural-Altaic languages, those connecting
Japanese with Korean (which many scholars place in the Altaic family), and
theories connecting Japanese with Ryūkyūan. Other hypotheses relate
Japanese with Southeast Asian languages—the Malayo-Polynesian, Austro-
Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman theories. And there are yet other, more recent
hypotheses.
Several things are clear from discussions in Miller (1974),
Shibatani (1990), and Holmberg (2010) that help explain the lack of
consensus. First, the split of Japanese from its nearest linguistic relatives
(such as perhaps Korean) took place much longer ago than did that of the
Romance language descendants of Latin, which was only 1000–1500 years
ago. This makes historical reconstruction of the Japanese language more
difficult. Second, Japanese scholars have tended not to use scientific
methods of linguistic reconstruction with particular rigor, thus making the
results of many comparisons somewhat suspect. This may be in part due to
a belief about the special nature of Japanese, in comparison with other
languages. Miller (1974: 94–95) states that, for Japanese scholars, “foreign
languages, Western languages, perhaps even Chinese, have genetic
relationships (shin’en kankei) that can be and often are established by the
scholarship of the comparative method, but that Japanese is, in this respect
as in so many others, ‘unique,’ in that it has only a keitō [(family) lineage],
which must, by terminological definition, remain forever obscure.” Finally,
although some linguistic relationships (such as the overarching Altaic
origins) are unsettled, some parts of this picture, such as the Japanese-
Korean and Japanese-Ryūkyūan connections, are fairly secure.
However, proposals differ with respect to these relationships as
well. For example, Robbeets (2005) considers Japanese and Korean to have
developed from different subfamilies of the Macro-Tungusic branch of the
Altaic family, while Japanese and Ryūkyūan are more closely related, being
the sole members of the Japonic language group. On the other hand, Miller
(1971, as reported in Shibatani 1990) takes Japanese, Korean, and
Ryūkyūan to have developed from a common ancestral Proto-Korean-
Japanese language, exclusive of other Tungusic languages. Shibatani
(1990:101), for his part, does not accept Miller’s suggestion that “Middle
Korean, Old Japanese, and Ryūkyūan [are] sisters on a par.” For him, “the
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 5
Japanese–Ryūkyūan connection is far more transparent than that between
Japanese and Korean” (Shibatani 1990: 101). As such, Shibatani would
likely agree with Robbeets on this matter over Miller, but would go further
in claiming that Ryūkyūan is merely a “dialect (group) of Japanese.” This
claim will be assessed further in the section on Ryūkyūan, but for now we
take the position that Ryūkyūan and Japanese are closely related; Korean
and Japanese are somewhat less closely related; and Ainu and Japanese are
for the most part unrelated.
Turning to the issue of Standard Japanese and Japanese dialects, it
is important to note, as Shibatani (1990: 185–186) does, that the geography
of Japan (i.e., its numerous islands and mountainous interior) lends itself to
a high degree of linguistic diversification, leading to a situation in which the
various dialects of Japanese are mutually unintelligible. For example, as
Shibatani says, “speakers [from] the southern island of Kyūshū would not
be understood by the majority of the people on the main island of Honshu
…[and] northern dialect speakers from…Aomori and Akita would not be
understood by the people in the metropolitan Tokyo area” (Shibatani 1990:
185). This linguistic reality led to an effort by the Meiji government in
Tokyo in the 19th century to attempt to impose a national standard variety
(called hyōjun-go, or “Standard Language”) that would unify the nation
linguistically. The enforcement of a national standard was historically
imposed through the educational system (as described later on). Teaching
the Tokyo dialect as the standard throughout Japan had the effect, Shibatani
notes, of fostering feelings of inferiority among speakers of non-standard
dialects. The enforcement could be, at times rather cruel, as when a hōgen
huda (dialect tag) was hung around the neck of any student who used their
home dialect in school. This policy and practice continued through the end
of World War II, when the concept of kyōtū-go (common language) was
introduced. This variety of Japanese (used by speakers of different dialects
to communicate with each other) is much more malleable than
“Standard/Tokyo Japanese,” possessing many of the features of the
standard, but also “retains dialect traits, such as accentual features”
(Shibatani 1990: 186). With this in mind, we take up the cases of Ainu,
Ryūkyūan, and Korean separately.
6 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
The Ainu
Historical Background
The origin of the Ainu is a somewhat obscure, though it has been
claimed on the basis of DNA-type evidence that both the Ainu and the
Ryūkyūans are descended from a group (the Jōmon) believed to have
arrived in northern Japan/Hokkaido some 14,000 years ago, originating in
southeast Asia (Hanihara 1991). The Ainu are indigenous to Japan’s
northern territories, including northern Honshu (possibly), Hokkaido, the
Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin Island (the latter two areas having been lost to
the Soviets following World War II).
Traditionally hunter-gatherers who lived in kotan (small villages)
of people directly related by blood, the Ainu were animists who believed in
spirits associated with natural phenomena (wind, fire, water), parts of nature
(animals, plants, mountains), and material culture (boats, pots), and whose
rituals included bear hunting, animal sacrifice, and tattooing the lips, hands,
and arms of girls when they reached puberty.
Although there had been earlier contact, regular trade with the
Japanese only began during the 1400s, with the establishment of small
Japanese trading settlements in southern Hokkaido. The Japanese
themselves considered the Ainu to be barbarians, and this led to an uneasy
relationship from the start and to repeated efforts on the part of the Ainu to
expel the Japanese from their lands. After a few centuries of sporadic
conflict, including the last “pan-Ainu” uprising against the Japanese in 1669
(Shakushain’s War), the territory essentially came under the control of the
Japanese. Competition between the Japanese and Russians for control of
Ainu lands officially ended in 1855 with the signing of the Treaty of
Shimoda (nichiro tsūkō jōyaku), under which the Japanese gained
sovereignty over Hokkaido. After this point, Japanese control of the island
grew progressively tighter.
Linguistic Background
Despite various proposals attempting to establish a genetic
relationship between Ainu and Japanese or Ainu and other languages
(Batchelor 1905; Hattori 1964), it is widely accepted among linguists
(Kindaichi 1937; Shibatani 1990) that Ainu belongs to no established
language family. Although some superficial similarities between Ainu and
Japanese exist, these are generally grammatical traits common to most
languages having Subject-Object-Verb word order. Thus, the same traits are
shared not only by Ainu and Japanese, but also other completely unrelated
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 7
languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Choctaw, and so on. Much more striking
are their dissimilarities.
First, the sound systems of the two languages are distinct. Perhaps
the most noticeable difference is the fact that, whereas Japanese has
voiceless and voiced pairs of (certain) consonants, Ainu only has the
voiceless member of each pair, so there is no /b, d, g, z/, as shown in the
following chart:
Table 1. Oral Obstruent Consonants in Japanese and Ainu Languages
Second, Ainu grammatical inflections and case marking is quite distinct
from Japanese. Unlike Japanese, Ainu verbs have no inflection for tense
and aspect, and thus temporality is interpreted solely on the basis of
context. Nouns are not marked to indicate the grammatical relations such as
subject, object, or indirect object, whereas Japanese include postpositions
for this purpose (i.e., ga, o, ni). Thus word order can be a crucial indicator
of who is doing what to whom in a clause, as seen in (1). Japanese would
have much freer word order, with subjects and objects signaled by ga and o,
respectively.
(1) a. Kamuy aynu rayke. b. Aynu kamuy rayke.
bear person kill person bear kill
“The bear killed the man.” “The man killed the bear.”
Additionally, Ainu first- and second-person subjects and objects are cross-
referenced on the verb with prefixes. In contrast, Japanese has no such
agreement system.
(2) a. ku-i-kore b. e-en-kore
1SING(ULAR)-2HON(ORIFIC)-give 2SING-1SING-give
“I give you (HON)” “You give me”
Bilabial
Alveolar
Velar
Glottal
Japanese
Stop
p b
t d
k g
Fricative
s z
h
Ainu
Stop
p
t
k
ʔ
Fricative
s
h
8 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
Language Rights Issues
Language rights issues for the Ainu “officially” began in 1869
when the island of Ezochi was renamed Hokkaido by the newly formed
Meiji government. Local administrative development systems were set up,
and the Meiji government embarked on a policy of (forced) assimilation—a
policy whose ultimate aim was to eradicate Ainu culture. Under this regime,
the Ainu were systematically stripped of any Ainu identity and were
“made” Japanese.
The official “registration” of the Ainu occurred in 1871, at which
time the Ainu were designated “commoners,” and were forced to assume
Japanese names (Irish 2009). Laws passed in and around this time were
designed to prevent or curtail many Ainu traditions, including salmon
fishing and deer hunting, the practice of burning a family’s house and
moving elsewhere after the death of a family member, the tattooing of girls
at puberty, and men wearing earrings. Also imposed at this time were many
restrictions concerning the use of the Ainu language:
Naming: The Ainu were forced to take Japanese names, and
names in the public domain had to be Japanese.
Restrictions on public use: The use of Ainu in public, including
the government and the legal system, was prohibited.
Education: Aside from naming, education in one’s native
language is widely considered to be a fundamental language right.
From the time of registration, Ainu children were forced to attend
schools that were conducted solely in Japanese as use of Ainu in
education was banned by law.
Thus, began the decline of the Ainu language. This was also a
period of dramatic decline in the Ainu population. A government survey in
1807 estimated that there were more than 26,000 Ainu living in Hokkaido.
By 1873, it was estimated that the population was roughly 16,000, and the
Ainu made up only 14.6% of the population of the island (Siddle 1996).
Thus, the Ainu had minority status after only a short period of time. Among
the causes for the dramatic decline were the spread of diseases (e.g.
smallpox, measles, and syphilis) brought by the colonists and the breakup
of families due to forced labor (Walker 2001).
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 9
In the late 1870s, as part of the promulgation of the myth of
Japanese ethnic unity, the Ainu were officially designated “former
aborigines” and their land was expropriated by the government. An influx
of ethnic Japanese continued apace, propelled in part by government offers
of land to the Japanese colonists. Naturally, as the population of Japanese
settlers from Honshu increased, the Ainu became increasingly
marginalized. Linguistically, Ainu continued to decline through (1) the
coercion of the government, (2) the belief among the Ainu that the use of
Japanese language would make life better for their children, and (3) inter-
marriage with Japanese settlers.
The next major event in the cultural and linguistic decline of the
Ainu came in 1899 with the signing of the Hokkaido Former Aborigines
Protection Act (hokkaido kyūdojin hogohō). At this time (possibly due to
insecurity about its control over the northern territories), the Japanese
government redoubled its efforts at assimilating the Ainu into Japanese
society and eradicating Ainu culture. As part of the act, Ainu families were
granted small plots of land, in order to transform them from hunters into
(more easily managed) farmers. Much of the best farmland had already
been claimed by Japanese settlers. In the end, most of the Ainu farmland
reverted back to the government, as they themselves lacked the desire or the
skills to be successful farmers.
The Regulations for the Education of Former Aboriginal Children,
which reinforced the education repression of the Ainu, were established in
1901. Under this regime, Ainu children were compelled to attend (mostly)
segregated schools, where the focus was on learning Japanese language
skills, rather than science, math, or other subjects. They were thereby
denied both the right to be educated in their native language as well as a
decent education. So, despite the fact that over 90% of Ainu children
attended school by 1910 (Ogawa 1997 cited in Ishikida 2005), most
received a greatly inferior education, and were cut off from their heritage.
As the Ainu continued their descent into poverty and disadvantage, the
Ainu language itself continued its path toward near extinction.
The first organization devoted to Ainu issues was established
immediately after the end of World War II. Beginning in 1946, the Ainu
Association of Hokkaido focused its attention on pressing economic issues
and attempted to increase wealth in Ainu communities.
1
There were more
1
The association was officially renamed the “Hokkaido Utari Association”
10 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
public works initiatives in the 1960s, but the Ainu themselves remained less
well-educated and on the cultural and economic margins of Japanese
society. For example, in 1972, barely over 40% of Ainu youth attended high
school (Siddle 1996). Other statistics are equally bleak, although the
economic status of the Ainu has reportedly improved in recent years.
During the 1960s and 1970s, a general awakening of indigenous
human rights efforts worldwide spurred the Ainu and their supporters to
increased activism, which led to a reawakening of the culture. Shigeru
Kayano championed the effort to open the first Ainu nursery school in
Nibutani (80% Ainu) in the early 1980s, where the Ainu language was
taught to preschoolers. Under his leadership, a number of additional
community-based Ainu language schools opened (Sjöberg 1993). Despite
these efforts, the Ainu language has not been successfully revived, and may
be beyond rescue. Various reports place the current number of speakers of
the only remaining Ainu language (the Hokkaidō variety) at anywhere from
15 to about 100.
The Japanese government has only recently acknowledged the
official existence of the Ainu as an ethnic minority. Only following the
ratification of the U.N.-sponsored International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights in 1979, and after international pressure and some domestic
activism, did the government renounce its official claims of ethnic
homogeneity for the region. But even then, official recognition of the Ainu
as an ethnic minority did not occur until 1991. Starting in the mid-1980s,
the Hokkaido Utari Association (with Kayano as its inspiration) started to
agitate for the repeal of the 1899 act and the establishment of a new one.
Finally passed in 1997 was the Act on the Encouragement of Ainu
Culture and the Diffusion and Enlightenment of Knowledge on Ainu
Tradition (also referred to as the Ainu Culture Promotion Act). The Act
included provisions for nondiscrimination, political activity, economic
development (i.e., fishing, agriculture), and the formation of an advisory
committee. But at the heart of the Act was the promotion and preservation
of Ainu culture through teaching, research and other efforts (focusing on
language as well as traditional arts, such as music, drama, oral tradition). At
one point, there was an annual Ainu Oratorical Contest (1998-2004) in
which students from the various language schools came together for Oral
Literature and Oratory competitions, but this has been discontinued.
in 1961 (http://www.ainu- assn.or.jp/english/eabout04.html).
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 11
So, in fact, few Ainu speak the Ainu language or follow the
traditional way of life. Given this, the Ainu identity is likely to become a
“symbolic ethnicity,” with Ainu culture and heritage being transmitted to
future generations of the Ainu through schools, museums, and annual
festivals (Ishikida 2005:24).
Comparisons
The similarities between the histories of the Ainu and the
American Indians in the United States are unmistakable. Both groups were
subject to internal colonization: for the Ainu, the Wajin from the south, and
for the Plains and Western Indians, American settlers from the east. Both
were subject to forced assimilation policies. Just as the Dawes Act (1887)
provided land to American Indians to encourage an agrarian livelihood, so
the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act (hokkaido kyūdojin
hogohō, 1899) gave land to every Ainu man for purposes of homesteading.
Education played an important role in the assimilation policies. For the
Ainu, the Regulations for the Education of Former Aboriginal Children
(1901) ensured that Ainu children went to government-sanctioned schools
where one of the primary foci was learning Japanese. In the United States,
the Indian Boarding School movement of the late 1880s and early 1900s
took children from their families to be educated, including “a thorough
knowledge of the use of the English language” (Lamar 1886:4). Finally, just
as the Ainu were registered under Japanese names (1871), so were the
American Indian children given Western names when they entered school.
In both cases, children who spoke in their native language were punished.
The strategies of both the Japanese and U.S. governments, while not
actually ensuring assimilation, did ensure the loss of native culture and the
precipitous decline of the languages of the indigenous populations.
Ryūkyūan Languages/Dialects
Historical Background
We turn now from the extreme northern parts of Japan to the far
flung reaches of its Ryūkyū Islands to the south. With a population of some
1.5 million and an area amounting to somewhat less than 2,000 square
miles, the 100 islands of the Ryūkyū Island chain extend about 650 miles,
from the southern main island of Kyūshū to within 75 miles of Taiwan.
This is nearly half the north to south distance of Japan’s four main islands
(i.e., from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido to the island of Kagoshima in
Kyūshū). The physical location and range of these islands are as important
12 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
as their history to an understanding of their current status. If, as Shibatani
maintains, the numerous islands and mountainous interior of Japan lends
itself to a high degree of linguistic diversification such that Japanese
speakers from Hokkaido would not understand their compatriots from
Kyūshū, then one might expect much more linguistic diversification in an
island chain strung out over 650 miles and isolated from the major Japanese
islands. The history of the island chain provides important insights into our
understanding of the linguistic situation here. Ishikida (2005) suggests that
the Ryūkyūans are (like the Ainu and the original inhabitants of the island
of Kyūshū) descended from Jōmon hunters, gatherers, and fishermen, who
had settled in the Japanese archipelago many centuries before the arrival of
the agrarian Yayoi peoples, who immigrated from North Asia through
Korea some 2,400 years ago.
Regardless of origins, it is clear that the Ryūkyūans were an
autonomous nation from the end of the 12th century right up until their
incorporation into the Japanese nation-state at the end of the 19th century.
The first recorded Ryūkyūan dynasty (the Shunten Dynasty) was founded in
1187, right about the same time as the Kamakura shogunate (which marks
the end of the Heian classical period and the beginning of feudal Japan).
The Ryūkyūan kingdom started attracting the (perhaps less than welcome)
attention of its more powerful Chinese and Japanese neighbors beginning in
1372, when the Ryūkyūan King Satto began paying tribute to the first
emperor of the Chinese Ming Dynasty.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Japanese feudal rulers got
into the act. Upset that the Ryūkyūans refused to provide conscripts for a
Japanese invasion of Korea, and taking advantage of a succession struggle
in the Ryūkyū kingdom, the Satsuma rulers in Kyūshū invaded and defeated
the Ryūkyūans in 1609. Deciding that a life well taxed was preferable to a
life cut short, the Ryūkyūans wound up paying double tribute (to China and
to the Satsuma) for another century. Towards the end of the 19th century, as
China was slipping irretrievably into the losers’ column of the colonialist–
colonized equation, Japan stepped up to claim the Ryūkyūs as a province,
making them the Okinawa Prefecture of the Meiji state in 1879. China,
having come out on the losing side of the Sino-Japanese War, finally
renounced its claim to the islands in 1895.
Thus, from 1879 until its defeat in 1945, the Ryūkyūs were ruled
directly by Japan. Following World War II, the islands were under a U.S.
military government until 1950, and then ruled by an indigenous
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 13
government (though still subject to U.S. oversight) until 1972. In 1972, the
Ryūkyū Islands were returned to Japan. Adding up the years, then, the
Ryūkyū Islands have been an actual part of Japan for about one of the past
eight centuries. This is a significant point in understanding the current
context.
Linguistic Background
In order to understand the linguistic situation in the Ryūkyū
Islands, some discussion of the language(s) spoken there is in order. As
noted earlier, there is a wide divergence of opinion on whether they are
languages separate from Japanese, or “merely” dialects of Japanese. Miller
(1971) claims that “Middle Korean, Old Japanese, and Ryūkyūan [are]
sisters on a par,” which would surely make them distinct languages.
Robbeets, while placing Korean at a further distance from Japanese than
Ryūkyūan, clearly gauges Japanese and Ryūkyūan to be distinct languages.
On the other side of the debate, Shibatani, along with many other Japanese
scholars, would classify Ryūkyūan as a “dialect” of Japanese.
Shibatani (1990) contrasts the view held by Chamberlain in 1895
(and many Western linguists since then) that Ryūkyūan and Japanese are
sister languages, with that proposed by Hattori (1976) – and other Japanese
linguists – that they are dialects of a single language. Shibatani (1990:191)
notes Chamberlain’s observation that “the relationship between Ryūkyūan
and Japanese is something like that between Spanish and Italian or between
French and Italian,” and then goes on to say that “unlike these Romance
languages, the Ryūkyūan dialects are often mutually completely
unintelligible among themselves, let alone to the speakers of any mainland
dialect.” In support of Hattori’s position, though, Shibatani suggests that it
is clear from linguistic similarities that Ryūkyūan is substantially more
closely related to Japanese than is Korean.
At this juncture, it is worth pointing out that Shibatani’s assertion
about the relative relationship of Korean and Ryūkyūan to Japanese quite
misses the point on which Chamberlain and Hattori would disagree. The
issue here is whether to consider Ryūkyūan languages to be dialects of
Japanese or whether to see them as a family of related but distinct
languages. For his part, Shibatani (1990:191) dismisses the issue: “Once a
genetic relationship is established between two languages, it is a moot point
whether to regard them as two languages or as two dialects of one
language.” But it is not a moot point at all. Whether the Ryūkyūans have
their own language and linguistic tradition, or whether they all speak some
14 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
rustic (and by popular implication, inferior) dialect of Japanese, has
enormous implications for them and for their linguistic culture.
In most (at least Western) contexts, considering two varieties of a
language to be dialects entails that they be mutually intelligible to some
extent. This is apparent in the salient case of British and American English,
whose speakers can converse each in their respective dialects with little
difficulty, other than the peculiarities of lexical choice (e.g. British “lift” for
American “elevator,” etc.). In Asia, the term “dialect” is often used to refer
to pairs of mutually unintelligible languages―e.g. Shanghai and Beijing
“dialects” of Chinese, which are in fact distinct Chinese languages―and at
other times to refer to what Western linguistics would acknowledge as true
varieties (i.e., dialects) of a single language.
With respect to the Ryūkyūan–Japanese situation, it is clear that
Ryūkyūan and Japanese are mutually unintelligible, as are the various
dialects of Ryūkyūan and the various dialects of Japanese proper. In
assessing Ryūkyūan as a Japanese dialect, Chew (1976) asserts that “the
Hirara dialect (of Ryūkyūan) is sufficiently close to Standard Japanese for
its speakers to be able to create a good proportion of the standard
vocabulary by applying sound changes to dialect words.” But what is this
evidence of? One could make the same claim regarding Italian and Spanish,
or about Russian and Bulgarian. Clearly such a metric is not really
informative.
However “transparent” the relationship between Ryūkyūan and
Japanese, it is nonetheless the case that “the Ryūkyūan stock split from the
mainstream Japanese language at the latest around 6 A.D.” (Shibatani
1990:193). From an historical perspective, this would suggest a split at, or
shortly after, the arrival of the agrarian Yayoi people to the Japan
archipelago (i.e., around the time of the formation of a separate ethnic
Japanese people). From a linguistic perspective, calling Ryūkyūan and
Japanese dialects of the same language would be no different from calling
English, German, and Icelandic dialects of the same language (whatever
language that might be).
2
Thus, while it might be advantageous to Japan to
consider Ryūkyūan languages as mere varieties (i.e., dialects) of Japanese,
2
“According to results employing the lexicostatistics method (Hattori
1954), the Luchuan languages share only between 59 and 68 percent
cognates with Tokyo Japanese. These figures are lower than those between
German and English” (Bairon, Brenzinger, and Heinrich 2009).
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 15
such an assessment does not carry much linguistic or historical weight
(Shibatani’s characterization of “moot points” notwithstanding).
Beginning with its 2009 edition, United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Atlas of the World’s
Languages in Danger includes, alongside Ainu, the following Luchuan
(Ryūkyūan) languages of Japan: Amami, Hachijō, Kunigami, Miyako,
Okinawan, Yaeyama, and Yonaguni.
3
By classifying Ryūkyūan as a group
of endangered languages, the UNESCO document thus affirms their status
as autonomous languages, and as objects worthy of study and preservation.
Bairon, Brenzinger, and Heinrich (2009) note that the UNESCO
classification serves as a challenge to “the long-standing misconception of a
monolingual Japanese nation state that has its roots in the linguistic and
colonizing policies of the Meiji period.” It is also notable that Japanese
society laid claim to the Ryūkyūan people and language as a part of Japan
and the Japanese language, and simultaneously categorized them and their
language as inferior and contemptible. According to Barclay (2006:120),
the Ryūkyūan people are deemed by main island Japanese to be “backward,
lazy, inefficient, prone to insanity, irrational and unhygienic…Japanese, in
contrast, [are] modern, hardworking, efficient, sane, rational, and clean.”
Language Rights Issues
One of the central issues of concern, as noted, is the preservation
of the Ryūkyūan languages. While there was some acknowledgement of
local Ryūkyūan culture and language at the outset of Japanese de facto
control over the territory in 1872, this did not last long. From the time of its
administrative incorporation into Japan in 1879, there was a deliberate and
focused effort on making the Ryūkyūans Japanese. This effort primarily
took the form of disseminating the (standard) Japanese language through
the public educational system.
The motivations for this are, to some degree, understandable. The
Ryūkyū Islands stand at the southwestern extremity of the Japan
Archipelago and extend out into the vulnerable space between Japan and its
larger Asian neighbor, China, and the pressure to incorporate this space into
3
The interactive atlas is found here: Moseley, Christopher (ed.). 2010. Atlas
of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd ed. Paris, UNESCO Publishing.
Online version: (http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/
atlas).
16 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
the Japanese nation took on greater urgency after the 1895 Sino-Japanese
War. It was in this same year that Japan occupied both Taiwan and Korea,
making the Ryūkyūans the most closely related peoples in Japan’s recently
acquired territories. In this context, and given the mutual unintelligibility of
Japanese dialects to begin with, it is not a surprise that the Ryūkyū Islands
became an extension of the Ministry of Education efforts to standardize
Japanese throughout the empire. As far as the policy makers were
concerned, Ryūkyūan languages appeared to be nothing more than dialects
of Japanese, and were consequently treated as such.
What this meant for the Ryūkyū islanders, at the start of the 20th
century, was that “efforts to spread Japanese increasingly employed
coercive measures” (Heinrich 2005). In 1907, with the passage of the
Ordinance to Regulate Dialects (hōgen torishimari-rei), children were now
prohibited from speaking their native Ryūkyūan languages in school. As
Japan’s imperial ambitions increased, so did the pressure on Ryūkyū
islanders to conform to the national(istic) model of Japanese language and
culture. In 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria (China’s
northeasternmost territory), and on the island of Okinawa established the
Movement for Enforcement of the Normal Language (fūtsūgo reikō undō).
Under this movement, debate societies were established to promote the use
of Japanese. At these gatherings, “speaking a Ryūkyūan language…was
considered an unpatriotic act, and children taking part in debate circles
risked being penalized if they failed to speak Japanese” (Heinrich 2004).
While Japan lurched toward the expansion of military conflict
throughout East Asia and the Pacific in the mid-1930s, there was an effort
throughout the nation to promote loyalty, patriotism, and national unity. In
this milieu, “active measures to suppress Ryūkyūan increased…[and]
speaking Ryūkyūan in the private domain came to be seen as an obstacle to
the spread of Standard Japanese” (Heinrich 2004:158). This period saw a
marked increase in the use of the infamous hōgen huda (dialect tag) which
was hung around the neck of any student who used their home dialect in
school. As Heinrich reports, “other punishments included assignment of
unpopular duties such as cleaning up after school lessons” (Heinrich
2004:159). Nishimura (2001:176) reports that, at one school, children had
to sing “using dialect is the enemy of the country” (hōgen tsukau wa kuni
no kateki) during morning assemblies. Tanaka (2001:12) reports that when
he was at school, “there was a clothes-line in the classroom on which
colored paper in the shape of laundry was hung. If a student spoke
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 17
Ryūkyūan, the expression used was written on a paper and symbolically
cleansed.”
By 1939, the suppression of Ryūkyūan had been extended well
beyond the classroom. A law was passed requiring the use of Standard
Japanese in all government offices and institutions. Customers who used
Ryūkyūan in these places would be denied service and any employees who
spoke Ryūkyūan were fined. As the war progressed towards its inevitable
catastrophe, the situation only got worse for the Ryūkyūans. Heinrich
characterizes the attitude toward Ryūkyūan as “hysterical.” By the time of
the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, “the army gave a command that anyone
found using Ryūkyūan was to be considered a spy; cases were reported in
which this order was carried out and people speaking Ryūkyūan were shot
or stabbed to death” (Nakamatsu 1996: 58; Oyafuso 1986: 38).
As pointed out by Heinrich (2004:162), “language ideology is
always also ideology about something other than language.” Under the
ideological sway of a Standard Japanese (national language) movement,
Ryūkyūan languages have been measured (along with true Japanese
language dialects) against the “correct” national standard. Under the
mistaken assumption that Ryūkyūan is a variety of Japanese, it has “stood
out as the region in which (perceived) embarrassing language behaviour
was most pronounced” (Heinrich 2005).
After the end of the World War II, there were attempts on the part
of the American occupiers (in concert with local Ryūkyūan activists and
scholars) to promote the distinct culture and language of the Ryūkyūan
Islands. However, resentment of U.S. occupation served to enhance
Ryūkyūan islanders’ affinity with Japan, and to cause them to agitate for
reunification. Since 1972, the incursion of Standard Japanese into all forms
of communication (public and private) and the diminution of Ryūkyūan
languages has proceeded unrelentingly, to the point that the entire group of
the Ryūkyūan languages is about to disappear.
While the UNESCO recognition is long overdue and welcome, it is
unclear whether it has perhaps come about too late to effect any meaningful
preservation of Ryūkyūan languages and culture. There is some reason to
be mildly optimistic though. As Heinrich 2005 reports, the establishment of
a Society for Spreading Okinawan (uchinaguchi fukyū kyōgikai) has begun
to exert a positive influence, through the establishment of dialect classes in
public schools and the introduction of a standard orthography for the
language. A recent “dialect boom” throughout Japan may also have the
effect of making Ryūkyūan languages more fashionable as well.
18 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
Comparisons
While Ryūkyūan languages are indeed distinct from Japanese and
do not fall into the category of dialects, similarities of Japanese attitudes
towards them and American attitudes towards non-standard varieties of
American English, more notably African-American English (AAE) are
striking. Pullum (1997:321) assesses the “Ebonics” controversy of 15 years
ago. In this controversy, the nation was scandalized by a proposal by the
“Oakland Unified School District in California [on December 18,
1996]…to recognize the native tongue of most of its (African-American)
pupils as a language.” While all linguists agree that AAE is a dialect of
American English, the controversy was more about what this variety
represented than its linguistic status. AAE, Pullum says, is “described as if
it were English with mistakes and omissions.… commentators clarified
little except the deep hostility and contempt whites feel for the way blacks
speak (‘the patois of America’s meanest streets,’ columnist George Will
called it, as if AAE could only be spoken in slums), and the deep shame felt
by Americans of African descent for speaking that way (a Los Angeles
Times column by Eldridge Cleaver, a former Black Panther party official,
compared the official acknowledgement of AAE with condoning
cannibalism)” (Pullum 1997:321).
However, as Pullum suggests, most Americans do not realize that
AAE is not merely “bad English.” But as has been shown by numerous
linguists, AAE is the same as any other human language, having a unique
grammar and pronunciation rules (Bailey et al. 1998). “There is no more
reason for calling it bad standard English,” Pullum says, “than there is for
dismissing western dialects of English as bad eastern speech, or the
reverse” (Pullum 1997:321). The fallacies evident from the Ebonics
controversy are reflected in attitudes accompanying some of the local
resistance to a revival of Ryūkyūan languages. Heinrich (2005) reports the
following comment in a letter to the editor of the Okinawa Times from
December 3, 2004. The letter writer, a government official opposed to a
Ryūkyūan language revival or having these languages taught in the schools,
wrote:
I have come across the misunderstanding that the
Okinawa dialects are believed to constitute language
systems of their own because terms such as Okinawan or
island language and the like exist. As a matter of fact,
they are merely instances of corrupt accents and Old
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 19
Japanese words which have not vanished but continue to
be used in Okinawa….Although there have recently been
voices calling for teaching the dialects as languages to
children, such a practice would be dreadful. What is the
idea of teaching corrupt accents? If pupils are not taught
to speak proper Japanese, they will face humiliation when
grown up because of the language barrier.
The author of this letter has many like-minded allies in the United States,
whose attitudes toward Standard American English are equally
unenlightened and linguistically flawed. Educating individuals such as this
is no easy task, and one that must be undertaken across linguistic borders.
Korean Minority Language Speakers
Historical Background
Contact between the Korean peninsula and the Japan archipelago most
likely dates back several thousand years. The earliest verifiable contact
would have been some 2,400 years ago when agrarian Yayoi people crossed
from Korea, bringing with them rice cultivation. Several hundred years
later, in the 6th century C.E., the Korean peninsula served as the conduit for
the introduction of Buddhism into Japan. From a linguistic perspective, this
contact brought Chinese Buddhist texts and the introduction of the Chinese
orthographic system to Japan.
A thousand or so years later, Japan (under Hideyoshi) attempted to
invade and subjugate Korea. While the invasions ultimately failed, and
Japan and Korea returned to a normal regime of trade for the next two
centuries, Hideyoshi’s invasions―with the explicit aim of extending
Japanese military supremacy far out beyond the archipelago―presaged
developments three centuries later. In the latter half of the 19th century,
Japan (taking its cues from European imperial powers) began to assert itself
beyond the main islands, as we noted vis-à-vis the Ryūkyūs. Around this
same time (1876), Japan, taking advantage of some Korean internal
instability, forced an unequal trading treaty (Japan-Korea Treaty of
Amity/nitchō-shūkōjōki) upon the Korean Empire. Following this,
successive Japanese victories in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the
Russo-Japanese War of 1905 left Japan in a position to exert complete
control over the Korean peninsula, and annex it officially in 1910.
According to Ishikida (2005), the incorporation of Korea into the
Japanese Empire at the beginning of the 20th century led, inevitably, to the
20 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
transmission of Japanese culture and language to Korea and to the
movement of population between the two (with Japanese military,
administrators and teachers going in one direction, and Korean laborers
going in the other). On the Korean side of the Japan Sea, schools were
established to teach “Japanese language and culture, and to instill loyalty to
the Japanese emperor” (Ishikida 2005:50). This intensified in the 1930s in
the run-up to World War II, with policies designed to instill the unity of
Korea and Japan (naissen ittai), declarations of loyalty to the Emperor, and
the adoption of Japanese names. Koreans migrated in great numbers to
Japan, to work in factories, construction, and mining. By the start of World
War II, there were some 700,000 Japanese living in Korea and about 1.2
million Koreans living in Japan. By the end of the war, due in part to forced
conscription of Korean laborers to help the war effort, the Korean
population of Japan was slightly under 2 million (Ishikida 2005) out of a
total population of 72 million (about 3%). Half of this number (about 1
million) returned to Korea immediately after the end of the war, with a
subsequent decline to about 600,000 by 1948. This number has remained
rather stable in the years since then. Most Korean residents live in the
Kansai area (Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyōgo Prefectures) and Tokyo
metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefectures.
Following World War II, the General Headquarters of the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ) deemed as “Japanese nationals”
any Koreans who refused to be repatriated to Korea, although for the
Japanese, these individuals were considered “resident aliens.” The outbreak
of the Korean War and the resulting division of Korea made the situation
for these Korean residents of Japan far more complicated. For one thing, as
Ishikida notes, many of them identified with the North Korean government
and politics, even though they had come originally from South Korea.
Language Rights Issues
One of the most difficult issues for Koreans in Japan has been, and
remains, the preservation of their language and culture. Because the two
largest Korean associations in Japan (the Chōren and the Minsei) were
communist-dominated, they were dissolved in 1949 upon the outbreak of
the Korean conflict and this led to cultural and educational deficits that
would be difficult to overcome. Up until the outbreak of hostilities in
Korea, the two associations had established nearly 600 elementary schools,
six middle schools, ten “youth schools,” and two vocational schools,
serving over 50,000 students. The dissolution of the supporting Korean
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 21
associations, coupled with an order from the GHQ that Korean language
could only be taught in extracurricular classes, resulted in a sharp fall in the
number of Korean children receiving ethnic education. Only 20,000
continued their ethnic and language training in private Korean schools,
while some 40,000 transferred to Japanese schools or dropped out (Lee
1999:139–145, as cited in Ishikida 2005).
The 1950-1960s saw a temporary recovery in the area of Korean
ethnic education, with the establishment of the Chongryun (the General
Association of Korean Residents in Japan), affiliated with North Korea. By
1966, “there were more than 140 schools with 14 branch schools, 30 ethnic
classes, 208 afternoon and night classes, with a total of 40,000 students”
(Ishikida 2005, Lee 1999:150). Over the next 40 years though, the number
of students in these schools declined (by 2003) to just over 11,000, with the
decreasing enrollments putting further pressure on the schools (as they are
private and self-supporting).
One of the ongoing problems with Korean heritage education
concerns the official Ministry of Education policies that impede it.
According to Hatori (2005), these ethnic schools do not have official status.
Japanese educational policy provides free public education, but only if the
medium of instruction is Japanese. This means, among other things, that
“students from Korean national schools are prevented from receiving the
same treatment as those of Japanese schools in terms of candidacy for
university entrance examinations; and Korean schools do not benefit from
Government subsidies and tax exemptions” (Hatori 2005:48). Since Korean
language and culture is not taught in public schools, and since Korean
heritage schools must therefore be private, there are strong economic and
educational disincentives for ethnic Koreans to attend such schools. This
had led, naturally, to a decline in enrollments in these schools, and to a
gradual loss of ethnic identity, cultural knowledge, and linguistic aptitude
among younger Korean-Japanese. It is noted (Hatori 2005, Ishikida 2005)
that the overwhelming majority of ethnically Korean youth use Japanese
names “rather than their given Korean ones” in order to avoid being labeled
as Korean.
There is, however, some indication that things are in fact changing
for the better. Beginning in 2004, the Japanese Ministry of Education began
to allow colleges and universities to independently assess the academic
credentials of their applicants, and in 2005, revised the examination that
high school students take to enter college, such that graduates from Korean
ethnic schools now have the same status vis-à-vis the exam as do graduates
22 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
of Japanese public high schools. It is also the case that Japanese youth
sports associations have begun to allow Korean ethnic schools to participate
in intermural sports competitions. Whether this will change the trend, or
whether it is too little, too late, remains to be seen. But it is clear that these
changes are in the right direction.
Comparisons
Problems affecting Korean residents of Japan, including the
domain of language and language rights, are effectively a subset of the
problems affecting any non-native ethnic group in Japan. As a 2008 U.S.
Department of State report states:
Despite legal safeguards against discrimination, the
country’s large populations of Korean, Chinese, Brazilian,
and Filipino permanent residents―many of whom were
born, raised, and educated in Japan―were subject to
various forms of deeply entrenched societal
discrimination, including restricted access to housing,
education, and employment opportunities.
4
That Korean residents of Japan have these problems, after several
generations of residence, is quite remarkable, although not unthinkable.
One only has to consider the status of Hispanic citizens of the United
States. In the case of Puerto Rico, for example, we find a very useful
comparison. Puerto Rico was conquered by the United States in a war with
Spain in 1898, right around the same time that Japan was incorporating
Korea. Unlike Korea, Puerto Rico remains a U.S. territory to this day, but
much like the Korean residents of Japan, Puerto Rican-Americans (who are
in fact U.S. citizens) are also subject to “various forms of deeply entrenched
societal discrimination, including restricted access to housing, education,
and employment opportunities.”
5
4
United States State Department, “2008 Country Reports on Human
Rights: Japan,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (accessed
November 2010, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/eap/
119041.htm).
5
Ibid.
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 23
Much of this discrimination, like that against Koreans in Japan,
finds its expression through resistance to culture and obstacles to the use of
language. Also, while there are many areas in which Puerto Rican citizens
have full access to Spanish language services, their need for such services is
still marked as an immigrant problem, even though they are clearly not
immigrants in any sense of the term.
Conclusion
From the preceding discussion, it is apparent that language is one
of the most salient markers (if not the most salient marker) of cultural
identity, and in the course of inter-group conflict, language is often (and
predictably) used as a tool for the domination of one group over another.
The policies of the Japanese government have generally tended towards the
absorption of other groups, in an apparent attempt to foster the notion of
Japanese ethnic purity. Yet, the specific manner in which official Japanese
policy has interacted with ethnic groups can be distinguished by the status
of each group―be they aboriginal, an intra-ethnic minority, or an
immigrant minority.
For the Ainu, being an aboriginal people meant that the very
existence of their ethnicity and culture was antithetical to the Japanese
notions of manifest destiny and their claim to being the first civilization on
the islands. This was handled in two ways, both of which are reminiscent of
white European-Americans’ stance toward Amerindian tribes. First of all,
the aboriginals were deemed to be “uncivilized” or “savages.” Thus, while
they might be “earlier” inhabitants of the land, they did not constitute an
“earlier civilization.” Secondly, they were remade into Japanese (or in the
North American case, into Americans), by replacing their language (and
other cultural identifiers) with that of the dominant civilization.
The Ryūkyūan case is one involving (for the Japanese, at least) an
intra-ethnic minority. In this regard, the Japanese imposed the same
regionally dictated chauvinist solution as was promulgated for all “dialect”
speaking sub-groups. To promote national unity, one variety of Japanese
would have to be officially favored, and be esteemed over all others. In this
model, the Ryūkyūans were simply deemed to speak a different dialect of
Japanese, but one that was “clearly” inferior to all the others. In this regard,
as we have noted, the American attitude towards African-American English
is worthy of comparison (in that many Americans regard African-American
vernacular as the worst of the non-standard varieties).
24 DUBINSKY & DAVIES
The Korean case, involving what is clearly acknowledged to be a
distinct national group, is somewhat different from these other two.
Complete eradication and absorption is not an option (as with the Ainu),
since the Korean nation remains a distinct national entity, irrespective of the
conditions of Koreans in Japan proper. Also, while it might have once been
imaginable during Japan’s imperialistic heyday, the idea that Koreans
would be absorbed into Japan and their language and culture replaced by
Japanese, ceased to be a possibility after 1945. The Japanese treatment of
Koreans and their language since then is thus very similar to American
treatment of Spanish-speaking immigrants. They are acknowledged, but
also deemed to be “alien” and kept from positions of power and influence
through the diminution of, and constraints upon, their language and culture.
LANGUAGE CONFLICT AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS 25
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