Discourse on Poetic Language in Early Modern Japan and the Awareness of Linguistic Change

Abstract

Until the end of the nineteenth century in Japan a linguistically complex situation existed where written Classical Chinese (kanbun 漢文), written Classical Japanese (bungo 文語), and many spoken variants of Japanese coexisted. While bungo conserved Classical Japanese over the centuries, the spoken language gradually changed. Beginning around 1700 elements of spoken language began to be integrated into written texts: partly in prose, to some extent in drama, and also in haiku poetry. However, these genres belonged to popular entertainment and were considered low and vulgar (zoku 俗) as opposed to the elegant (ga 雅) classical written language. Around 1800 an argument was presented which suggested that contemporary spoken language was the only effective means of writing poetry. A century before the genbun itchi movement, a group of poets pleaded for the use of the contemporary vernacular in elegant poetry and at the same time emphasized that poetry could not be restricted to elite groups.