ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter to Scripting Japan lays out the fundamental need for moving to a more sociolinguistic understanding of variant script use in Japan. The chapter opens by noting the primarily functionalist nature of prior study on Japanese script use, with most work to date drawing heavily on findings that Japanese language users have distinct images of each script. It then specifically details the limitations of this perspective, doing so in a manner designed to assist non-Japanese readers in accessing the discussions throughout the text. The chapter begins by giving an overview of the fundamentals of script use in Japan, and then moves to discuss origins of the writing system’s orthographic flexibility and the established motives for variant Japanese script to date. After this review, the specific limitations of the prior findings are detailed, and an explanation is given for how the latter chapters of Scripting Japan will fill in this gap in understanding.
