ABSTRACT
Those who deviate from modernist ideas of what language ought to be, disturb the invented order of homogeneity, monotony and clarity. Where they may be held accountable for their divergence, they risk penalization – where they may not, they face the risk of exclusion or expulsion. Once we come to understand modernist language ideology for what it really is, that is, an over-simplification of sociolinguistic reality, it loses much of its power to control. Its inconsistencies quickly become visible, and the modernist ideology of Japanese is no exception. Japan is, and always has been, multilingual, and the image of a monolingual society it presents both to its own people and the rest of the world is purely a modernist fabrication. Already, the myth of a monolingual Japan has been undermined (and its multilingual heritage thereby defended) by a significant body of academic work, by such authors as Goebel Noguchi and Fotos (2001), Denoon et al. (1996), Honna and Kannō (1999), Kanno (2008), Long (2007), Maher and Yashiro (1995), Masiko (2003) or Yasuda (2000). Besides autochthonous languages like Ainu, the various Ryukyuan languages and Japanese Sign Language, there are now more than 75,000 immigrant children within the Japanese public education system, who arrived in Japan from the 1980s onwards, bringing with them more than 100 different languages. Of these, Portuguese, Mandarin and Spanish are the most prominent (Vaiepae 2001). Roughly the same number of children of foreign nationality as have attended school have not (Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communication 2005). These newcomer immigrant communities (see Ōta 2000) add to the so-called oldcomer communities of Korean-and ChineseJapanese, and those of Korean and Chinese descent granted permanent residency (see e.g. Takeuma 1998). About 10,000 kikokushijo (Japanese nationals who have spent much of their childhoods living abroad) may also be found within the Japanese education system. So significant a group do the kikokushijo constitute that their numbers are also constantly monitored, one reason for this being that they are perceived to constitute a problem (Pang 2000). Further adding to Japan’s increasing linguistic diversity, the importance of English as a language of international communication in business and science is growing, and its future status is hotly debated (Suzuki 2002). Japanese, too, has entered the global era, with an estimated ten million people now speaking Japanese as a foreign language, and the majority of Japanese now supports the idea of Japanese becoming an international language (Katō 2000). One result of internationalization is the creation of yasashii nihongo, or Easy Japanese, designed to smooth the way for Japanese to become a language of global communication (see Hirosaki City 2005). All these developments have one thing in common. None of this was predicted under the ideology of modernity. Linguistic modernization sought the opposite: uniformity, clarity and monotony. For a long time, one’s identity as being Japanese was largely defined by one’s proficiency in the Japanese language. Today, such a definition of identity is challenged both by the increasing number of foreigners who use Japanese fluently, and by the many people of Japanese descent – like the nikkeijin (returning descendents of Japanese migrants) – who cannot. The issue of keigo (honorific language) remains, though whether one can convincingly argue the case for basing one’s identity as Japanese on one’s ability to use keigo is doubtful, given the large number of Japanese people who are not fully proficient in its use. Faced with this diversification of language use, modernity is forced to relocate, and to reaffirm its position ever more vocally because it does not view diversity and ambivalence in a positive light. Rather, to the modern mind, they are evidence of the ineffectiveness of its efforts to establish order thus far. Despite these challenges to modernity, as an ideology that informs and regulates everyday social activities it remains in place. Evidence of this is to be found in the fact that all of Japan’s languages apart from the national language, Standard Japanese, are endangered (UNESCO 2009). Linguistic diversity is slowly giving way to uniformity, with minority languages becoming endangered as a result. Regional dialects, too, are in decline (Inoue 2008b), and folk bilingualism finds itself undervalued, as uniformity remains the order of the day in schools. The right to mother-tongue education is granted only to native speakers of Japanese, while the Ministry of Education is unwilling to recognize schools attempting to teach in languages other than Japanese (Kanno 2008). One consequence of Japan’s efforts to internationalize has been the introducion of a parallel system of monolingualism, whereby English has become the medium for international communication (Miura 2000), while Japanese remains the language of national identity and everyday communication
in Japan (Katsuragi 2007). Modernist efforts to give order to language and society such as these are to be found everywhere in Japan. The quest for linguistic homogeneity is disturbed, however, by the movement of people, and by the defining and redefining of the geographical borders of the state (see Iriye 1970), and as a result ideology does not match the realities on the ground. The fact remains that some people and places simply do not fit into the modernist idea of what Japan ought to be, and the existence of such people is at odds with the modern order. As a consequence of modernity, not only foreigners, but all those who find themselves caught between the imposed “foreigner versus Japanese” dichotomy, must negotiate the gap between Japan, the idea and Japan, as it is. Those who uphold the modern order, however, are themselves experiencing hard times, forced to defend the ideology of homogeneity in the face of increasingly strong arguments to the contrary. And homogeneity finds itself threatened from within, too, attacked, albeit indirectly, by the political, ideological and economic neoliberalism of recent governments. Modernism’s attempts to eliminate diversity have unarguably failed, and there is nothing to indicate a reversal in fortunes. Diversity will not disappear. Linguistic diversity, and the awareness thereof, unmasks the legislated linguistic order of uniformity as an order of power. It restricts the freedom of language and identity choices for all those at the shorter end of the power divide. Awareness thereof leads to discontent, which drives, in turn, further emancipation efforts. In order to gauge the prospects for language and society in Japan, we are welladvised to pay such discontent sufficient attention. The intensification of language ideology among all those deviating from imagined orders is, to borrow from Jane Hill (2006: 114), the reason why “history speeds up at the margins.” Discontent is located there because the margin was not considered to be a constitutive element of what was to be given order under modernity. It was either pushed aside, or regarded as a problem to be solved. It is this, and the awareness thereof, which results in discontent at the margin. Consider some concrete examples. Foreign nationals are denied the freedom to maintain their languages through mother-tongue education programs, bilingual education or accredited foreign language-mediated school education. Deviance from the homogenous, monolithic view of language likewise undermines the specific uses of Japanese by returnees, immigrants, and children of international marriages (Tomozawa 2001), many of whom are neither balanced nor Japanese-dominant bilinguals. Under modernity, such problems were ignored, and those deviating were ideologically pressured to assimilate into the imagined orders in which their presence was never envisioned. In late modernity, this is no longer seen as an acceptable remedy, because the modern order is not seen as natural. Modernist ideology has become visible. It is recognized as an artifact, a fabrication, thus allowing for its discussion with the aim of improvement. Such discontent results in increasingly viable attempts to seek more freedom in the face of attempts to create security by restricting choice. Let us consider such conflict in more detail.
