ABSTRACT
Scholarship on language reform movements of Meiji Japan has focused critical attention on intertwined issues of nationalism, the de-Asianization of language, and the colonialist/imperialist agenda that attended Japan's rise as a modern world-power. This chapter seeks to illuminate what has been effaced in the rush to expose the underpinnings of nationalism in Meiji language reform movements. It examines the linguistic terrain that preceded the Ueda-led national language reforms, in order to reveal how those reforms in fact negotiated with the proliferation of kanbun kundokutai in 1880s Japan. The chapter shows how the emergence of national language in fact appropriated the linguistic space established by kanbun kundokutai. It discusses the fertile space of kanbun kundokutai. The chapter turns to the many arguments for reform that shaped the second decade of Meiji and inquires into the forces that govern those arguments to highlight how the Meiji literati situated kanji characters and compounds and ultimately kanbun kundokutai in their arguments for new language.
