Research Highlights

Throughout my academic journey, from undergraduate to master's research, I was captivated by the writings of pioneers of the Meiji era's genbun’itchi movement (commonly translated as the movement for the “unification of spoken and written languages”). This included writers like Futabatei Shimei, Yamada Bimyo, and Ozaki Koyo, and I delved deep into their theories and practices. Since then, I've engaged deeply with Japanese language materials from the late Edo to the Meiji period. My approach differs from etymological research, and I've strived to trace and document the evolution of each word's meaning and usage, writing a chronicle for each word, so to speak. Take the Japanese term for "sisters," shimai, for example. It originally referred to women in the same parent-child relationship, but now it is also used to describe things that have some similarity, such as in the word “sister city.” Similarly, in my research, I have found many examples of the term “sister ships” throughout the Meiji period. Behind these words were the gender-specific nouns in Western languages that influenced their translation into Japanese. In Japanese, the colloquial term for sibling, kyodai, is not necessarily gendered (though it is often used for men). “Female siblings” can also be referred to as onna no kyodai (lit. “female siblings”), which led me to speculate that the word shimai was not as commonplace as the word kyodai in everyday language and, therefore, was better suited to indicating analogous relationships. As the 20th century progressed, references to "sister volumes" (shimai-hen) and "sister schools" (shimai-ko) also became more prevalent. Incidentally, the first recording of a "sister city" in Japanese was after World War II. Studying these semantic shifts and expansions encompasses the evolution of the usage of a word, which I call “word history,” to distinguish it from etymological research. Such individual word history research demands observation of numerous examples, making progress painstakingly slow. Investigating one word will often necessitate the study of several related terms.

Generally speaking, a dictionary describes the meaning and usage of words arranged by principles, and it is the variety of modern dictionaries that underpin my research. Dictionary research is inseparable from the study of a word’s history. Thus, one aspect of my inquiry intertwines with the craft of dictionary-making. 2022 marked the publication of the 10th edition of the Shinsen Kokugo Jiten, a comprehensive dictionary of Japanese. My involvement in the world of dictionary-making began during my time as a graduate student when I worked part-time organizing materials for Daijirin, a comprehensive single-volume Japanese dictionary. It was there that I got to know many of my mentors in the field. The challenge of succinctly capturing the essence of words—without excess or omission—persists to this day.

I'm currently affiliated with Keio's Center for Japanese Studies, which provides Japanese language education for international students, and it is my hope that native Japanese speakers can also learn to approach the language with the same kind of awareness of meaning and usage as international students do.

(2024/4/1)