Language, Nation, Race: Linguistic Reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912)

Language, Nation, Race explores the various language reforms at the onset of Japanese modernity, a time when a "national language" (kokugo) was produced to standardize Japanese. Faced with the threat of Western colonialism, Meiji intellectuals proposed various reforms to standardize the Japanese language in orders to quickly educate the illiterate masses. This book liberates these language reforms from the predetermined category of the "nation," for such a notion had yet exist as a clear te...