Early Twentieth-Century Terms for New Verse Forms (‘free verse’ and others) in Japanese and Arabic

In the first half of the twentieth century, when Japanese and Arabic poets began writing free-verse poetry, many terms were proposed as labels for the new form. In addition to the calques on “free verse,” neologisms were created to name the new poetry. What is striking is that, in these two quite different literary spheres, a number of the proposed neologisms were the same: for example, in both Japanese and Arabic the terms prose poetry, modern poetry, and colloquial poetry were proposed (among others) as alternatives to the label free poetry. This essay provides an annotated list of the neologisms in Japanese and Arabic, with a list of English terms for comparison; and by referring to the contemporary Japanese and Arabic criticism on the topic of poetic innovation, this essay attempts to explain the similarity between the Japanese and Arabic neologisms. In short, the Japanese and Arabophone arguments in favour of adapting the free-verse form were based on similar premises regarding modernity, freedom, and a vision of literary history that was rooted in an evolutionary theory of genre development

Japanese Language, Standard Language, National Language: Rethinking Language and Nation

The paper examines the relationship between language and nation through the historical process by which the modern Japanese language came to exist and proposes a tentative answer as to what this says about the nature of phenomena such as language and nation themselves. The paper suggests that if language is understood as an actually existing natural and definable object, it must indeed be claimed that the Japanese language is no more than a hundred years old.    Članek se ukvarja z razmerjem med jezikom in narodom na podlagi zgodovinskega procesa, ki je pripeljal do nastanka modernega japonskega jezika, in predlaga možno razlago narave samih pojavov, kakor sta jezik in narod. Teza članka je, da če razumemo jezik kot objektivno obstoječ, naraven in jasno določen objekt, potem moramo nujno zaključiti, da japonski jezik ni star več kakor sto let.

A sketch of Buyuan Jino tones and their development

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 18th meeting of the Linguistic Circle for the Study of Eastern Eurasian Languages, held at Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo, Japan) on February 20, 20111

\u3cem\u3eGESAKU\u3c/em\u3e IN EDO FICTION AND AN ANNOTATED TRANSLATION OF \u3cem\u3e NENASHIGUSA YUME MONOGATARI \u3c/em\u3e BY SHIKITEI SANBA

In this thesis Iw ill examine the illustrated fiction gesaku of the Edo period (1600-1868), focusing on Shikitei Sanba (1776-1882) as a gesaku writer and translate one of his gesaku works, Nenashigusa yume monogatari, which was published in 1809. Nenushigusa yume monegaiari has been categorized as gôkan, which is a genre of gesaku literature