Pizziconi, Barbara

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reconceptualized and a new book to reflect current approaches to Chinese artwill be produced.Stacey PiersonENDŌ ORIE:A Cultural History of Japanese Women’s Language.(Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies.) vii, 139 pp. AnnArbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2006.$38. ISBN 9781929280391.Orie Endō’s well-known abhorrence of a normative and inevitably ideologicalnotion of ‘‘women’s speech’’ surfaces vividly in A Cultural History of JapaneseWomen’s Language (an English translation of the 1997 Onna no kotoba nobunkashi, Gakuyoo Shoboo, Tokyo). A female linguist investigating the natureof, and the discourse on, women’s speech in literature, plays, press,governmental agency surveys, advertising, as well as in ostensibly scientificliterature, Endō is confronted by a deluge of rather provocative material –commentators being typically male, and prescriptivism amore common currencythan rigorous description. But Endō’s objective is not limited to the rectificationof received ideas about the nature of ‘‘women’s language’’. She goesmuch furtherand challenges the common-sense, yet essentialist, notion that women’s speechhas always been there because it naturally embodies female nature.Endō’s deconstructive project starts out with an attempt to identifydocumented evidence of specific realizations of gendered speech, in the earliestliterary texts and other surviving documents. In the Kojiki, the oldest Japanesechronicle written in the Nara period (710–794), the first utterance of the godIzanagi no Mikoto and the goddess Izanami no Mikoto upon meeting eachother is a completely undifferentiated exclamation of mutual appreciation. Butthe goddess speaks first, which vitiates the success of the Japanesearchipelago’s creation; only after reversing the order of speech is the taskachieved. The episode announces two broad themes of the book: the lack ofevidence of a definite speech differentiation in ancient times, and males’ earlypreoccupation with dominance. Even during the Heian Period (794–1185), therare references to gendered differences concern neither vocabulary norgrammar, but rather women’s ‘‘manner of speech’’, i.e. their attitude, the useof emphasis, the speed and logic of their speech. However, it is in the followingKamakura (1185–1333) and Muromachi (1336–1573) periods that crucialdevelopments take place. Endō acknowledges revisions of the accepted viewthat medieval Japan has been a time of systematic oppression of women, and iscareful to avoid unqualified statements that link such new developments to anabsolute and universal transformation of gender roles in this period. But shenotes, for example, that while the asymmetrical use of honorifics does notunambiguously index gender (but rather class or age) gender begins, in thisperiod, to be marked in a way that mirrors subordination in class and age, andsubmits that the rationale for this development lies in the rise of the samurai’spolitical power and the escalation of male-dominated discourse. The birth ofnyoobo kotoba (or language of the nyoobo, daughters of nobility andintellectuals attending at court) is characterized as a linguistic innovation thatindexed demeanour rather than deference. As a type of argot, this marksin-group communication, based on the use of devices of indirect, euphemistic,388 REV I EWSmetaphorical reference. Interestingly though, together with prefixation by o-(e.g. yu . o-yu for ‘‘hot water’’), which survived in the modern repertoire ofhonorific language, other devices such as abbreviation (takenoko . take,‘‘bamboo shoot’’) or repetitions (kazunoko . kazukazu, ‘‘herring roe’’) are alsoassociated with childish language: what started as mother-talk may have comeadditionally to index femininity.During the Edo period, a plethora of etiquette books appear which furtherpolarize gendered linguistic conduct and produce exceptionally explicitnormative codifications. Women are expected to speak softly and gently,avoid expressions of Chinese or popular origin (i.e. both ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’registers), or in fact speak as little as possible.Several studies address the discourse on women’s linguistic corruption inmodern times (see for example M. Inoue, ‘‘What does language remember?:Indexical inversion and the naturalized history of Japanese women’’, Journal ofLinguistic Anthropology, 14/1, 2004: 39–56), and Endō’s account is largelyconsistent with these, but the chapters covering the Meiji period to the presentare an excellent review of primary sources illustrating the innumerablecontradictions that such discourse contained.Despite modernization and the fostering of women’s education, thepromotion of ‘‘good wives and wise mothers’’ meant that normative linguisticcodes saw little change. If anything, Japan’s male academics can list anotherevil influence poisoning Japanese women’s speech: Western women’sintellectual assertiveness. The rebellious modan gaaru (modern girl) of earlyShowa was not a suitable model for the supportive role demanded of womenduring the war, and was expected to speak ‘‘haltingly’’ and act ‘‘bashfully’’.Even women’s return to public spheres of social and intellectual life at the endof the war did not grant them the right of use of intellectual tools. It is not inthe 1960s, nor the 70s or 80s, but only the mid-1990s that finally attest to anovel acceptance of the language of diversity.On the basis of abundant linguistic data and social commentaries, the bookargues that the polarization of male and female language historically served thesocial, metapragmatic function of establishing and maintaining genderinequality – prescriptions on the rights of use of Chinese-based words wouldmake little sense were these words not frequent in the lexicon of knowledge andacademia (a contrast which thus can index progress vs tradition). Bemoaningwomen’s use of slang (deplored when borrowed ‘‘upward’’ or mocked whenborrowing ‘‘downward’’) suggests anxiety towards social mobility. But thebook’s main thesis is that the so-called ‘‘women’s language’’ is the product ofhistorical amnesia: it has not always been there, it is artificially construed ashomogeneous, is positively driven by social inequality, and is then arbitrarilycoded as ‘‘natural’’ and inherent to femininity. Moreover, it is subject toreinterpretations: what is first condemned as vulgar and inappropriate (likeMeiji women’s teyodawa kotoba) is subsequently recodified as prototypicalfeminine speech. Such reinterpretations barely conceal the discourse of power:the linguistic mechanisms of both medieval nyoobo kotoba and contemporarywakamono kotoba (youth language) are very similar and both can be thought ofas linguistic fashions, but the former is iconized as the epitome of beautifulfeminine language, and the latter as impertinent or immoral corruption.Endō interprets current linguistic developments as evidence that the schismof gendered speech is reducing, and shared forms are increasingly common.And nevertheless, she notes that centuries of male-dominated discourse haveleft a deep trace in women’s consciousness – they are afraid to ‘‘offend’’ whenresisting the conventions of sexist language. While lauding the creative use ofREV I EWS 389language by today’s young girls, she concludes the book by expressing the hopethat they will carry their ‘‘rebellion’’ into adulthood.Barbara PizziconiSIMON MILLS:Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea’s East Coast HereditaryShamans.(SOAS Musicology Series.) xii, 121 pp. CD. Aldershot: Ashgate,2007. £27.50. ISBN 987 0 7546 5845 0.Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea’s East Coast Hereditary Shamansis a study of the role, the beliefs, and the ritual practices of hereditary shamansand their instrumentalists in South Korea’s Kangwŏn and Kyŏngsangprovinces. Much of the work is based on Mills’ PhD thesis, which in turnrelied on extensive fieldwork performed by the author in 1999 and 2000. Sincehe began his fieldwork, Mills has studied with and occasionally performedalongside his two main informants, Kim Junghee and Jo Jonghun. Many of thecomments included are taken from interviews conducted with them in early2005 when they stayed at SOAS as ‘‘visiting research performers’’. The bookconsists of five chapters and a short conclusion, followed by a bibliographyand a short index. On the audio CD, Kim, Jo and Mills can be heardperforming the five key pieces discussed in each chapter.In chapter one, ‘‘Tŭrŏnggaengi – Who are the East Coast hereditaryMudang?’’, Mills introduces the realm of shamanist practice in South Korea,and in particular that of the Kim clan in the East Coast region to which hisinformants belong. Although Mills has been a participating observer of someof the rituals he describes, he does not dwell on how his being a foreigner mayhave affected his interpretations or his informants. He chooses, instead, todescribe his experiences as objectively as possible, and gives fairly literaltranslations of sections from his interviews. When he indents a paraphrasedrendition of his informants’ words on their clan’s heritage (p. 8), however, it seemshe goes a little too far in trying to let them speak on their own behalf. Millsdescribes how someof his informants came to enter into the profession andwhat itimplied in terms of their social position. He relates the differences betweenhereditary and charismatic shamans, and explains that even though someinstrumentalists work for both kinds of shamans, they maintain their preferences(p. 18).He also reports somevery interesting, negative experienceswithChristians(p. 12). Becausemany aspects ofKorean shamanism are introduced in a relativelyshort chapter, the narrative is a little patchy at times. This is exacerbated by thefact that throughout the book the names of illustrations and figures look exactlylike sub-headings and that long tables are not broken up, resulting in the text onthe preceding page ending well before the bottom of the page (see pp. 23, 27, 54).Chapter two, ‘‘P’unŏri – musical practice in ritual’’, introduces theinstruments used and explains their role in rituals. Unfortunately not all areaccompanied by a picture, and because Mills does not always give descriptionsof size and colour, some lay readers may be left wondering what they actuallylook like. The structure of the music, on the other hand, is given considerableattention. Mills provides long transcriptions of the main rhythmic cycles asplayed by the two instrumentalists and carefully describes the similarities anddifferences in style (pp. 42–55). I found the illustrations here very helpful,390 REV I EWS

Review of Endō Orie 'A Cultural History of Japanese Women’s Language'

Barbara Pizziconi

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Endō Orie: A Cultural History of Japanese Women’s Language. (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies.) vii, 139 pp. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2006. $38. ISBN 9781929280391.

https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/file/358593/1/book_review_of_endo_orie.pdf

Review of Endō Orie 'A Cultural History of Japanese Women’s Language'

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