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Translator’s Note

This is an English translation of Nippongo (The Japanese Language) by Kindaichi Haruhiko, published by Iwanami Shoten in 1957.

When I first read it some years ago, I thought it very interesting and stimulating, for it explains the different aspects of the Japanese language which are intimately connected to the nature of the Japanese people and the country in which they live. For a foreign student of Japanese, it will serve as a wonderful guide for solving some of thedifficult problems and as a good introduction to Japanese studies. Several years later, when I was at Columbia University teaching Japanese and Japanese literature, I realized the value of this book even more keenly, and it was then that I decided to translate it into English.

The book abounds in proper names, historical analogies, literary references, classical quotations and, above all, book references. Since the book was originally written mainly for the Japanese reader, footnotes and annotations were not necessary. Foreign readers, however, would not be able to suffciently understand and appreciate the book without them. Hence, the translator has added annotations, mostly in the form of footnotes and supplementary notes at the back, totaling several hundred items.

By its very nature as a work dealing mainly with words and characters, this book contains frequent insertions of romanized Japanese words and phrases. In such cases their English translations appear along with the words and phrases and after the quotations. All sources referred to in the text are listed by publisher and date of publication at the back of the book.

One of the interesting features of the book is the author’s use of comparative examples from various languages of the world in discussing the characteristics of Japanese. I sincerely hope that this book will be of interest not only to the student of Japanese language and literature, but also to the general reader with an interest in Japan and the Japanese people.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Father E. R. Skrzypczak of Sophia University for his valuable advice and to Professor David A. Dilworth of New York State University and Miss Sharon Woods for their assistance in the preparation of this book.

—UMEYO HIRANO

Note: Throughout the main text, all Japanese proper names are written in the traditional style: family name first, given name last.