Yukio Naruse's 'Various Reference Books': 'How Was the Japanese Language Created?' and 'The Japanese Language Evolves' (2)

(Continued from above)

Europe, lacking absolute borders like open seas, has been a region where human interaction has been extremely intense since ancient times. Furthermore, it was established upon a common foundation of Greco-Latin culture and Christianity.

Therefore, in Western countries, the task of translation between Western languages can, to put it extremely, be considered as nothing more than 'correcting differences in phrasing between dialects'.

Of course, since entering the modern era, the West has also engaged in translation work from non-Western cultural spheres such as Japanese and Chinese. However, it can be said that these are acts intended to enrich their own cultures just a little bit more. To put it clearly, it is nothing more than a kind of exoticism.

However, the situation in Japan is completely different.

Since its founding, for over 1,700 years, Japan has engaged in the act of translation to 'transform' its society from the roots up.

From the Tenpyo era through the Nara and Heian periods, Japan sent missions to China, a great civilization far across the sea, risking the nation's prestige and survival. Despite suffering enormous casualties, they brought back a vast array of books and translated them to build a new nation.

There could not have been even a shred of casual sentiment, such as merely enriching their own culture, in that endeavor.

Much of the Japanese culture we enjoy today, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, tea drinking, and calligraphy, was brought to us through such translations.

Entering the modern era, during the Meiji period, Japan translated thousands of books in just a few decades to incorporate Western civilization, and by utilizing them, succeeded in 'modernization'.

And it became one of the few non-Western countries that was able to escape the crisis of colonization by Western powers.

It is no exaggeration to say that Japanese culture is, in short, an aggregate of the translation culture that has been accumulated in this way.

However, despite this, Japanese culture never ended up as a mere copy of foreign cultures.

In various fields, Japanese culture has come to possess a uniqueness unparalleled in the world.

Starting from a copy, it gradually drifts away from the original, and eventually begins to construct something unique.

Flexibly incorporating and digesting everything, and transforming it into something of its own.

Is that not the essential characteristic of Japanese culture?

What has supported that endeavor from the roots is the act of translation.

Translation has created and nurtured Japanese culture.

(Continued below)

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