The History of Japanese Writing

General

Butler, Lee. "Language Change and 'Proper' Transliterations in Premodern Japanese." Japanese Language and Literature 36, no. 1 (Apr, 2002): 27-44.

Conlan, Thomas D. "Traces of the Past: Documents, Literacy, and Liturgy in Medieval Japan." In Currents in Medieval Japanese History: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey P. Mass, edited by Gordon M. Berger, et al., 19-50. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2009.

Frellesvig, Bjarke. A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Fröhlich, Judith. Rulers, Peasants and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Japan: Ategawa no shō 1004–1304. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Gottlieb, Nanette. "Written Japanese and the Word Processor." Japan Forum 5, no .1 (1993): 115–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09555809308721480.

———. 1995. Kanji Politics: Language Policy and Japanese Script. London: Kegan Paul International, 1995.

———. "Language Planning and Policy in Japan." In Language Planning and Language Policy: East Asian Perspectives, edited by Nanette Gottlieb and Ping Chen, 21–48. Routledge, 2001.

———. "Japan: Language Policy and Planning in Transition." Current Issues in Language Planning 9, no. 1 (2008): 1–68.

———. Language Policy in Japan: The Challenge of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Habein, Yaeko Sato. The History of the Japanese Written Language. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1984.

Handel, Zev. Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script. Netherlands: Brill, 2019.

Harutake Iikura. Komonjo nyūmon handobukku. Yoshikawa Keizō, 1993.

Heath, Rose. The Japanese Writing System: Challenges, Strategies and Self-Regulation for Learning Kanji. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2017.

Gustav Heldt, "Writing like a Man: Poetic Literacy, Textual Property, and Gender in the 'Tosa Diary'" The Journal of Asian Studies 64, No. 1 (2005), 7-34.

Hiraga, Masako. "Kanji: The Visual Metaphor." Style 40, no. 1/2 (2006): 133–47.

Igarashi, Yuko. "The Changing Role of Katakana in the Japanese Writing System: Processing and Pedagogical Dimensions for Native Speakers and Foreign Learners." PhD Dissertation, Canada: University of Victoria, 2007.

Kamens, Edward. "Terrains of Text in Mid-Heian Court Culture," In Heian Japan, Centers and Peripheries. Edited by Mikael S. Adolphson, Edward Kamens, and Stacie Matsumoto, 129-152. University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.

Konno, Shinji. Hyaku Nen Mae No Nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami, 2012.

———. Seishohō No Nai Nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami, 2013.

———. Kanazukai No Rekishi. Tokyo, Japan: Chuokoron, 2014.

———. "Nihongo No Hyōki No Tayōsei." AJALT 37 (2014): 23–27.

———. Nihongo No Rekishi. Tokyo, Japan: Kawade, 2015.

Kurozumi Makoto. "Kangaku: Writing and Institutional Authority." Translated by David B. Lurie. In Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, edited by Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, 201-219. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Lowe Bryan D. "The Discipline of Writing: Scribes and Purity in Eighth-Century Japan," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 201-239.

Lowe, Bryan D. Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2017.

Lurie, David B. Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011.

Lurie, David B. Sekai no mojishi to Man'yōshū (The Man'yōshū and the World History of Writing). Kasama Shoin, 2013.

Lurie, David B. "Zadankai: Kanbun bunkaken to kodai Nihon: Yunibāsaru na bunka genshō to shite no kanbun kundoku to man'yōka no shoki (The Sini-textual cultural sphere and early Japan: Logographic reading practices as a universal cultural phenomenon and the inscription of the Man'yōshū)." Anahorish Kokubungaku 1 (Winter 2012).

Mareshi, Saito. Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature. Edited and translated by Ross King and Christina Laffin. Brill, 2020.

Nakamura, Momoko. Gender, Language and Ideology: A Genealogy of Japanese Women's Language. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2014.

Piggott, Joan R. "Mokkan. Wooden Documents from the Nara Period." Monumenta Nipponica 45, no. 4 (1990): 449-470.

Robertson, Wesley C. Scripting Japan: Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese. Routledge, 2020.

———. "'Chinese Ideographs Belong to a Childhood Age […] but Japan Has Now Become a Man': Graphic Ideologies and Language Reform in The Japan Times." Japan Forum (2022): 1–27.

Saito, Mareshi. Kanji Sekai No Chihei: Watashi Tachi Ni Totte Moji to Wa Nanika. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2014.

Sasahara, Hiroyuki. Nihon No Kanji. Tokyo: Iwanami, 2006.

———. Kunyomi No Hanashi: Kanjibunka to Nihongo. Tokyo, Japan: Kadokawa, 2014.

———. "Kanji Ni Miru Nihonjin Rashisa." Association des Enseignants de Japonais en France (2017).

Satō Shin'ichi. Komonjogaku nyūmon. Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1917.

Seeley, Christopher. "Aspects of the Japanese Writing System." Visible Language 18, no. 3 (1984): 213–18.

———. A History of Writing in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000.

Twine, Nanette. "The Adoption of Punctuation in Japanese Script." Visible Language 18, no. 3 (1984): 229–37.

———. Language and the Modern State. London: Routledge, 1991.

Wixted, John Timothy. "Kanbun, Histories of Japanese Literature, and Japanologists." Sino-Japanese Studies 10, no. 2 (1998): 23-31.

Yoda, Tomiko. "Literary History against the National Frame, or Gender and the Emergence of Heian Kana Writing." positions 8, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 465–497.

Notes

The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Wes Robertson and Paula R. Curtis.

Suggest Additions

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