The Taisho Period

Some Japanese greatly disliked the increased presence of foreigners and the concessions that the government was making for them. This discontent soon grew into internal civil rebellions and a coup d'etat. In January 1868 a new government was established in the name of the Meiji emperor.

The Meiji Restoration brought about some radical changes. The government abolished the old caste distinctions of samurai-townsman-farmer and introduced compulsory education. Thus the Meiji Restoration began its efforts in modernising the country. There were also a number of important changes in language policies. The language monopoly held by the authorities disappeared, and various language academies flourished. At first, the only people to enjoy the fruits

The ideas of return to traditional Japanese values and heritage were further fuelled by the Japanese military victories against China and Russia around the turn of the twentieth century. Peculiarly, despite these nationalistic tendencies, the English language did not lose its flair. The ensuing Taisho period saw an unparalleled spread of English loanwords owing to new forms of mass media. While many of the previous Meiji Era loanwords pertained to abstract notions related to Westernisation or modernisation, many of the Taisho loanwords concerned everyday popular culture or practical life. The Taisho period saw the borrowing of such widely used words as takushī タクシー [taxi], rajioラジオ [radio], and sararīman サラリーマン[salaried man, male white-collar office worker]. Among the roughly 1,500 common loanwords used during the last year of the Meiji Era (1912), about 75 percent were from English. Moreover, during this time, linguistics as a science emerged in Japan, and increased attention was devoted to English and English-language

The search led to the creation and popularisation of the highly influential ethnocentric and essentialist nihonjinron 日本人論 [literally, “theories of Japanese”] literature and the set of ideas contained in such texts. According to these texts, the Japanese constituted a culturally unchanging and socially monolithic ethnicity and differed from all other ethnic groups. Nakasone Yasuhiro, the Prime Minister of Japan in the 1980s, came as far as stating that the Japanese had been living “for at least two thousand years . . . hand in hand with no other, different ethnic groups present.” The Japanese language, and thus the culture which it expressed, was as unique as it was enigmatic. This vision of the Japanese language was partly born out of its comparison with the Western languages, particularly with the ever-present English language. In the nihonjinron discourse, “Japan is usually juxtaposed with the West, while non-Western cultures are excluded from the