Japanese Language Library Kango (Shino-Japanese Word)

This is a manual published alongside a companion work, Kanji (Chinese Characters) (Editors: Okimori Takuya and Sasahara Hiroyuki), as one volume in the Asakura Shoten Japanese Language Library. The author of the introduction (the writer of this text) is one of the editors of the work. Although it was written for university students and the general reading public, it is more than just an introductory textbook, as it is scattered with new academic opinions..
 
For those who are not experts in the study of the Japanese language, this may be surprising, but this volume treats the research on Chinese characters and that on Sino-Japanese words as separate fields of research. Of course, the two fields partially overlap, but researchers generally segregate them. At least in Japan, people who consider themselves to be students of writing characters perform the former type of research and people who consider themselves to be students of vocabulary perform the latter, so such a separation likely generally conforms to the actual situation.
 
Nevertheless, the handling of Chinese characters and Sino-Japanese words in the world of Japanese language study have not necessarily been even. The words “Chinese characters” and “Sino-Japanese words” are often written together, but “Sino-Japanese words” has continuously been in a subordinate position. Many volumes on the topic of “Chinese characters” have been edited and published in various lectures series, but the topic of “Sino-Japanese words” has rarely been covered, as this topic has continually been buried in volumes such as “Chinese Character Lectures” or “Vocabulary Lectures” (this is probably a result of the small population of researchers who narrowly specialize in the study of Sino-Japanese words).
 
When Asakura Shoten proposed publishing an independent volume on “Sino-Japanese words,” we were reminded that a manual with its content focused in this way has never been published. Moreover, because people who are not researchers in the field of so-called “Sino-Japanese words” were asked to contribute to this work (even the editor Hizume himself is not a “Sino-Japanese words” researcher), it is a book with a somewhat unique structure that includes chapters focused on phonemics, grammar, or related matters that researchers who specialize in Sino-Japanese words rarely deal with.
 
Perhaps influenced by TV quiz shows, so-called Chinese character booms recur periodically, and private sector tests, the Nihon Kanji-noryoku Kentei(Kan-ken), are used to give university credits. Because of this, it is easy to falsely believe that many people are interested in Chinese characters or in Sino-Japanese words. However, there is a wide gap between a popular Chinese character boom and the academic study of Chinese characters and Sino-Japanese words. Study of Chinese characters and Sino-Japanese words as linguistics research is not merely collecting and memorizing individual phenomena; it is generalizing and discovering their universality.
 

(Written by HIZUME Shuji, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2018)