<Research Note>Japanese Original Key Words in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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  • <研究ノート>日本オリジナルの人文社会系キーワード
  • 日本オリジナルの人文社会系キーワード
  • ニホン オリジナル ノ ジンブン シャカイケイ キーワード

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Intellectual leaders in Modern Japan were required to translate numerous European terms into Japanese in the process of importing Western science and literature. At the level of the sentence as a whole the choice between literal and free translations has long been problematic. On the other level of terms the style of combining two Chinese characters became standardized and has continued to the present time. In addition as it often has been the case that original terms have plural translations which caused not a little confusion we have still another style of phoneticization using Japanese phonetic letters (Kana). The phrase nashonarizumu for ‘nationalism’ instead of kokka-shugi or minzoku-shugi is one of the most conspicuous examples. Incidentally Japanese native speakers may coin original terms by means of European etymology often in the natural sciences and occasionally in the humanities and social sciences. In this research note I focus on the most remarkable cultural phenomena which have been hardly noticed but must be noted: that we have some Japanese original key words in the humanities and social sciences and yet we take them as translations of Western originals. They circulate among Japanese translations as byproducts of translated works or as combinations of translated terms. One typical example is jokei-shi (landscape poetry or descriptive poetry) which has no corresponding original in European languages. Gen-fukei (original landscape of nostalgic scenery) is another typical example which has a relevant German equivalent in Urlandschaft but their respective connotations are different. Similarly ‘atmoscape’ is coined alongside European etymology and proposed as a Japanese original term. Interrelating with these humanistic terms and more relative to the social sciences we have the Japanese original key word shinso-bunka (deep culture) which was coined about 1970 as a combination of ‘depth’ and ‘culture.’ As its derivative term choten-bunka (peak culture) was offered in 2008.

Journal

  • 国際日本研究

    国際日本研究 8 93-108, 2016-03

    Master's and Doctoral Program in International and Advanced Japanese Studies Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Tsukuba

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