Unexceptional Part 6

Unexceptional Part 6 – Mongrel Languages

The tendency among ELH practitioners is to focus obsessively on the micro aspects of the Japanese language.  Usually this means a focus at the level of the phoneme.  Because the phonemes of Japanese and English differ it seems plausible, at first, that there is some essential difference between the two languages.

If, however, one shifts focus and looks at English and Japanese from a macro perspective, from a larger context, the similarities between the two languages become evident.  One similarity between the two is that both languages have a large percentage of borrowed words.  Consider the following from Language and Society in Japan:

“No language exists in a vacuum.  All are influenced to varying degrees by others with which they have contact.  We need only think about the number of widely-accepted Americanisms or words and expressions from non-English languages current in Australia today to see this in action.  Any native speaker of English . . . even without detailed knowledge of or contact with Japan, will know what sushi means . . . The two major linguistic influences in the case of Japanese have been Chinese and English.  Around 60% of today’s Japanese vocabulary, or at least of that part of it found in dictionaries, is made up of loanwords from other languages.  Around 6% of these are from western languages, but the vast majority come from Chinese.  Kango, Sino-Japanese words, reflect the long history of language and cultural contact between China and Japan since the fifth century.”

Language and Society in Japan

Nanette Gottlieb

Page 11

The high percentage of loan words in ordinary Japanese resembles the high percentage of loan words in ordinary English used today.  If Anglo-Saxon is taken as the foundational language out of which modern English emerges, thousands of Anglo-Saxon words have fallen away over time. Many of these words have been replaced, and new words added, over the centuries from French, Latin, Scandinavian, other European languages, and more recently non-European languages.  In the U.S., Spanish is making a significant contribution to the spoken English vocabulary.

Some sources suggest that 45% of modern English vocabulary consists of loanwords; this means words that are of non-Anglo Saxon origin.  It is not always clear as to whether or not a loan word came first from French or Latin, or a mixture of the two, but the influence of French on the English language is, in many ways, comparable to the influence of the Chinese language on the Japanese language.

In other words, both Japanese and English are mongrel languages.  By ‘mongrel’ I mean a language whose identity is essentially a mixture.  Like a mongrel dog, a mutt.  Japanese and English are mutt languages.  Neither Japanese nor English are ‘pure breeds’, to continue with the analogy.  Both Japanese and English are essentially a mixture of numerous linguistic influence that have become so thoroughly interwoven that the average person has no inkling of the linguistic source of these numerous loanwords.

“Most Japanese hardly think of these as loanwords, however, as over the centuries they have become absorbed so thoroughly into Japanese as to seem not at all foreign.”

Ibid, page 11

The same can be said for English.  English speakers, unless they are linguists themselves, simply speak what they consider to be English.  The fact that what they are speaking is a mongrel language, a mashup of Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, etc., etc., is irrelevant to everyday conversation.  And the fact that when Japanese speak it is a mashup of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English, etc., etc., is irrelevant to everyday conversation in Japan.

For those who think of Japanese as an exceptional language, these considerations would seem to undermine that stance.  If Japanese is a uniquely unique language, then how does the Japanese language manage to borrow such a huge number of loanwords?  In order for language X to borrow from language Y, the two languages need to be porous to each other, to share common features; otherwise borrowing would not take place.  That is why English has been able to borrow so many foreign words.  And that is why Japanese has been able to borrow so many foreign words.

Again, we see that Japanese is unexceptional.  Just like English, and many other languages, the Japanese language is a mixture, a hybrid, a mongrel, a linguistic mutt, a mashup of numerous linguistic influences and borrowings that have become thoroughly interwoven.  To close with a less abrasive metaphor, both English and Japanese are like vast oceans that easily absorb the rivers of numerous languages as they pour into their respective waters.  This gives both English and Japanese enormous expressive resources that would be absent had either language remained ‘pure’ due to isolation.  As poets, both Japanese and English writers are greatly blessed by this history of borrowings and influence.  It is an expressive feature which both English and Japanese share and which both benefit from.

Unexceptional: Part 5 -- Are Japanese Syllables Too Short?

Unexceptional: Part 5 –

Are Japanese Syllables Too Short?

One of the bases for the idea that the Japanese language is uniquely unique is the brevity of the Japanese syllable.  The implication is that the Japanese syllable is so short that in comparison to English the difference results in a qualitative distinction.  This is one of the reasons why some ELH Haijin will refer to Japanese as using ‘morae’ (plural of ‘mora’) as opposed to English which uses ‘syllables’.

For example, in a 1993 paper by Anne Cuttler and Jacques Mehler, Mora or Syllable? Speech Segmentation in Japanese, the authors write in the Introduction:

“When Japanese poetic forms such as the haiku are rendered in other languages, an approximation to the prescribed form is usually achieved by specifying the number of syllables per line . . . But morae do not necessarily correspond to syllables.  Consider the first line of the haiku: shinshin-to.  Although it has the prescribed 5 morae (shi, n, shi, n, to), it has only 3 syllables (shin, shin, to).  The mora is a subsyllabic unit . . .”

To my mind, and not a few linguists, this is simply confused thinking.  As I have noted in previous posts in the Unexceptional series, the concept ‘syllable’ is not defined by the specific acoustic features of any particular language; that is to say the fact that Japanese count acoustic features, such as a concluding ‘n’, that English does not count does not mean that the Japanese are not counting syllables.  What it does mean is that Japanese count sounds that English speakers do not count.  But that is true of many languages, as I have noted in previous posts.

To my way of thinking the idea of ‘mora’ is a distinction without a difference.  If morae are subsyllabic, then what about the English syllable ‘it’; a very brief syllable.  Does the brevity of ‘it’ make it subsyllabic?  If it does not make it subsyllabic, then why would a Japanese ‘n’ be subsyllabic?  And what about other languages that also have shorter syllables than English; languages such as Spanish and Italian?  Does Spanish and Italian use morae or syllables?  Seriously; is this distinction of any help at all?  The idea of ‘mora’ is one of those academic conjurations that is little more than jargon posturing as insight.  It should be noted, though, that there is little agreement among linguists about this topic; if you look up papers on syllabic timing and usage you will find a whole range of differing opinions.  There does not seem to be any consensus.

There is a lot of literature in linguistics on the topic of syllable duration in various languages.  Much of it is highly technical.  But I don’t want to get side-tracked into a technical discussion when I believe that, for the most part, these technical considerations do not clarify; rather, in my opinion, they create a conceptual fog.  However, I think a few non-technical remarks are worth considering.

First, Japanese is not the only language which flows by at a more rapid rate than English.  Spanish and Italian, for example, are also more rapid than English.  When I say ‘more rapid’ I mean that the average syllable duration of Italian and Spanish is briefer than the average syllable duration of English.  In fact there are a great many languages that are more rapid than English.  Japanese, once again, is not unique in this regard; Japanese is unexceptional in its pacing.

There are also languages which are slower than English; tonal languages tend to be slower than English because speakers need time to enunciate the tone.  For this reason Chinese flows by, generally speaking, at a slower rate than English.

In other words, English is roughly in the middle when it comes to how fast the sound units, or syllables, of various languages flow by.  It is neither the slowest nor the fastest.  And speaking of being in the middle range; while Japanese is more rapid than English, from the studies I have read there are languages that are more rapid than Japanese.  Again, from the studies I have read, Thai consistently rates as the most rapid.  In other words, Japanese seems to occupy a speed that is only slightly faster than Spanish and Italian, but is surpassed by other languages such as Thai.

This puts both English and Japanese in the mid-range for speed of syllabic flow.  In other words, English and Japanese share the middle ground; neither of these languages is at the extreme.  Japanese is middle-fast, while English is middle-slow; but neither English nor Japanese is exceptional in its pace.

Before going further, I want to make a few remarks about the studies I have read.  First, many of the studies use a very small sampling; more than a few use a single speaker.  Statistically this leads me to be skeptical of the value of these studies.  I suspect that larger samplings would yield different results.

Further, some of the information about speed that is used by ELH Haijin is completely anecdotal, including some of the most often cited supporting claims.  Anecdotal reporting has its place and should not be dismissed out of hand.  But anecdotal reporting needs to be supported by further investigation if one is going to use these reports to make broad claims about language speed.

In addition, I have found that few studies take into account dialect variation.  Some studies I have read take British English as their standard of the pace of English syllable flow.  British English may differ from other types of English usage in terms of syllable pace.  Anecdotally, I strongly suspect that this is true.  When I was working construction, many years ago, I worked with many men from Texas as well as those from the Louisiana Bayou.  The long, slow-paced drawl of the Bayou dialect, I suspect, is significantly slower than standard British English.  On the other hand, I once had a forewoman on an assembly line who was Scott by birth.  Her English flew by at a rapid clip that took me some time to key into.  Again, I suspect the pace of Scottish English differs from that of standard British English.

The effect of dialect is not a minor consideration.  Millions of Indians speak English either as their primary language, or as a significant second language.  The steady flow of Indian English seems to me to differ, and to be more rapid, than that of standard British English.  Given what appears to me to be the wide variation in the pace of syllabic flow among different English dialects, I am reluctant to accept the generalizations about the pace of English verses the pace of Japanese when they are based on very small samplings of a single type of English.

Dialect further complicates the situation when one takes into account that there are regional dialects in Japan.  The question is, do these regional dialects effect the pace of the flow of the Japanese syllables?  Again, studies that do not take this into account make me inclined to regard their findings as of limited value; not valueless, but limited in terms of what kind of conclusion we can draw from their studies.

And finally, I think it is worth pointing out that context will effect pace.  If a subject knows they are being studied for the purposes of determining the pace of their language, this will inevitably effect their performance.  It will not be an example of a ‘natural’ interaction.  In addition, people change the pace of their output depending on the situation.  Speaking to children people tend to speak more slowly.  Speaking to long-term friends, people might speak very rapidly in comparison to their normal interaction.  When speaking to an audience this will also effect pace.

This last remark about audience is significant because some of the anecdotal stories about how rapidly people speak are derived from poetry readings.  Poetry readings are a highly specialized situation; they are not a normative use of a language and it is unlikely, I feel, that significant generalizations can be drawn from anecdotal reports of how people speak when reading their poetry.

None of this is to dispute the general conclusion that Japanese syllables are, on average, briefer than English syllables.  All the studies I have read support this conclusion.  The reason I bring up the above caveats is that even though it is true that Japanese is more rapid than English, one should not exaggerate the differences in the pacing of the two languages.  English and Japanese both occupy, as mentioned above, a middle ground when it comes to pacing.  They are not really so far apart when one looks at the full spectrum of language pacing.  I think this point needs to be emphasized because when reading some of the claims by ELH haijin one gets the impression that Japanese syllables are super-fast, or extraordinarily brief.  But that simply isn’t the case; rather Japanese occupies the middle ground with some languages just as fast and some faster.  And English also occupies this middle ground with some languages, like French, at roughly the same rate, some, like German or Chinese, slower, and some, like Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, faster.

All of this is very interesting, no doubt, for linguists.  But I would like to suggest for the readers’ consideration that all of this discussion about syllable duration is, quite simply, colossally irrelevant.  Consider the transmission of poetic forms from one culture to another, from one linguistic context to another.  When Latin poets in Rome began to write in hexameters they were imitating Greek; no one worried about the relative duration of Latin and Greek syllables.  When the Sonnet moved from Italy to England and France and Spain, no one felt that syllable duration was a factor of concern; it is never mentioned.  And perhaps most telling, when Japanese poets wrote in Chinese forms, using Chinese characters, what are called Kanshi, the Japanese were unconcerned with the fact that Chinese syllables are longer than Japanese syllables (and Chinese syllables are longer than English syllables as well).  Only in the case of the transmission of Japanese forms such as Haiku and Tanka has this issue been raised.

I find this revealing; and it only makes sense if one views the Japanese language as uniquely unique, as so completely different from other languages, from any other language, that one is compelled to treat it differently.  In other words, the foundation for the idea that the Japanese don’t count syllables, that they count something else, is, once again, nihonjinron, the highly problematic, and highly suspect, idea that the Japanese people and culture are estranged and distinct from the rest of humanity.

But there is another reason why the relative pacing of syllable duration is irrelevant: my view is simply that this idea that English (or other languages) should match the duration of Japanese poetic forms is a misunderstanding of how we should comprehend duration.  I would suggest for the readers’ consideration, especially for readers that have bought into the idea of the significance of Japanese syllable duration, that what we should be looking at is the relative duration within each linguistic context, not the absolute duration of the Japanese as a measure for non-Japanese languages. 

If Haiku in Japanese are written in 17 Japanese syllables and Haiku in English are written in 17 English syllables, the relative duration within each linguistic context is the same.  It is not that English and Japanese Haiku have the same absolute duration; in this they differ.  Rather it is that within each linguistic context their relative duration within their respective contexts is the same.  And, I would suggest, it is this relative duration that matters.  Notice, though, that if one approaches the issue this way, then all the discussions about syllable duration, syllable versus mora (or onji, or jion, or sound unit, or whatever term is currently in fashion) simply fall away.  Things become much simpler, much less cloudy, much more direct.

This is why I regard all these studies on duration to be a kind of huge mistake: it is completely unnecessary and does nothing to clarify the relationship between Japanese and non-Japanese using Japanese poetic forms.  In fact, there is a great advantage to the relative duration view: it is that for each language the same count will apply.  It will apply equally to German, Russian, Spanish, Hindi, Zuni, and Bantu.  The Haiku in all these languages would simply be constructed using the count of 5-7-5 syllables however each language counts, whatever sounds they count as a syllable.  Very simple.

In other words, and in conclusion – it doesn’t matter if Japanese syllables are shorter, longer, or the same as English syllables.  It is an irrelevant consideration.  It is time to simply put this line of reasoning aside. 

Unexceptional: Part 4 -- Clap Your Hands!!

Unexceptional: Part 4

One way of looking at the relationship between Japanese and English syllables is through what I am going to refer to as a ‘performance definition’.  In Japan Haiku and Tanka poets count syllables on their fingers.  I think of this as a performance: the movement of the fingers is an embodied performance of what a syllable means. 

In a previous post Dan, a follower of this blog, who is a grade-school teacher, commented that he teaches his classes the meaning of an English syllable by clapping hands.  As Dan recites a sentence out loud, the class claps with each unit of sound, i.e. each syllable.  This is very easy to do and the kids like it.  Dan also noted that there are instances of ambiguity: for example, some kids will clap twice for the word ‘fire’ (hearing the word as something like ‘figh-er’, or ‘fy-er’), and some will clap once.  This can also be fun for the kids to discuss.

In both instances, counting syllables on one’s fingers, and clapping one’s hands for each syllable, we have an embodied performance of what a syllable means.  In both instances it would be easy for those involved to switch the procedure.  Although Japanese are not used to clapping, it would not be difficult to offer instruction and instead of counting on their fingers have the Japanese clap for each syllable of their Haiku or Tanka.  Similarly, Americans are capable of counting syllables on their fingers; I have observed Americans counting on their fingers when counting change, for example, or counting the number of days until an appointment.

What I want to suggest is that these embodied procedures for counting syllables reveal that, in fact, the Japanese syllable and the English syllable are the ‘same thing’ at the level of this kind of embodiment.  That is to say if you observed Japanese counting syllables on their fingers while composing a Haiku, and then you observed Americans counting syllables on their fingers it would appear that they were doing the same thing.  I would argue that, in fact, they are doing the same thing.  And the same would be true if one observed the two groups clapping hands to mark the flow of their syllables.

It is only when we become obsessed with abstractions and the micro-level of the two languages that the idea that Japanese and English are counting different things appears.  I would suggest, for the readers' consideration, that this is an example of the abstract mind causing confusion rather than clarifying.  At the level of embodiment it is obvious that English speakers and Japanese speakers are doing the same thing: that is to say they are both counting syllables.  Yet another indication that the Japanese and English languages are not so different after all.

Unexceptional: Part 3 -- Keeping Track of Time

Unexceptional: Part 3 – Keeping Track of Time

One way of approaching the issue of the relationship between Japanese and English syllables is to look at how different cultures count other shared experiences.  The example I would like to consider here is the calendar.

Human beings live immersed in the flow of time.  It is a stream that has no borders.  But human beings have developed ways of keeping track of time by dividing the flow of time into units.  These units vary among different cultures. 

For some the day begins at sunrise, while for others the day begins at sunset. 

For some the year is based on strictly solar observations; this is true for the dominant, Gregorian, calendar used in the world today.  For others the year is based on strictly lunar observations; this is true of the Islamic calendar.  For still others the year is based on a combination of solar and lunar observations; this is true of the Jewish and Chinese calendars.

Even though there are different approaches for keeping track of time, they are all counting the same stream of time; it’s just that they are using different markers for their counting. 

In the same way, different languages parse the stream of language differently.  Some languages will mark a certain sonic appearance as significant, as carrying enough weight to count, while other languages will pass over that sonic appearance.  But it’s not that they don’t hear it.  And it’s not that the different groups are counting different things.  Just as different calendars all keep track of time, so also different cultures keep track of syllables but have different markers for doing so.

The Chinese calendar and the Gregorian calendar are doing the same thing: keeping track of time.  And when Japanese speakers and English speakers count syllables they are doing the same thing: keeping track of the stream of sound by parsing it into countable units.

Unexceptional: Part 2

Unexceptional: Part 2

What Are We Counting?

Last year I visited some friends in Portland.  I was delighted by the prevalence of rose gardens in the city.  The roses in Portland are astonishingly beautiful; in fact I’ve never seen such well-kept and cultivated roses. 

Suppose one of my friends from Portland visited me here in Sonoma County, California.  I decide to take my friend to some local gardens.  We visit a well planted and cared for garden in the neighborhood.  My friend says, “This isn’t a garden.  Where are the roses?”

You see, this particular garden doesn’t have any roses.  At first I think my friend is joking; perhaps he’s contrasting this garden with the abundant rose gardens in Portland.  But in follow-up questions I discover that my friend is serious.  My friend asserts that since there are no roses it is not a garden.  I respond, “If this isn’t a garden, what is it?”  My friend says, “This is a plant cultivation center.”  For my friend, if there aren’t any roses then it’s not a garden; it’s something else.

My feeling is that something similar has happened to the concept ‘syllable’ in discussions among English Language Haiku practitioners.  As English speakers we are used to syllables appearing in a certain way; that is to say English syllables have certain sonic contours.  When English speakers visit the world of the Japanese language, and wander in its garden, many of the specific sounds that English counts as syllables do not appear in the Japanese language.  In addition, there are sounds, such as a concluding ‘n’, that the Japanese count that are not counted in English. 

The response by some ELH practitioners has been to conclude that what the Japanese are counting and what English speakers are counting are so different that we need a whole new conceptual apparatus to designate what it is that Japanese count.  Like my fictitious friend who refuses to put into the category ‘garden’ a yard of flowers if among those flowers one cannot find roses, so also ELH practitioners have decided that because the specific sonic contours of English and Japanese differ, that therefore what Japanese count must not be syllables, it must be something else.

The ‘something else’ has been called by many names; among the candidates over the decades has been ‘onji’, ‘jion’, ‘moira’, and ‘sound unit’.  I think there are a few others that have made a brief appearance, but you get the idea; it’s a kind of endless hunt for some other word, or term, than syllable.

What has happened here is that ELH practitioners have taken the English language as a standard for what constitutes a syllable.  But, and this is important, the concept ‘syllable’ is not a language specific concept.  That is to say, the word ‘syllable’ is not defined by any specific features of a single language.  The sonic structure of English does not define the meaning of syllable. It is, therefore, a misapplication of the concept to apply the specific features of one language, such as English, and use them as a standard, a yardstick, to determine if other languages measure up to the meaning of the word ‘syllable’.

One way of looking at this is to note some examples of syllable presence in a non-English language that English would not recognize as a syllable, and are non-Japanese as well.  An excellent example of this is how in French poetry a silent ‘e’, in some linguistic contexts, will be counted as a syllable.  Now it is ‘silent’ from an English language perspective.  That is to say this kind of ‘e’ does not carry enough weight for an English speaker to count as a syllable.  In this way it is similar to a concluding ‘n’ in Japanese which, again from an English speaker’s perspective, does not carry enough weight to count as a syllable.

In spite of this well-known feature of French prosody, no one has ever suggested that the French don’t count syllables.  Nor has anyone suggested that the French language is so utterly different from English that ‘you can’t compare the two’.  I think there is a general lesson to be learned from this comparison.  The lesson is this:  just as we English speakers find the French language and its poetry comparable, so also we, as English speakers, should be able to find the Japanese language and its poetry comparable.

Continuing with the metaphor of the garden; suppose I ask two people to count the types of flowers found in my garden.  Person X comes back and says there are six kinds of flowers: tulips, marigolds, calalilies, geraniums, daffodils, and roses.  Person Y says there are eight: tulips, marigolds,  calalilies, geraniums, daffodils, tea roses, climbing roses, hawthorn.  Person X complains; tea roses and climbing roses are both roses, therefore they should count as one.  And the hawthorn is a tree, and a blossoming tree is not really a flower.  Person Y counters; tea roses and climbing roses look very different and it is the appearance that counts in a garden.  The blossoms of the hawthorn are the flower of the tree and therefore should be included in a full count.

Here is an example of how our subjectivity intrudes on what might seem, at first, to be a simple and matter-of-fact procedure.  Both people are counting the same garden, but they are coming up with different counts.  And both X and Y have reasons for their different results.

Applying this to the question of Japanese and English ‘syllables’, I believe this metaphor offers a resolution regarding how Japanese and English speakers can come up with different counts when listening to the same word.  For example, the Japanese word ‘Manyooshuu’ receives six counts, is heard as six syllables, in Japanese: ma-n-yo-o-shu-u.  In English the same word is given three counts: man-yo-shu. 

What I am getting at here is that just because the two language groups count the same word differently (meaning the two language groups parse the sounds differently), that does not mean that they are not both counting syllables.  Just as the two people counting the flowers in a garden came up with different results, so also an English speaker and a Japanese speaker will come up with different results as to how to parse some words into their constituent sound groupings; i.e. syllables. 

But this is not a problem and it does not mean that Japanese are counting something different from what English speakers count when they count syllables.

The thing is that the kind of discrepancies regarding syllables and syllable counts appear when you compare any two languages.  For example, in Russian the word ‘kto’, which means ‘who’, is one syllable.  It is very difficult for an English speaker to either hear the word as a single syllable, or to pronounce it correctly as one syllable.  Almost always an English speaker will insert a vowel between the ‘k’ and the ‘t’; something like ‘keeto’, or ‘kito’.  In listening, most English speakers will hear it as two syllables, even when pronounced by a Russian.  Russians hear it as clearly one syllable.

Again, when comparing any two languages one finds these differences.  And Japanese is not an exception; it is unexceptional in this regard. 

Unexceptional: Part 1

Unexceptional: Part 1

I’m going to take a few posts to talk about the Japanese language.  My comments in this post, Part 1, are going to be preliminary.

I hesitate to get into this subject.  It has been my experience on other online forums that the nature of the Japanese language, how it is viewed, and its relationship to other languages, particularly English, give rise to a lot of less than considerate interaction.  Perhaps I should forget about it; perhaps that would be wiser.  But here I go.

My main reason for posting these remarks is that there is a line of argument that asserts that Japanese and English are so different that one cannot really compare the two.  Therefore it is wrong to mimic the Japanese counting in English because what the Japanese count, when they are counting in order to compose Haiku and Tanka, is quite different from what English speakers are counting when English speakers count English syllables to compose English Language Haiku or Tanka.  The consequence of this kind of analysis is that the conclusion is drawn that mapping the counting procedure which is foundational for Japanese poetry forms, such as Haiku and Tanka, onto English is at best a misunderstanding, and shouldn’t be adopted by those with a deeper insight into the Japanese language.

The therefore is crucial here.  The argument is that because English and Japanese are so different, that therefore one should not compose syllabic Haiku or Tanka.  The argument is that a syllabic approach to Haiku is based on a misunderstanding of the Japanese language.  In other words, the view that Japanese is essentially different and unique is used as a foundation for a critique of a syllabic approach to English Language Haiku and Tanka.

This idea has a lot of traction; it appears in a significant number of Haiku manuals.  In addition, one runs into it on the web here and there, and not infrequently at poetry forums where someone, commenting on an English Haiku, written syllabically, will say something like, “You cannot compare the two languages.”

Let me be upfront: I have a different view.  My view is that the Japanese language is unexceptional.  My view is that Japanese count syllables just like English speakers count syllables.  My view is that the Japanese language is an ordinary language spoken by ordinary people in an ordinary culture.  My view is that not only can you compare the two languages, but also it is easy to do so.  I do it all the time.  A lot of people do.

However, and I want to emphasize this, I do not conclude from my view, I do not construct a therefore, that people should not compose free verse Haiku.  In other words, these comments I am making are not meant to undermine a free verse approach to Haiku.  There are excellent reasons to take a free verse approach to Haiku; there are examples of Japanese who take such an approach (not many, but there are some).  For example, free verse Haiku gives a poet the option of a more concise, focused, presentation.  At its best, free verse Haiku has a snap and energy that can be amazing. Free verse haiku also allows for flexibility of expression in response to what is being written about.  These virtues, when used by a good poet, do not depend on the nature of the Japanese language; they are sufficient unto themselves. 

In other words, I am not saying that because I believe that it is easy to compare Japanese and English, and because I believe that both languages count syllables, that therefore people should not compose free verse haiku.  That’s not my purpose.

My purpose is apologetic.  My purpose is to argue that it is legitimate to adopt a syllabic approach to English Language Haiku (ELH), that a syllabic approach is not based on a misunderstanding of the Japanese language, that it is not misguided and/or naïve.

My overall view is that the idea that the Japanese language is somehow deeply alien to English is rooted in the view that Japanese culture is unique.  Now, every culture is unique.  But when Japanese assert the uniqueness of their culture, and when westerners buy into this assertion, they are asserting that Japanese culture, and its language, is uniquely unique, that Japanese culture is incomparable.  In the case of language this view means that the Japanese language is literally not comparable to other languages such as English.

There is a large body of literature which discusses this view.  It is referred to in Japanese as nihonjinron; and, again, there is a large body of literature both in Japan and in the U.S. that discusses the widely held Japanese view that as a people they are utterly unique, or uniquely unique.  The most entertaining book I have read on this subject is by Robin D. Gill, an American who speaks fluent Japanese and lived and taught in Japan for many years.  He has also done a lot of translation; both from English into Japanese and from Japanese into English, including numerous translations of Japanese poetry.  His book on this topic is Orientalism and Occidentalism; and it is written with good humor and, at the same time, deep insight.  If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend it.

Let me say at once that this view of one’s own culture as uniquely unique is, paradoxically, unexceptional; it is not unique to Japan.  As an American I am well aware of how my own culture configures itself as uniquely superlative.  In the U.S. this doctrine is known as American Exceptionalism; it is the view that the U.S. is the best, most advanced, greatest nation that has ever existed on earth.  President Obama has publicly stated that he is in agreement with the view of American Exceptionalism.  It is a very widely held view in the U.S. with deep roots in doctrines such as Manifest Destiny.  So I am able to sympathize with the Japanese culture when it makes assertions about its culture being superlative and incomparable.  I get it. 

However, I don’t think either view is true.  From my perspective both Japan and the U.S. are just ordinary.  Both countries have done some wonderful things and some horrific things; just what you would expect of any culture that you are not identified with or defensive about.

My first experience with the linguistic aspects of nihonjinron go back about forty years.  In the seventies I was the Abbot of a Buddhist Temple in New York City.  My teacher was Korean.  At that time a Japanese Zen Master had set up a Zen Temple in New York.  At the morning and evening services they chanted a short Buddhist work known as The Heart Sutra; in Japanese.  The Zen Master’s American students wanted to chant in English.  I was drawn into these discussions because of my role as Abbot, because I was a white guy, and because my teacher was Korean and therefore not part of the Japanese Zen hierarchy.  The Zen Master was adamant about sticking with the Japanese.  When his students pointed out that Chinese chant in Chinese, Tibetans in Tibetan, etc., this did not persuade him.  The Zen Master was quite blunt; his view was that English was ‘primitive’, ‘combative’, and ‘incapable’ of communicating the subtleties of something like the Heart Sutra.  It happened that I knew that the Zen Master was fond of Shakespeare (many Japanese are).  So during the discussions I mentioned Shakespeare in passing, and that Shakespeare wrote in English.  Interestingly, this seemed to have an effect.  I am not sure, but I like to think that my little contribution softened the Zen Master’s stance and allowed for the chanting of the Heart Sutra in English, which eventually happened.

I tell this story because I believe that when Americans take a stance on the idea of Japanese linguistic uniqueness, they have absorbed some of the linguistic views of Japanese nihonjinron.  I believe this has been done unknowingly.  I say ‘unknowingly’ because I suspect that most Americans studying Japanese arts are not aware of how widespread the negative stereotypes of foreigners in general and Americans in particular found in nihonjinron are.  It resembles someone studying in the U.S. who is unaware of how pervasive the idea of American Exceptionalism is and how deeply embedded the history of this idea is in aspects such as manifest destiny.  A foreigner resident in the U.S. who might be studying aspects of U.S. business and finance, might uncritically absorb some aspects of American Exceptionalism; like the idea that American Democracy is the purest and most advanced form of Democracy that has ever appeared in the world.  In an analogous way, I think some Americans who have studied Japanese poetry have uncritically absorbed the idea of Japanese linguistic uniqueness.

In a strange way, Americans are primed for such misunderstanding because the idea of American Exceptionalism creates a psychology that is sympathetic to the world view of nihonjinron.  Particularly if an American has not critically examined Exceptionalism, then the idea of Japanese being uniquely unique will seem oddly familiar.  And the linguistic aspects of nihonjinron do not threaten an American’s view of American Exceptionalism because American Exceptionalism is not linguistically based.  That is to say the English language is not a specific cultural artifact of America; it came from England and is used by millions of non-Americans throughout the world.  In contrast, Japanese language usage maps almost perfectly onto the Japanese nation.  In a way, Japanese linguistic exceptionalism actually re-enforces American Exceptionalism by encouraging the view that different peoples are essentially different and estranged from each other.

In future posts I want to discuss specific aspects of this idea of Japanese linguistic uniqueness.  Part of this will be an open-ended inquiry into the idea of ‘syllable’.  And another part will be centered on the speed of Japanese and how that measures up to other languages.

In closing these introductory remarks, I want to restate that my purpose is not prescriptive.  I mean that I am not arguing for a particular approach to English Language Haiku or Tanka.  But what has happened is that a particular view of the Japanese language has been consistently used, and is still being used, to marginalize a syllabic approach to Haiku and Tanka in English.  I believe that this argument, this line of reasoning, is misguided.  Putting aside uniqueness, putting aside exceptionalism, I believe we have much more in common than is often acknowledged.