Japanology as ‘Encompassing philology’ and its prospects for the 21st Century

 Jiří Matela Jiří Matela Japanology as ‘Encompassing philology’ and its prospects for the 21st Century: Functionalstructuralist approach to the Japanese language revisited Preliminarno priopćenje Preliminary communication UDK 81(520):378.147.091.32 https://doi.org/10.32728/tab.18.2021.7 ABSTRACT The recent development of the academic field of Japanese studies towards interdisciplinary cultural studies paradigm has been causing certain downfalls of traditional philological orientations within this area of scholarship. The aim of the present paper is to reflect on the tradition of Prague school’s functional-structuralist approach to language and text and present its application on contemporary Japanese studies programs. The functional-structuralist approach presented in the paper is based on the unified dichotomy of system (of signs) and texts (as sign formations), the latter being defined by the features of genre classification, situational binding and discourse tradition. The framework of ‘Encompassing philology’ applied to the field of Japanese studies aspires to fulfill the basic needs of a modern interdisciplinary orientation and at the same time strengthen the role of the Japanese language beyond the “tool for communication”. Key words: Japanese language, Japanology, Functional structuralism, Prague school, Encompassing philology. 91 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies 1. INTRODUCTION1 The term ‘Japanology’ used to be a common denomination for studying things Japanese. Nowadays, however, within most academia in the West it sounds rather outdated and void. In the face of the needs to study a broad range of aspects of Japanese culture and society, the term ‘Japanology’ has become associated with an image of studying solely the Japanese language and literature. Although there are reasons for seeing the discipline as dealing with mostly literary texts, it is not just renaming the field that took place in the second half of the 20th Century. The influx of methodological innovations has transformed Japanology into “Japanese studies”, a branch of modern Cultural or Areal studies. The ideology behind the transformation has had several consequences for the form of the discipline. First of all it redefined the role of the Japanese language and its practical study. The goal of this paper is to reexamine the relation between the Japanese language and the academic field of Japanese studies from the perspective of philology. Philology itself has an old-fashioned tinge these days, but the reasons for this are mostly rooted in the lack of reflections and/or lack of understanding the delicate nature of the relationship between a linguistic system and a (literary) text. We will try to demonstrate, that a philological methodology – embodied in the program of so called Encompassing philology – can bring a valuable unification to the Japanese language and various aspects of the Japanese studies, and moreover, it can provide a functional strategy for building a solid Japanese language program within the Japanese studies. In the following section we will briefly reexamine the role of the Japanese language education within the historical evolution of Japanology and the Japanese studies. 2. JAPANOLOGY AND JAPANESE STUDIES The roots of the modern academic field of studying Japan, its language, history and culture can be traced to the 19th century’s scholars’ attempts to describe (and explain to the western world) various aspects of the mysterious ‘Land of the Rising Sun’, country that opened its borders in the second half of 1 This text is a homage to prof. Tomáš Hoskovec, the author’s teacher, advisor and mentor. 92  Jiří Matela the century and soon gained an image of a nest of exotic and fascinating, yet highly incomprehensible culture.2 The rather patchy and in a way amateurish and multi-methodological works (Ōkubo 2008: 38) of ‘japanophiles’, such as Lafcadio Hearn or Ernest Mason Satow, were paralleled by research grounded in a methodology with a long tradition in the western academic environment – philology. Japanese philology (or ‘Japanology’) was already firmly established at universities in Europe during the first half of the 20th century (a little later also in the United States) and produced numbers of scholarly works focusing on Japanese literature, history and art. In the philological fashion of the classical philology and also some modern philologies (such as Sinology, Indology etc.), Japanology based its research in written texts – this is the main reason for historiography or literary studies’ thriving in this period. The reasons for leading the research philologically, however, were not pure tradition, they were also practical. Unlike Lafcadio Hearn, Ernest Satow, William Aston or Basil Hall Chamberlain, the Japanologists based in Europe (Léon de Rosny, August Pfizmeier or Antelamo Severini, to name just a few) in the second half of the 19th century had very limited access to primary sources, thus focussing on written texts (mostly literary) was a logical step (Kreiner 1992). However, not too long from its establishing, Japanology, and philologies in general, started to show signs of a slow but steady decomposition of its essence, motivated by emancipation and emergence of new academic fields within humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and fragmentation of its basic object of study (in the post-modernist sense) on the other. Departure of linguistics from philology and its establishing as an individual science at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century still had little impact on the philological nature of Japanology, although the actual reasons for maintaining aspects of linguistics and literary studies within the philology became in a way obscured to some scholars, and many Japanologies, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, continued their original forms merely out of a sense of respect towards tradition, rather than out of deep reflections on the interrelation between studies of a linguistic system and literary texts. It is perhaps worth mentioning here, that this was not only a case of Japanology. Most modern philologies have suffered (often justifiably) criticism and crisis of self-identity, due to a lack of reflections on the methodology of philological work. 2 We are aware of the fact that the research into Japanese culture itself has much longer history (see e.g. Kreiner 1984, 1992). However, for the sake of brevity we will focus here on the modern times only. Also, we are focusing here on the western academic environment, despite extensive contributions from Russian scholars, that should not be forgotten. 93 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies The process of decomposition of Japanology around the middle of the 20th century gave light to the so called Japanese studies, that originated in the United States, but found fertile soil in Western Europe as well. As Kreiner (1984: 40) points out, at least two types of approach could be distinguished within the post-war Japanese studies: a holistic approach (best represented by works in social anthropology, such as Ruth Benedict’s) and an analytic approach, trying to focus and thoroughly describe particular (often isolated) aspects of Japanese culture via methodology of another discipline well established within social sciences, such as Economy, Political science, Religious studies or even frameworks like Post-colonial or Gender studies. The Japanese studies have inevitably an interdisciplinary flavour and their nature as a part of the new Areal or Cultural studies paradigm can explain the trends of institutional abolishing or merging Japanese studies departments and programs in favor of East Asian studies, something that has been observable at the western universities and other academic institutions since the last decades of the 20th century. The development of Japanese studies has been supported by two important and interrelated factors. First, there has been a solid base of secondary literature on Japanese history, literature and culture in general, mostly as a heritage from the traditional Japanology, but also as a result of specialized works of Japanese studies scholars in the post-war period (scholars, such as Ezra Vogel, Marius Jansen and number of others). And second, the amount of a great quality secondary literature (including translations of Japanese works) in the European languages, has allowed a shift in concentration from mastering Japanese language to the problems of the methodology of research. While for the traditional Japanology, mastering of the Japanese language was the essential thing to do a Japanological research,3 for the modern Japanese studies there are plenty of sources in more accessible form (mainly in English) to start digging into Japan’s culture and society right away, often without any imminent need to spend energy on overcoming the difficulties of the Japanese language. This makes even more sense in the context of (East) Asian studies: there is no single “Asian” (as a language), only the numbers of societies to which a scholar can apply a methodology in order to study them.4 3 And, as we mentioned above, one of the sources of the original criticism of methodological inadequacies. 4 We abstain here from analysing the politics and the ideology behind the Cultural studies (including the Japanese studies). We consider the fact, that it is the social sciences (Economy, Political studies etc.) what contributed mostly in methodologies of studying Japanese culture and society, rather telling. 94  Jiří Matela 3. JAPANESE STUDIES AND THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE The situation of the modern Japanese studies described in the previous section creates an interesting dilemma for the Japanese language education within the academic field: What is learning the Japanese language actually good for? After all, the history, the society, politics, the international relations and other aspects of Japanese cultural and social life can be studied using English written sources. It should also be obvious from the last paragraph of the previous section, that the traditional philologically oriented Japanologies (many still persisting at universities in various European countries) would never have to deal with such question, and would rather deal with the problem of scientific methodology (to the extent that some Japanologists may have hard time telling, what it actually means “to be a Japanologist”, other than knowing the Japanese language). The common consequence of the aforementioned dilemma within the Japanese studies seems to be a diminution of the role of the Japanese language classes in the Japanese studies programs’ curricula. The goal of the Japanese language education is rather “to get an idea” of what kind of language Japanese (within the Japanese culture) is, than to equip a student with enough knowledge for work with primary sources. Let us here provide an example. The program of Asian Studies and International Relations at the Metropolitan University Prague (the Czech Republic) offers 180 minutes of Japanese language instruction per week (divided into two classes). The aim of the classes of Japanese is to provide basic orientation in the language and some understanding of the Japanese culture as reflected in the language.5 Obviously, it is unrealistic to suppose that the graduates of the program would command the Japanese language to a level allowing for any practical use within the study of Japan and its international or political relations. But again, for the Asian Studies program, a research based on a solid knowledge of the Japanese language is not really its goal. An answer to the question “what should students (or scholars, for that matter) of Japanese studies study the Japanese language for” comes from the field of Japanese language education, as a part of applied linguistics or general language education. It comes at about the same time the question of Japanese language education within the Japanese studies arises. The simple answer is: communication. To see the communication with the Japanese 5 Based on personal communication with the Japanese language instructor at the Metropolitan University Prague. 95 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies (and other Japanese language speakers) as the main goal of the Japanese language education is a logical perspective and it is also incarnated into an initiative of constructing a Grammar for Japanese as a second language education or Grammar for JSL (nihongo kyōiku bunpō).6 The initiative of Grammar for JSL stems from the externally oriented Japanese linguistics (nihongogaku) and tries to overcome certain weaknesses of the grammar, constructed from the perspective of ‘descriptive grammar’ (kijutsu bunpō) (Iori 2011). While the descriptive grammar sees the language as a knowledge from the perspective of a native speaker, the specific perspective of Grammar for JSL sees grammar of Japanese as a system constructed according to the learner’s acquisition process and from his/her needs – with the purpose of communication. “Communication” seems to be the most important keyword for the Japanese language education in the 21st century. It is the topic of conferences, of volumes and research papers. The titles of prominent volumes edited by Hisashi Noda in 2005 and 2012 have the word komyunikēshon ‘communication’ in their title (Noda 2005, 2012). Even the latest teaching materials, such as the Japan Foundation’s Marugoto, claim to have communication as the ultimate goal: “In Marugoto, using Japanese to actually communicate is the goal. The goal is not just to increase your knowledge of grammar and sentence patterns. Can-dos are set as objectives that show what you will be able to do in what situations, and you study Japanese that can be used in real-life situations.”7 Of course, the policy of Japanese language education (as represented by e.g. the Japan Foundation) is not limited to teaching Japanese as a part of Japanese studies programs. It includes teaching Japanese at institutions of various levels of education, public or private language schools, courses for business companies etc. Nevertheless, the communication oriented Japanese education strategy has become common.8 After all, a Japanese studies scholar is expected to go to Japan and to communicate with the locals while conducting her research. Ultimately, the communication orientation is what is causing even more internal fragmentation of the Japanese studies programs. The programs are being divided into two independent areas: 6 It is also a logical reaction to previous currents in the Japanese language education, that were focussing on mostly formal and often impractical knowledge of grammatical patterns. 7 See the section What is Marugoto? of the まるごと 日本語のことばと文化 website, cited in the references of this paper. 8 Again, we abstain from discussing here the political background of this orientation. 96  Jiří Matela courses of Japanese studies and courses of Japanese language. While the first area deals mainly with subjects from the methodological perspectives of social sciences, the second is a communication oriented language course, not unlike a course at a language school unrelated to an academic study. From an institutional point of view, the independence of the two areas creates a justifiable reason for backgrounding or even excluding the courses of Japanese language from the Japanese studies curricula. It is not an aim of this paper to criticize the ideology of Japanese studies and the policy of Japanese language education within it. At this point, it is important to go back and reflect upon developments of the two approaches to studying things Japanese, namely the traditional Japanology and the modern Japanese studies. The two concepts naturally form a kind of abstract ‘prototypes’ and we are far from claiming there is a strict line between their categorial borders. We are also not suggesting any deterministic effects of the two kinds. Certainly, many scholars in the field demonstrate characteristics of either both prototypes or none of them. To put individual factors related to scientific endeavors aside, we intend to refer to university (undergraduate) programs. It is in the structure of their curricula where the characteristics of ‘Japanology’ vs. ‘Japanese studies’ approach tend to manifest. The strong point of the Japanology approach seems to be its concentration on work with texts (as primary sources) in Japanese, its weak point, on the other hand, the lack of solid methodology when analysing them. On the other hand, the Japanese studies offer a wide variety of solid methodologies as its strong point, but suffers from the lack of interrelation between these and the study of the Japanese language (perhaps, with the exception of linguistic studies).9 The inclination to either kind is reflected in the concentration and amount of the Japanese language instruction as a part of the curriculum. With the respective strong and weak points mentioned above, it is not difficult to find ourselves asking: Isn’t there any ‘golden mean’ to overcome the disadvantages of the two approaches? We will claim that there actually is an intellectual program that can both bring back the self-esteem and revitalize the identity of the traditional philological approach of Japanology, and at the same time interconnect the Japanese studies with the study of the Japanese language, without losing sight of the advantages of the Grammar for JSL and the development of 9 However, the western linguistic methodologies, often related to general or theoretical linguistics, are often particular enough to situate a research within the field of linguistics, rather than the Japanese (or Cultural) studies. 97 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies communication skills. The program we have in mind is called Encompassing philology. The following section introduces its outline, theoretical and methodological background. 4. AN OUTLINE OF 'ENCOMPASSING PHILOLOGY' The functional approach of the Prague school, represented above all by the Prague Linguistic Circle, had an eminent position within the linguistic structuralism and the linguistics of the 20th century in general. The focus on function grounded in a text has contributed to world’s linguistics in various areas, including phonology, stylistics, or the research in syntax (especially the information structure, or ‘functional sentence perspective’ in the Prague school’s words). The program of Encompassing philology (celostní filologie in Czech, introduced e.g. in Hoskovec 2010) is a revitalization and logical continuation of ideas of various prominent figures of the Prague functional structuralism (including Vilém Mathesius or Jan Mukařovský), while reflecting on other sources as well (Copenhagen structuralist school, François Rastier’s school of Interpretive semantics and others). Since we are claiming that the program is fruitfully applicable to the Japanese language within the Japanese studies and Japanology of today, let us first present the basic outline of Encompassing philology and the functional-structuralist approach to language in general. The functional structuralism approaches a language from the perspective of two interrelated poles: an abstract system and a concrete text. It is only the latter that is seen as an actual real entity. Text (composed of utterances, including cases of a single-utterance text) is a socially and culturally grounded event and also the main object of a semiological analysis. Text is seen as an entity, that can be both spoken and written, in its own terms. From a text, by the method of oppositional differentiating, an abstract system of linguistic signs is constructed, in order to describe the norms, by which an abstract linguistic ‘meaning’ (the content pole of the linguistic sign) is manifested as a concrete ‘sense’ in a text. The system is an intellectual construction, result of the analysis of texts, but at the same time, it is also the tool for understanding and producing further concrete texts. This way a system and a text are mutually interrelated and dependent. The structuralist commitment prevents from seeing the linguistic system (or a sign) as any kind of speculative mental or cognitive entity, but grounds it in the socio98  Jiří Matela cultural realm of texts, with respect to the communicative and interpretive norms, which are supra-individual in nature. When establishing the factors of interpretation of linguistic signs within texts – the actualization of a ‘meaning’ as a ‘sense’ –, dimensions of concreteness of text must be identified. The established dimensions of concreteness are the following: situational binding, genre classification and discourse tradition. If any other dimension shows itself as indispensable for the purpose of semantic description of a sign, the theory is open to adaptations, but at the present state of the theory, the aforementioned three dimensions are seen as sufficient. Let us look at them a little closer. Situational binding of a text gives rise to the interpretation of content of a wide array of linguistic forms and means. The deictic expressions, such as I, you, now or here in English are the obvious examples, but far from the only ones. Since a text is an event taking place within social relations of the participants, its ‘linguistic’ norms are naturally ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ norms at the same time. Genre classification relates to the functional aspect of a text. The commitment to consider linguistic means with respect to their capacity to relate to the extra-linguistic reality is at the core of Prague structuralism’s “functional” attribute, after all. The genre of a text is its ability to be an effective tool, by which a speaker turns to the addressee in order to communicate. It is the trivial type of knowledge (of norms), by which a speaker distinguishes a love letter from a newspaper article, but at the same time, it allows for understanding utterances like You’ll see. either as ‘a statement’, ‘a promise’ or ‘a threat’. Finally, the knowledge of a discourse tradition allows for interpretation of a text within a wider socio-cultural context. Language is seen as a system of cultural norms exactly for it being transmitted in a society from one generation of speakers to another. Many norms of interpreting a linguistic sign cross time and remain valid for a kind of text or discourse. Common experience with texts and their interpretation suggests that there is quite a number of interpretive norms that are put into action only for specific texts, i.e. texts of a certain genre classification in a certain situation. The various classes of genre or types of situation a text can be bound to are by no means objective. They are constructed for the sake of 99 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies interpretation and thus the abstract system is subject to the researcher’s judgement, that is supposed to be evaluated an re-evaluated with each new text, with each new act of interpretation, by the method of differential investigation of each individual sign. The signs on the pole of abstract system are to be put into opposition with any other sign of the system (although only certain oppositions are actually fruitful), the signs on the pole of concrete text are to be put into opposition only with other signs within the text. The whole process of creation of the linguistic system out of texts is limited only by the number of texts that enter the analysis, needless to say, the number of potential texts to be subject to interpretation is practically limitless. It is also important to point out, that texts of a language are not all equal. Although any text is a potential object of analysis, some kinds of texts have a higher capacity to demonstrate possibilities of the linguistic system than others. At this point, it is not hard to conclude that it is the literary texts that have the highest quality in this sense (compared to e.g. scientific papers, similar to the present one). This special quality of literary texts are to be seen also as the motivation (albeit often rather implicit) for the literature and linguistics’ prominent position within the traditional philologies. The literary studies naturally occupy the position of dealing with the concrete texts, while linguistic studies focus on the abstract system. The functionalstructuralist approach presented here is defined as ‘encompassing’ exactly for seeing the two poles as complementary and inseparable. Philology is then seen as the methodology of creating descriptive systems through a conscious interpretive work, done on concrete texts. The socio-cultural nature of texts is what justifies seeing philology as a scientific study of culture in its own right. 5. JAPANOLOGY AS 'ENCOMPASSING PHILOLOGY' If we are to claim that the apparatus of Encompassing philology introduced in the previous section is suitable for the academic field of Japanese studies or Japanology, we should present some examples of its application. This section aims exactly at that. Encompassing philology has many basic features in common with the movement of Grammar for JSL (see Matela 2018 for detailed discussion). Therefore, the approach of Encompassing philology can serve the same purpose as the modern nihongo kyōiku bunpō – to create a grammar for Japanese language education. Unlike the descriptive grammar within nihongogaku, functional-structuralist approach does not suppose 100  Jiří Matela there is just one general system of Japanese that speakers know. Instead, since there are multitudes of texts of various kinds, each speaker knows various systems of Japanese; in other words, a multitude of co-existing grammars within the knowledge of linguistic norms. The differential investigation into texts of different dimensions of concreteness allows for building the abstract system of meaning/sense interpretation. Let us first see the examples (1) and (2). The expressions in question are underlined. (1) 君をズット見守っていたいから10 (2) 君が代は千代に八千代に […] The two utterances contain the same expression kimi. However in each of the examples the word has a different sense. How then is the meaning of the lexeme kimi to be accounted for? The difference stems from a different situational binding of the two texts. While the first one is a situated in an on-line communication between young speakers, expressing closeness and romantic feelings towards the addressee (Kimi o zutto mimamotte itai kara ‘It’s that I want to take care of you forever’), the second is a first line of the Japanese national anthem, where the word kimi is supposed to refer to the emperor (Kimi ga yo wa chiyo ni yachiyo ni… ‘May your reign [Your Imperial Majesty] continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations…’), since anthem is not uttered in a situation of close relations between two speakers.11 In this way, the meaning of kimi is to be interpreted (and described) with regards to the situational binding of the text in question. In the present perspective, it is the situational binding that differentiates the concrete ‘senses’ of kimi.12 The functional-structuralist method described in the previous section builds the descriptive system of meanings from the concrete texts (situationaly bound), thus it naturally works without the 10 Example from Yahoo! ブログ, 2008, via the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ). 11 The lyrics of the anthem come from an anonymous poem included in Kokin wakashū, anthology of Japanese poetry from the beginning of the 10th century. Therefore, we can think of yet another situational binding, making a different concrete text out of Kimi ga yo. For the kimi of the poem, several analysis’ exist. E.g. Koike (2010: 32) suggests it is an expression of addressing a (male) lover by a female (‘you, my dear’). 12 This aspect of ‘concreteness of the text’ could be seen as the motivation of the ‘functional polysemy’ in question. 101 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies somewhat artificial distinction between (lexical) semantics and pragmatics – both perspectives are “encompassed” in the meaning description process.13 Examples (3) and (4) demonstrate the role of genre classification in grammar construction. (3) サッカー森保新体制が始動14 (4) 新型インフル 警戒かつ冷静に対応を15 The examples seem to violate a general rule of situating the verb (or the predicate) at the end of a sentence. The expression in (3) ends with a verbal noun shidō ‘starting’ without the ‘light verb’ suru, the expression in (4) ends with a case particle o. The “general rule”, however, should not be a generalization over texts of various genres. The expressions in question are examples of newspaper headlines. Considering newspaper headline a genre, the system should reflect the fact, that utterances of this genre regularly end with expressions other than verbs. Finally, examples (5) and (6) below are supposed to demonstrate the role of discourse tradition in a meaning construction. (5) 花の色はうつりにけりな […] (6) 世界に一つだけの花 […] The example in (5) is the first two verses of a famous poem by 9th Century poet Ono no Komachi. It appears (among others) in Fujiwara no Teika’s anthology Ogura hyakunin isshu. Within the classical poetry there is a longlasting discourse tradition of interpreting the word hana as ‘cherry blossom’, which is the case of Ono no Komachi’s poem. On the other hand, texts of modern pop songs don’t share this tradition (and rather have their own), and the word hana in (6) – part of lyrics of the boy band SMAP’s song – is to be interpreted as ‘flower’. Again, there is no ‘general lexical meaning’ of the word hana (花) in Japanese; its meaning needs to be related to the text, concrete in its situational binding, genre classification and discourse tradition. In a manner similar to the one demonstrated above, a system for genres of spoken texts shall be created. Utterances such as Chotto soko made… 13 In a similar fashion, areas of language studies such as discourse analysis or conversation analysis are seen here as a natural manifestation of the functionalist perspective (and could be understood as a variation of Encompassing philology approach in its own right). 14 Example from 朝日新聞DIGITAL, 03/09/2018. 15 Example from 中日新聞, 29/04/2009. 102  Jiří Matela ‘Just over there…’ display a whole array of different meanings (or senses) when interpreted with various genre classification (common greeting – in response to Dochira ni o-dekake desu ka? ‘Where are you going?’ – being just one of them). Linguistic communication (both spoken and written) occurs exclusively through texts, and functional-structuralist method thus builds its grammar bottom-up and usage-based, just like the Grammar for JSL.16 In fact, when adopted, the Encompassing philology perspective states that the grammar for teaching Japanese is not a kind of general grammar knowledge of an abstract speaker, but always a concrete purpose/text oriented construction. The modern Japanese studies built from the Encompassing philology allow (or rather require) an intimate association of the linguistic system instruction with the concrete texts interpretation, the main goal being discovering and describing the ways in which the abstract meaning “materializes” in the concrete text. Understanding texts as not exclusively written texts of the Japanese literature is supposed to overcome the limited image of Japanese philology (Japanology) as a discipline dealing only with Japanese language and literature. On the contrary, the whole Japanese culture can be seen as a complex of texts and the norms of social behaviour not unlike the norms of linguistic system. The richness of texts in the Japanese realm represents the vast range of possibilities of research in modern Japanology. The texts may cover various aspects that the Japanese studies want to deal with, including historical sources, contemporary journalist texts, political discourse, religious texts and many other kinds of texts waiting to be interpreted. The methodology is there. 6. CONCLUSION The contemporary academic approaches to studying things Japanese have been facing their specific challenges. The traditional philologically oriented Japanology is unsure of the value of its methodologies, mainly because it forgot or failed to properly reflect the relation of the linguistic system and the concrete texts. The literary studies within Japanology often do not care about linguistic aspects of a literary work, because there seem to be enough theories of literary analysis to apply to the work and we suppose we understand the original text somehow anyway. The linguistic studies within Japanology often fall into the trap of 16 Let us add, that the paralinguistic aspects of communication (gestures, proxemics etc.) are seen again as a set of norms of social behaviour and thus subject to the functional-structuralist description. 103 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies mentalism, seeing the Japanese language as an abstract knowledge of an abstract speaker, unrelated to textual manifestations.17 The criticism from the part of the interdisciplinary Cultural studies, that just knowing a language is not doing a science, is legitimate. Thus, Japanology has to face the pressure at the institutional and ideological levels, and its only effective defense seems to be a conscious and thorough advocacy of its philological methodology. The Japanese studies themselves face the challenge to maintain the integrity, to understand the key role of the Japanese language in studying the Japanese culture and society (which goes far more beyond communication with the Japanese people) and not to be dissolved into an amorphous mass of methodologies serving just ideological purposes. The program of Encompassing philology presented in this paper offers a perspective and suggestions for both challenges. The “textual” approach to language allows for building a unified knowledge of Japanese language tied to the Japanese culture, society and the communication within. Japanology as Encompassing philology also allows for study of various aspects of Japanese culture and society, both ancient and modern, while maintaining bonds with the scholarly tradition. In this respect the Japanology or Japanese studies (at this point we don’t have to see them separate anymore) can not only draw from the valuable perspectives of Prague functional structuralism, it can also serve as an example of fruitful culturally based sciences for the 21st century. REFERENCES HOSKOVEC 2010 Tomáš Hoskovec, “Celostní filologie jako program (na příkladu baltistiky)”, Časopis pro moderní filologii 92/1-2, Praha 2010, 10-17. IORI 2011 Isao Iori, “Nihongo kijutsu bunpō to nihongo kyōiku bunpō”, in Iori Isao and Mori Atsushi, (eds.), Nihongo kyōiku bunpō no tame no tayō na apurōchi, Tōkyō 2011, 1-12. KOIKE 2010 Seidži Koike, Úvod do gramatiky moderní japonštiny, Brno, 2010. 17 The recent attempts of corpus linguistics research will not solve the problem, unless they acknowledge the specific dimensions of concreteness of the texts included in the corpora. 104  Jiří Matela KREINER 1984 Josef Kreiner, “A Concrete Holistic Approach to the Study of Japanese Culture: An Example of Civilization Studies”, in Umesao Tadao, Harumi Befu and Josef Kreiner, (eds.), Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Life and Society. Senri Ethnological Studies 16, National Museum of Ethnology, Ōsaka 1984, 37-49. KREINER 1992 Josef Kreiner, “National Approaches, Parallel Developments of Schools of Great Masters? – Some Remarks on the History of Japanese Studies in Europe”, in Harumi Befu, Josef Kreiner (eds.), Otherness of Japan: Historical and Cultural Influences on Japanese Studies in Ten Countries, München 1992, 37-61. MATELA 2018 Jiří Matela, “On the Common Points of Prague Functional Structuralism and ‘Nihongo kyōiku bunpō’”, in Martin Tirala (ed.), Crossing Time and Space: From the Perspective of Japanese Studies, Praha 2018, 146-155. NODA 2005 Hisashi Noda (ed.), Komyunikēshon no tame no Nihongo kyōiku bunpō, Tōkyō, 2005. NODA 2012 Hisashi Noda (ed.), Nihongo kyōiku no tame no komyunikēshon kenkyū, Tōkyō, 2012. ŌKUBO 2008 Takaki Ōkubo, Nihon bunka no meisho nyūmon, Tōkyō, 2008. INTERNET: What is Marugoto?, https://www.marugoto.org/en/about/; ultima consultazione 09/03/2019; Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/; ultima consultazione 09/03/2019; 105 Tabula 18 Poseban broj posvećen istraživanjima na području japanologije Special issue on Japanese Studies SAŽETAK Japanologija kao „obuhvatna filologija“ i njezini izgledi za 21. stoljeće: funkcionalno-strukturalistički pristup japanskom jeziku, iznova Ovaj rad uvodi intelektualni program tzv. „obuhvatne filologije“ u kontekst japanologije i japanskih studija kao znanstvenih disciplina. Prvo se analizira razvoj proučavanja japanskih stvari, ukazujući na specifičnost filološki orijentirane japanologije i modernih japanskih studija, posebno iz pozicije nastave japanskoga jezika. Zatim se predlaže objedinjavajući i 'obuhvatni' program funkcionalne lingvistike koji će se primijeniti na japanske studije kako bi se očuvale prednosti tradicionalnoga filološkog pristupa i suvremene interdisciplinarne metodologije. Obuhvatna filologija ima snažno semiološki pristup tekstu, gradeći apstraktni jezični sustav odozdo prema gore, ujedno uzimajući u obzir tri dimenzije konkretnosti teksta: situacijsko vezivanje, žanrovsku klasifikaciju i diskurzivnu tradiciju. TEKST, pisani i govoreni, smatra se formacijom jezičnoga znaka koji bi se trebao apstrahirati u deskriptivni jezični SUSTAV. Rad predstavlja i primjenu teorije o japanskome jeziku i sugerira da je japanologija kao primjer obuhvatne filologije održiv put za japanske studije u 21. stoljeću. Ključne riječi: japanski jezik, japanologija, funkcionalni strukturalizam, Praška škola, obuhvatna filologija 106  Jiří Matela まとめ 包括的な文献学としてのとその21世紀の行先：機能構造主義による日 本語の把握の再評価 本稿は日本文化・社会を研究対象とする日本学・日本研究における日本 語と日本語教育を再評価することを目的とする。 プラーグ学派において盛 んになった 「包括的な文献学」 という考え方を出発点にし， 日本研究におけ る日本語教育の重要性を指摘しつつ教育のための日本語の文法／構造の 組み立て方の原理をテクストの観点から紹介する。 その原理は，機能構造 主義言語学の言語記号の把握を示唆に，言語構造を 「場面との密着」 「ジャ ンルの属性」 「ディスコースの伝統」 の三つの具体性に基づいたテクストか ら抽象化することと考えられる。 本稿では，以上の理論を日本語に適用した 例を紹介し，21世紀においても包括的な文献学に基づいた日本学・日本研 究が実行可能な研究分野になれると唱える。 キーワード：日本語，機能構造主義， プラーグ学派，包括的な文献学 107