1
THE
2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Iaponica Brunensia 2017
Program:
Day I: Friday, 22nd September 2017
9:00 – 9:20 Registration
9:20 – 9:30 Opening
9:30 – 10:00 Solidifying the Status System, the case of outcast groups at the dawn of
Tokugawa period (L. Mornsteinová)
10:00 – 10:30 Initial Attempts to Define the Setting of Japan as One Space in the face of
the Foreign Threat (D. Labus)
10:30 – 10:50 Coffee break
10:50 – 11:20 Chrysanthemum, Pine and Crane – Female Names of the Meiji Period
Japan (I. Barešová)
11:20 – 11:50 Towards TOPOS: A Place for Space in the Japanese grammar
(J. Matela)
11:20 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:00 Genesis of the Japanese Language in Spatial Perspective
(I. R. V. Rumánek)
14:00 – 14:30 Language Areas in East Asia: Case Study of Japanese, Korean and
Manchu (V. Ulman)
14:30 – 14:50 Coffee break
14:50 – 16:10 Typology and Evolution of Language from the Perspective of
Modes of Cognition (keynote speech) (Y. Nakamura)
16:10 End of Day I
2
Day II: Saturday, 23rd September 2017
9:30 – 10:00 Motif of “the escape” in Shimada Masahiko’s Jiyū shikei
(A. Cima)
10:00 – 10:30 Hotel as a Metaphor of Contemporary Japan in the Novels of Haruki
Murakami (T. Jurkovič)
10:30 – 10:50 Coffee break
10:50 – 11:20 Taking humor seriously: Jiji senryū as a mirror of public moods in
contemporary Japanese society (A. Klimeshova)
11:20 – 11:50 Translating Wordplays in Japanese Early Modern Texts: Comparative
Study of Two English Translations of Act VII of Kanadehon Chūshingura
(Y. Kawauchi)
11:50 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:00 Trying to judge a book by its cover: About the connection of form and
contents of Edo period popular fiction (M. Mikeš)
14:00 – 14:30 Japanese misemono in the Czech territory: First Japanese performers in
the Czech lands (Z. Rozwałka)
14:30 – 14:50 Coffee break
14:50 – 15:20 The Use of the Second Person Pronoun Anata as perceived by Current
Japanese University Students (H. Kloutvorová, I. Barešová)
15:20 – 15:50 Faith within the Japanese Zen Buddhist milieu as expounded by Dōgen
(Z. Kubovčáková)
15:50 – 16:10 Closing
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Abstracts:
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Lucie MORNSTEINOVÁ
Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic
9:30 – 10:00 Solidifying the Status System
The case of outcast groups at the dawn of Tokugawa
period
Japanese title: 身分制の固定化，徳川時代寸前の被差別人
In my presentation, I would like to briefly introduce the
institutional processes and some of the Laws which helped to
set apart the outcaste groups from the commoners and
peasants at the time of the unification of Japan at the end of
16th century.
As is well-known, the outcaste groups throughout the
Tokugawa period encountered an increasing degree of official
discrimination at both state and local level. Theories about
their non-Japanese origins were drawn up and the
discrimination often continued even into the afterlife.
What may come as a surprise, is that the perceiving of
outcastes as the Other was also delineated spatially. Their
hamlets didn’t figure on the Tokugawa period maps and the
geography of pre-modern Japan did not, in most cases, apply
to them. Furthermore, if an official had to make a trip which
would take him through outcaste settlements, the custom was
to subtract the time and mileage spent there from duration of
the journey.
The topic of this presentation is also a part of my dissertation
thesis, in which I am going to research in some detail the
Laws and Decrees pertaining to outcaste groups during the
Tokugawa period.
4
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
David LABUS
Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic
10:00 – 10:30 Japan as One Space in the face of the “Foreign
Threat”
Japanese title: １９世紀前半における、「空間」としての日本
とは
The first phase of direct contacts with western naval powers –
be they corporate entities or individuals – initiated among
many other changes also shifts in perception of Japan’s own
territory and cultural space. Before the first signs of
intensified interest in establishing contacts with Japan, it was
not so common for scholars or politicians to perceive Japan as
one space, much less a state because there was no urgent need
to define oneself against any “other side”. Moreover, the
Tokugawa shogunate traditionally pursued policy of
deliberate (political) division of interests among the daimyō
class (so called kakkyoron). However, western ships proved to
pose a new type of danger that was mobile and that started to
change the very basic military presumptions and considerations
about strategy with far reaching consequences. To
give just one example, it slowly transpired that it would be the
navy and not the army that would be decisive as a future
potential defence against the western intruders. This was an
alarming finding in a country with such a developed military
culture as Japan.
In this paper, I will focus on the formation of the first modern
images of Japan as a territory, a culturally unified space and a
nationality, touch on ways in which Westerners were portrayed
and will analyze reactions of scholars and politicians,
as they appeared during the first decades of 19th century. I will
draw on letters and petitions of the most influential Confucian
scholars and other relevant documents.
5
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Ivona BAREŠOVÁ
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
10:50 – 11:20 Chrysanthemum, Pine and Crane
Female Names of the Meiji Period Japan
Japanese title: 明治時代の女性名 ― 「菊」「松」「鶴」を例に
Throughout most of the twentieth century, Japanese female
names were dominated by names such as Kazuko, Masako,
Yukiko, and other such three-mora names, usually written
with one or two kanji followed by 子 -ko. This trend became
popular in the Taishō period, peaked in the 1940s and
continued until the 1980s, when new types of names emerged,
but actually had its roots in the social changes that took place
after the Meiji Restoration. This paper looks at female names
that were bestowed to women during the Meiji period, before
names with the final 子 -ko became widespread. It provides an
overall description of these names, from the point of view of
their orthography and structure, and also as to their meanings,
offering some insight into aspirations for the newborn, the
values and priorities that were considered important or
desirable at that time, and also the background from which the
well-known phenomenon of -ko names arose.
6
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Jiří MATELA
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
11:20 – 11:50 Towards TOPOS
A Place for Space in the Japanese Grammar
Japanese title: トポスをめぐって―日本語の文法における「場」
の機能
The existence of the particle wa in the system of Japanese
language has been a source of great number of discussions
within the broad field of Japanese language studies. The
function of wa has been associated with the concept of SUBJECT
(at least since Ōtsuki Fumihiko), later also with the concept of
TOPIC, what eventually lead to classification of Japanese as
“Topic-Prominent (and Subject-Prominent) Language” (Li &
Thompson, 1976). Recently, a contrasting function of wa has
become rather exposed within the studies of toritate (focusing
and de-focusing expressions).
The double function of wa presents several problems. From
the view of information structure, several other “topic
markers” can be identified (e.g. tte, toieba, nante, ø etc.), which
leaves the function of wa rather unclear. The relation of the
“topic marker” and “toritate marker” functions is often treated
as a functional polysemy. The present paper takes the position
of constructional approaches to grammar and presents a research
aiming at establishing a general constructional schema
for the [NP wa] construction. I call this schema TOPOS and argue
for relevance of this category in the sentence structures of
both Japanese and Czech language.
7
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Ivan R. V. RUMÁNEK
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
13:30 – 14:00 Genesis of the Japanese Language in Spatial
Perspective
Japanese title: 空間的に見る日本語の成立
The paper is a report on the initial stage of my research
program which aims at trying to make the picture of the
genesis of the Japanese language clearer and more concrete
than the usual generalizations of its pidgin origin by means of
a spatial theory.
The Japanese language is generally considered to be the result
of pidginization of various languages - linguistic layers. As an
archipelago on the edge of the Continent, the Japanese Isles
were incessantly the destination of various populations which
brought with them their cultures and languages. The
archipelago then saw complex processes at work, which are,
obviously, beyond reconstruction, due to lack of any written
data whatsoever. Nevertheless, I would like to cast more light
onto the matter and attempt at bringing out clearer contours
of the linguistic processes in the Japanese Isles by means of an
approach consisting in a theoretical spatial perspective which,
combined with archaeological data, can yield some idea at
least about how the Japanese language possibly came into
being. Such concepts as strata (substrate, superstrate,
adstrate), creolization and pidginization are further tools in
the theory which might be helpful to make the picture about
the genesis of Japanese a little more concrete.
8
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Vít ULMAN
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
14:00 – 14:30 Language areas in East Asia
Case Study of Japanese, Korean and Manchu
Japanese title: 東アジアにおける言語連合：日本語，韓国語，
満州語
In this presentation, I will discuss areal features in Northeast
Asian languages sometimes included in a controversial
grouping known as Altaic languages. Here these languages will
not be analyzed as a single language family, but as a language
area. I will focus mostly on Japanese, Korean, and Manchu. I
will attempt to analyze the perceived similarities between the
aforementioned languages as a result of a complex multilayered
succession of linguistic contact between them.
Therefore, a broad analysis of a large plethora of grammatical
features is needed to fully grasp the complicated relationship
of these languages. However, due to time constrains this
presentation will focus on the most relevant features.
Semantic maps will be used to elucidate the shared typological
features. The focus will lie mostly on case particles and loosely
fitting grammatical constructions found in these languages.
9
KEYNOTE SPEECH
Friday
22. Sept. 2017
Yoshihisa NAKAMURA (professor emeritus)
Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
14:50 – 16:10 Typology and Evolution of Language from the
Perspective of Modes of Cognition
Japanese title: 言語の類型と進化：認知モードの観点から
The structure of this talk is a twofold one: The first part
introduces the most innovative aspects of Cognitive
Linguistics (CL), which is so inspiring that students of
language may try CL to write promising master’s or Ph.D.
theses. The second part elaborates on the discussion of the
first part: developing a deeper linguistic typology and
proposing a sensible theory of language evolution that will
stand the test of scientific scrutiny.
Questions or problems to be discussed in this talk include:
Why is the verb rise used when nothing moves up in (1b)? (1b)
depicts the shape of the hill.
(1) a. The balloon rose gently into the air.
b. The hill rises gently from the bank of the river.
What are the rules for choosing the subjects and the direct
objects in the following sentences? Does the notion ‘semantic
role’ work?
(2) a. John shot the gun.
b. John shot a few bullets.
c. John shot the door.
d. John shot a hole in the door.
(3) a. The gun shot a few bullets.
b. The gun shot the door.
c. The gun shot a hole in the door.
(4) a. The bullets shot the door.
b. The bullets shot a hole in the door.
Why does English allow the possessive verb have to be
extended to mean ‘locational existence’ as in (5b)? In contrast,
why does Japanese allow the existential verb aru ‘be’ to be
freely used to mean possession as in (6b)?
(5) a. I have an electric toothbrush.
b. The house has four rooms.
(6) a. Kono ie-ni-wa 4tsu-no heya-ga aru.
(this house-IN-TOP 4-GEN room-NOM be.NPST)
b. Watashi-ni-wa denki-haburashi-ga aru.
(I/me-IN-TOP electric toothbrush-NOM be.NPST)
10
The Japanese sentence (7a), which has superficially the same
structure as (7b), actually corresponds to the English sentence
(7c). Why, then, does English need the phrase I saw to be
explicitly added to the English sentence, as in (7c)?
(7) a. Ushiro-o miru-to, John-ga suwatte-ita.
(the back-ACC see-CND, John-NOM sitting-be.PST)
b. Looking back, John was sitting.
c. Looking back, I saw John sitting.
Lastly, consider the “humanique” (unique to the humans)
property of our language: infinite embedding or recursion.
Human languages have recursion as demonstrated in the
sentences under (8). What is the basic mechanism of language
that allows this?
(8) a. This is the house that Jack built.
b. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
c. This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house
that Jack built.
d. … the cow … the dog … the cat … the rat … the malt …
Jack ….
Would it not be a challenge to answer all these “whys” from
one perspective? The basis of my answer resides in the claim
that we should draw on two basic human modes of cognition,
I(nteractional)-mode and D(isplaced)-mode of cognition,
as illustrated in (9a) and (9b).
(9) a. I-mode b. D-mode
C
displacement
C
We may, from a typological point of view, distinguish
languages that reflect I-mode of cognition from languages that
reflect D-mode. For example, Japanese is typically an I-mode
language and English a D-mode language. As for linguistic
evolution, the evolution of cognition from I- to D-mode can be
said to be the most critical factor for the emergence of basic
structure of human language.
11
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Anna CIMA
Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic
9:30 – 10:00 Motif of “the escape” in Shimada Masahiko's Jiyū
shikei
Japanese title: 島田雅彦の『自由死刑』における「脱出」の
モティーフ
If we divide Japanese post-war period into three parts, the last
one would be, according to Ōsawa Masachi and Azuma Hiroki,
the period of sensual attraction (1995–). Described by the two
as the period where people (like animals) depend on
stimulation of senses, this period was triggered by two major
shocks – the earthquake in Kōbe and Tokyo subway sarin
attack that both happened in 1995. Ōsawa and Azuma
presume that after these horrible experiences, people in Japan
started escaping from reality to other worlds, be it virtual
reality or various other spaces.
Jiyū shikei was written by the postmodern author Shimada
Masahiko and published at the end of 20th Century in 1999.
It deals with the topic of voluntary self-execution and explores
various possibilities of escaping from everyday reality,
touching such aspects of society as the emptiness of popular
culture and religion or the inability to break free from the past.
In this article, based on Ōsawa and Azuma’s perception of
post-war Japanese society, I will analyse the form of several
different types of escape depicted in Jiyū shikei, discussing
the nature of space which characters escape from, as well as
the space where the escape takes place.
12
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Tomáš JURKOVIČ
Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic
10:00 – 10:30 Hotel as a Metaphor of Contemporary Japan in
the Novels of Haruki Murakami
Japanese title: 村上春樹の長編小説に於ける「ホテルとしての
日本」の比喩
Among many different places, serving as scenes for stories of
novels by Haruki Murakami, especially hotels are of great
importance. Since the Wild Sheep Chase (1982) they constantly
serve as places, where the stories’ crucial moments happen.
And among those crucial moments, we can find surprisingly
frequent representations of hotels as places, where the most
important personal problems of protagonists’ lives are solved
and where even many lasting problems of the dark side of
contemporary Japanese history find their solution. In Dance,
Dance, Dance (1988) Murakami even establishes an open
parallel between the place, known as a Hotel Dolphin,
and the contemporary Japanese society.
In my paper, I focused on a short study of this phenomenon in
the whole context of Murakami’s work as a novelist and tried
to describe its development from the very beginning to the
most recent works of the author. What are the most important
connotations of the hotel metaphor in Murakami’s work? And
what is the role of the repeatedly used characters of prostitutes
and their clients, set into this hotel sceneries? The scene of
hotel, in which prostitute-client-like form of human relations
takes place, is really a very frequent one in Murakami’s novels
and we can conclude that it even constitutes a metaphor of
contemporary Japan as a hotel-like place.
13
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Anastasiya KLIMESHOVA
Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic
10:50 – 11:20 Taking humor seriously:
Jiji senryū as a mirror of public moods in contemporary
Japanese society
Japanese title: ユーモアを真面目に―現代日本社会における
パブリックムードの鏡としての時事川柳―
The study aims to provide analysis on jiji senryū (poems on
current affairs), which is an original, in many respects unique
and yet meagerly examined phenomenon of modern Japanese
poetry. Jiji senryū, seventeen-syllable poems, are regularly
published in most national and local newspapers, including
such leading national daily newspapers as Yomiuri shinbun,
Asahi shinbun and Mainichi shinbun, each of which has its
senryū column. These tiny pieces of satirical remarks are
written by individual readers and not by regular news writers,
and present a poetic response of the most perceptive
individuals of Japanese society to current events, political
affairs, latest trends at home and abroad, contemporary
problems and issues.
The study explores the phenomenon of contemporary jiji
senryū from an interdisciplinary perspective: it brings
together structural linguistic analysis of the poetry, humor
studies and media discourse analysis. The study offers a model
of analysis incorporating several components – intertextual,
critical and comic. Other subcomponents, namely structural,
stylistic, lexical, pragmatical and rhetorical mechanisms,
will also be examined.
14
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Yūko KAWAUCHI
Ritsumeikan University, Kyōto, Japan
11:20 – 11:50 Translating Wordplays in Japanese Early
Modern Texts:
Comparative Study of Two English Translations of Act VII
of Kanadehon Chūshingura
Japanese title: 『仮名手本忠臣蔵』における言葉遊びの翻訳―
『仮名手本忠臣蔵』の 2 つの英訳の比較研究
In translation studies, the difficulties of translating humor of
texts have been frequently discussed, partially because humor
connects strongly with the source culture and translation
transplants the texts into the contexts of another culture.
Among the several patterns of humor, wordplays account for
significantly large part in Japanese classic literature. Wordplay
in Japanese literature as humor has a common origin with
the techniques of waka which use images, characters, sounds,
or connections with a particular place of the word. This paper
aims to analyze how the earliest translators of Japanese
literature dealt with wordplays in classic Japanese texts,
taking examples from the first two English translations of
Kanadehon Chūshingura, the first one by Frederick Victor
Dickins, published in 1875, and the latter by Inoue Jūkichi,
published in 1894.
One of the features of Act VII are the humorous lines full of
wordplays of the main character, Ōboshi Yuranosuke.
In previous studies, the translations of wordplays in this act
were also analyzed but as a linguistic matter and it still
remains to be elucidated as a cultural translation.
15
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Marek MIKEŠ
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
13:30 – 14:00 Trying to judge a book by its cover:
About the connection of form and contents of Edo period
popular fiction
Japanese title: 本を表紙で判断できるのか―江戸版本の形態と
内容の関係性について
What formats of books were published in the Tokugawa
period? What kind of connection was there between their
form and their contents? What can a quick look at the cover
and the pages of a book tell us? How was space used in
different printed works?
I will try to answer these and other questions in my
presentation which will be an introduction to the physical
aspects or spatial dispositions of books of (mostly popular)
Edo period literature. While introducing the fundamentals
I will also try to verify some basic claims about the literature
using concrete examples from widely available digital
repositories. Finally I will also discuss some difficulties
connected with handling books that were originally physical
objects in today's digital age.
16
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Zuzana ROZWAŁKA
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
14:00 – 14:30 Japanese misemono in the Czech territory:
First Japanese performers in the Czech lands
Japanese title: チェコにおける日本の見世物：チェコの領域に
おける最初の日本のパフォーマンス
In my doctoral research, I am exploring Czech contacts with
Japanese theatre and performance artists from the second half
of the 19th century until the end of World War II. The
appearance of Kawakami Otojirō and his wife Sadayacco at the
Paris Exposition in the 1900 is usually considered as the initial
moment in the encounter of Western and Japanese theatre and
as such, it became a topic of scientific debates and research.
However, there were many performance artists who
entertained the West long time before them and some of them
performed also in the Czech lands. Acrobats, jugglers, dancers
and musicians – performers of various genres called misemono
were the first to go abroad and quench the western thirst for
the mysterious Japan.
During examinations of primary sources, I came by chance
across a note about circus performance of “original Japanese”
in Brno in 1870, only two years after the Meiji restoration. The
members of the group were for sure the first Japanese
performers and very likely the first Japanese that set foot on
our territory.
In my presentation, I will examine the primary sources
concerning the 1870s performance and also explore the
circumstances of the troupe’s tour abroad. I will subsequently
try to put this event in a broader context of history of early
cross-cultural encounter between the West and Japan.
17
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Hana KLOUTVOROVÁ, Ivona BAREŠOVÁ
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
14:50 – 15:20 The Use of the Second Person Pronoun Anata as
Perceived by Current Japanese University
Students
Japanese title: 人称代名詞「あなた」の使用に関する一考察
―日本の大学生の認識を中心として―
The originally honorific second person pronoun anata is
nowadays generally considered a formal pronoun used by
both men and women towards someone of equal or lower
social status, and as an informal pronoun used mainly by
women. However, its use in real conversations is now actually
very limited. This present study examined the use and
perception of anata among current Japanese university
students in communication with different categories of
interlocutors along the axis of psychological and social
distance. The results show that the current young generation
strongly perceives anata as a non-reciprocal pronoun used
from the position of a superior in a distant relationship.
In closer relationships it creates uncomfortable psychological
distance, which they interpret as alienation, confrontation,
or in some other negative way. Their awareness of anata as an
informal pronoun used especially by female speakers in
intimate relationships is for the most part limited to its use in
the media.
18
Saturday
23. Sept. 2017
Zuzana KUBOVČÁKOVÁ
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
15:20 – 15:50 Faith within the Japanese Zen Buddhist milieu as
expounded by Dōgen
Japanese title: 道元による日本の禅の「信仰」
The current paper deals with the question of faith and
enlightenment as presented by Dōgen (1200–1253), founder
of the Japanese Sōtō Zen School. Buddhism, as any religious
tradition, distinguishes between popular notions of faith and
belief on the one hand, and traditional or doctrinal notions of
practice and enlightenment (aka practice leading to enlightenment
in the case of Zen schools of Buddhism). Dōgen
himself is famous for equating the two; for stating that Zen
practice is already identical with enlightenment. The aim of
the present paper, therefore, is to shed light on the concept of
faith in Dōgen’s writings as well as to elucidate possible
connections between faith and practice, belief and enlightenment,
based on various chapters in Dōgen’s Shōbō genzō.