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Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan

Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan positions 7:2 0 1999 by Duke University Press. Kazutoshi’s version of Kokugo.2 In an important I 894 speech, this educational theorist who had come under the influence of European linguistics established Kokugo as the national language of Japan. Soon he was envisioning the spread of Japanese to the rest of Asia. In other words, even before its particular structures were completely set forth, the new Japanese national language took on a “double status: ‘universal-imperial’ and ‘particularnational.’ ”3 Sometimes referred to as an ideology (ideorop-),Ko4ugo provided a scheme for the linguistic assimilation of subjugated people into the Japanese nation. It reached people in the home islands of Japan through the nascent public school system, as it was concurrently being applied to Japan’s first formal colony.4 As an institutionally sanctioned doctrine of colonial education, Kokugo ideology implied universalism in the sense of its potential application; it suggested that any person who mastered Kokugo could become Japanese. Its actual implementation, however, was particularistic, since the colonized could never become Japanese regardless of their level of competence in the Japanese language. T h e distinction between the colonizers and the colonized was strictly maintained through the family-registry (kose&) system. Further, the discriminatory http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan

Tai, Eika
positions asia critique , Volume 7 (2) – Sep 1, 1999
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1999 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-7-2-503
Publisher site
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Abstract

positions 7:2 0 1999 by Duke University Press. Kazutoshi’s version of Kokugo.2 In an important I 894 speech, this educational theorist who had come under the influence of European linguistics established Kokugo as the national language of Japan. Soon he was envisioning the spread of Japanese to the rest of Asia. In other words, even before its particular structures were completely set forth, the new Japanese national language took on a “double status: ‘universal-imperial’ and ‘particularnational.’ ”3 Sometimes referred to as an ideology (ideorop-),Ko4ugo provided a scheme for the linguistic assimilation of subjugated people into the Japanese nation. It reached people in the home islands of Japan through the nascent public school system, as it was concurrently being applied to Japan’s first formal colony.4 As an institutionally sanctioned doctrine of colonial education, Kokugo ideology implied universalism in the sense of its potential application; it suggested that any person who mastered Kokugo could become Japanese. Its actual implementation, however, was particularistic, since the colonized could never become Japanese regardless of their level of competence in the Japanese language. T h e distinction between the colonizers and the colonized was strictly maintained through the family-registry (kose&) system. Further, the discriminatory

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 1999

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