CopyRight YANABU Akira
CopyRight YANABU Akira
§２. 個人 （kojin, individual）
−Fukuzawa Yukichi's struggle against language
Individual is translated into Japanese kojin (個人) today, the source of which seemed to be in "Eika jiten (English-Chinese dictionary)" which appeared even in Japan in the last days of the Tokugawa era. In R.Morrison's * "Eika jiten"(1822), individual was substituted for '単 (one), 独 (single), 単一個 (one being)', and instances as follows: 'There is but a single individual there.' This was translated into Chinese: '独有一個人在那処.' Here is kojin in the compound word ikkojin * .
In "Eika jiten" of Medhust (1847-48), individual was described as:
a single person, 単身独形, 独一個人, 人家, my individual self, 本身, individuality, 独者, 独一者
'Doku ikkojin' which was used by Fukuzawa Yukichi as explaining below,includes kojin in it. Next, in "Eika jiten" of W.Lobsheid (1866- 69), individual as adjective is interpreted; 'an individual person, ikkojin',and then, as noun, explained:
a single personal being, 独一个人, 独一者 an individual animal, 一隻獣
Herein, 个 (ka) is the same meaning as 個 (ko) which was succeeded to the description of Medhurst's "Eika jiten" mentioned above.
Looking at the interpretations above, it may look as if the translating word kojin seemed to have been straightly taken over from "Eika jiten" in 1820's to today, but it was not so plain in reality.
'Individual' was a word of quite difficulty to understand for Japanese people in those days, which was essentially the same as 'society. As I explained so far, individual and society are closely concerned each other. Before long when society was translated as shakai,individual was also going to be translated as 一個人 (ikkojin), from which 一 was soon taken off, it became to be 個人 (kojin). However, the same translating word shakai which could never work out the problem of translation of 'society', as 一個人 or 個人 were not rendering well the meaning of individual. 個 (ko) in 個人 is in Japanese grammar a sort of postposition of numeral, used when counting things 一個 (one ko of …), 二個 (two ko of …) etc. The meaning of 一個人 is therefore analyzed to be 一個 plus 人 in Japanese grammar, hence a compound word of 個人 cutting off 一 must have been curious or strange for Japanese.
Appearance of translating word kojin (個人) or ikkojin (一個人) can been seen to have given up to communicate the meaning of 'individual' with the meaning of characters, and to have rather escaped to coinage of Chinese characters of strange and scant meaning. The circumstances of kojin for individual may be similar to shakai for society.
issin no mimochi (the morals of a person)
In the time of the Meiji Restoration, individual was in many cases
translated as hitori (a person). In "Eiwa taiyaku shuchin jisho" (1862) put above, it was rendered as ittai * (a body), ichibutsu * (a thing), hitori * (a person). The noun of individual indicates either a person or a thing, of which we will mainly notice the former, which was put as hitori here. In "Waei gorin shuusei" (1867), translated as h'tori (a person), ichi-nin * (one person), and in "Eiwa jii"(1873), also hitori.
Now, when a Japanese translator was trying to render the writing of Western thoughts, he could anyhow notice the important role of the word 'individual' there. It may be natural for him hence to think it insufficient to translate this word into a Japanese 'hitori'. For instance, Nakamura Masanao wrote in his translation of "On liberty" mentioned above:
Of the limits to authority of nakama kaisho, sunawachi seifu # (a meeting of companion, namely government) over the jinmin kakko # (everyone of people)
What, then, is the rightful limit to the authority of the government over ikko jinmin # (the one of people).
In Mill's original text:
OF THE LIMITS TO THE AUTHORITY OF SOCIETY OVER THE INDIVIDUAL
What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? (J.S.Mill: On Liberty, 1859)
This is the heading of chapter four. The word individual is opposed to 'the authority of society'. The contrastive scheme of individual versus society, which is one of the fundamentals of Western thoughts, can be clearly seen here. Nakamura substituted 'nakama kaisho sunawachi seifu' for 'the authority of society', in this translating phrase 'seifu (government)' was included, on the other hand individual was contrasted to it and had to be equally opposed to this dignified being 'seifu'. Individual had to be also dignified to be suitable for this opposing situation. Hitori (a person) was week for this situation, while 'jinmin kakko (人民各個)' was imposing somehow or other because of being made of four characters. Nakamura translated individual in this book, as jinmin koko (everyone of people), jinmin ikko (one of people), jiko ikko (being oneself) etc. Every instance includes a word ichi, kaku or ikko expressing the meaning of hitori and it is interesting that everyone has imposing expression made of four characters.
Nishimura Shigeki * who initiated Meirokusha with Nakamura and Fukuzawa and tried to introduce Western culture, in "Meiroku zassi" in 1875 on the title of 'Seigo 12 kai * (Explanations of twelve Western terms)', in which he introduced F.Guizot's * "General history of
civilization in Europe" and wrote as follows:
He said hence that the civilization ought to be a state where both issin no mimochi # (the morals of a person) and nakama no kousai
(the intercourse of company) have sufficiently developed. The meaning of issin no mimochi implies the love of knowledge, sociability and charity and the cultivation of tastes. According to what these two intellectuals said above, the civilization appears in two ways, one is that of nakama no kosai and the other that of issin no mimochi.
In the original text, Guizot said that the two elements of civilization were society and individual as I explain below, nakama no kousai Nishimura said here thereby can be understood as society and issin no mimochi as individual. Nishimura also translated individual as jinmin kakko and so on succeeding Nakamura's translating words, while introducing the fundamental idea of Guizot's book in particular, he coined himself issin no minochi. On the cause of this coinage, he explained in a preceding sentence of the quotation above as follows:
Because people living in the cities, as opposed to those in the country, are intellectual, of good manners and of elegant mimochi (morals),……
That is to say, having thought of Guizot's idea in which individual was an important element of civilization, he seemed to have searched out of the original meaning of 'civilization' and put it as 'people living in the cities', the content of which he translated as mimochi in the Japanese context. Because the origin of the word 'civilization' was the noun form of the adjective 'civil' which derived from 'city'.
Issin no mimochi being thought thus seems to have taken chiefly in the phase of moral of the original meaning. But having felt the importance of the word individual, he strove to express it in the Japanese context, the effort of which may communicate to us today through this translation.
Fukuzawa Yukichi translated individual as hito * (person). He translated it in some cases hito in other cases hito ono ono * (every person), hitori no tami * (one of people), hito bito * (persons), jinmin * (people) and so
forth, almost every instance contained however a character hito.
These words may not seem to be translating words, but observing carefully his various translating words comparing with original Western texts, since his early work of "Seiyo jijyo (Western matters)" (1868), he had been trying to substitute individual that was imported from the far away world for Japanese 'hito'.
In his writing titled "On the liberty of oneself", which was written about in the beginning of the Meiji era though unknown when it has exactly written, there were a lot of parts translated from Wayland's #
"The Element of moral science" (1863). The followings are quoted from its source text and Fukuzawa's translation corresponding to it:
Every human being is, by its constitution, a separate, and distinct, and complete system, adapted to all the purposes of self-government, and responsible, separately, to God, for the manner in which his powers are employed. Thus, every individual possesses a body,…… (Wayland)
The personal being is supposed to be separated from others, to make oneself a complete system, to manage one's own body, to use one's own mental power and to responsible to ten * (heaven). Hence
every hito(person) has the body. (Fukuzawa)
Here individual in original text corresponded to hito in Fukuzawa's translation. However, hito being quite an ordinary word, it was often used other than when used as translating word of individual, while in European history individual had had its background of Western ideas different from 'person' or 'personal being'. It had been spoken through ideas as a human being toward God and as a being of the ultimate unit toward society. When reading instances of individual in Western books, translators cannot help feeling or at least vaguely feeling such philosophical backgrounds. Ikko jinmin, issin no mimochi and so forth somehow dignified words were consequently coined in those days. These were not equivalent to individual, but they made readers feel at least they could not be easily understood as ordinary Japanese words. Readers could not read them through. Having been not able to understand well, the readers must have felt that these words may have had somehow deep meaning.
On the other hand, Fukuzawa's translating word hito, ordinary Japanese readers could completely understand, however the different meaning of individual from hito all the more did not communicate to them. This was a week point when ordinary easy words were used for translation.
But such Fukuzawa's way of translation, while if it could not communicate some important meaning of individual, we should observe that it became to change the meaning of Japanese word, hito. Hito in Fukuzawa's translation began to create the new contexts Japanese language had never had. In the quoted writing above, hito (person) in relation with ten (heaven) which was substituted for God, expressed the idea of hito being responsible for ten, and existing alone, which had given the new meaning never known in Japan to this word hito. It was common to the famous phrase in the beginning of "Gakumon no susume": Ten created hito, neither above nor below another hito.
Fukuzawa Yukichi thought of translating word in a essentially different way from many Japanese intellectuals of the day. In "The complete works of Fukuzawa Yukichi, Preface" (1897), looking back his own way of translation, he described:
A friend of mine pointing out a word in a book asked me into what word this word was to be translated. It meant 'atehamaru *(apply)',
but translating it was very difficult. Though he had translated a lot of words, he grieved that in such case he didn't know what he did. Then I laughed and said to him that in spite of saying translating had been very difficult, he had already said an appropriate word for translation, 'atehameru' had been a proper and ordinary Japanese # and suitable translating word. If I were
he, I would have at once translated the source word with that Japanese. Generally speaking, why they only use squared characters $ when translating Western books?
Not using 'squared characters', but 'at once translated the source word with … Japanese', this was the principle of Fukuzawa's translation.
Thus translating with 'proper and ordinary Japanese', the result of this work was certainly the Japanese writing, with which the translator would think. On the other side, while the source text that should be translated expressed the new and heterogeneous ideas, it would be spoken through the way that had never expressed till then through
Japanese language. Then the translator, using 'proper and ordinary Japanese' as materials, devised to compose words and would create new relations in context, in which the meaning of 'proper and ordinary Japanese' would change; hito would begin to be an independent being in front of ten, and kousai to mean the equal human relations with a lot of people who could not be seen directly.
Why then, did not many intellectuals except Fukuzawa of the day translate in this way? Why did they mostly use 'squared characters'?
That is a quite deep-rooted problem in Japan, I will briefly outline it however. Here is a historical background; since ancient times for about a thousand and several hundred years, Japan has imported the advanced cultures of China and so forth through the Chinese characters of Japanese writing letters. Our country has been consistently a translation receiving country, in the words of advanced cultures that should be imported, there have been inevitably meanings which could not be translated into 'proper and ordinary Japanese', particularly so in important terms. Complete 'suitable translating word' Fukuzawa said above was, to tell the truth, not in the 'proper and ordinary Japanese'.Then translators entrusted the difficult meanings to the 'squared characters', such as were 'jinmin kakko', 'issin no mimochi' and so on
after all.
The problem of the consequence was that the meaning of these 'squared characters' did not become equivalent to that of individual, the meaning of which could not be derived from the characters themselves even if how eagerly looking at them or thinking of them. But so to speak, an arrangement was made that beyond these new words there was the meaning of original word, which was however made by the translator voluntarily, many readers could not understand it consequently. Owing to our long cultural tradition however, though the readers could not understand them, they could receive these words, feeling that there had to be some crucial meaning in such seemingly difficult Chinese characters.
Such sort of effect that Chinese characters in Japanese have, I call it 'cassette effect'. A cassette means a little box for jewelry, which attracts people even if they don't know what is in it. 社会 and 個人 were once words having this 'cassette effect', and for us even today to some extent.
Fukuzawa Yukichi would speak of the new and heterogeneous ideas through Japanese language living in Japanese daily lives, devising the ways of using words, by which he intended to change the meaning of words living in our ordinary lives, through which he would convert our real lives themselves. It was a difficult work, because every word used there was dragging the weight of real lives. This difficulty was quite different from the way relying upon 'cassette effect', that is, the way manipulating mainly only words.
Fukuzawa's way of translation was common to the way of handling words and thinking of issues in his writings other than his translation. In those days, when entire Japan was moving after the model of the Western civilization, intellectuals were inclined to speak to judge the Japanese reality presupposing the Western thinking way. While Fukuzawa
recognizing the advancement of Western civilization, on the other hand he always departed from Japanese reality and the words living in Japanese reality, then constructed these words and looked for future prospect.
"Bunmeiron no gairyaku * (General remarks on civilization)" (1875)
was his representative work of such thought. It was based on "General history of civilization in Europe" mentioned above as a fundamental model.Taking over from that Guizot had thought civilization as progress of society and individual, Fukuzawa may have opposed kuni (country) or kousai (intercourse) against hito (person) or jinmin (people), and thus constructed whole design of this book. These terms were thought to be the translating words of Fukuzawa's own style. Having extended the meaning of kousai, he analyzed the real circumstances in Japan through this term and lead up to a conclusion of 'kenryoku no hencho (partiality of power)' which I introduced in the preceding chapter. He still more eagerly explained 'partiality of power' in this book. He accused severely that the history had been so far but that of rulers, that of ruled had never been written yet, and religion and sciences had forgotten the situation of ruled and so on.
At the root of this reality, Fukuzawa found out the defect of hito that was 'independent and doing his own duty', because he was just the unit of 'kousai (intercourse)'. While 'partiality of power' had created 'two elements' of hito, namely ruler and ruled.
The more accurate and vigorous Fukuzawa's critique was, the more he became to be contrary to his fundamental way, because at last he had nothing to say but what was desirable wasn't in reality, into which corner he became to be driven. The future prospect of kousai in Japan was gloomy. In the end, Fukuzawa said:
'Personal intercourse' in Japan has been, since ancient times, divided into two elements, that of ruler and that of ruled, which had made 'partiality of power' till today. None among people has needless to say ever insisted his own right.… Warriors in the turbulent days were thought seemingly to be courageous, didn't know the spirit of doku ichi kojin * (a single being).
And this doku ichi kojin was in a few preceding lines described as:
Warriors in Japan having had no disposition of doku ichi kojin (injivijyuarichi), did not shame such dirty behavior.
This word was then intended to be used as translating word of
individuality. In Fukuzawa's writing appeared here uncommonly, word for word translation styled, namely 'squared characters' as he said himself.
Doku ichi kojin was also in the dictionary of Medhurst mentioned above. Fukuzawa may have referred to it. But this was such sort of Chinese characters as had been avoided by Fukuzawa so far, and was mostly different from that 'proper and ordinary Japanese'. Why did it appear here?
Fukuzawa's thinking came into collision here. Beyond his thinking he looked up to Guizot's idea that the appreciation of individual in European civilization derived from individualism in ancient German. Referring to it, Fukuzawa had pursued the same through Japanese words, kousai, hito and so on, which was impossible at last, idea of individual and the reality of Japan were too different.
At this collision of thinking, appeared the translating word of doku ichi kojin, which came out as if the difficulty of thinking could have been solved through this word, to the unknown meaning of which the succeeding problem was entrusted. That is to say, 'cassette effect' put above was expected, word is right, false is rather reality's side
−where the difficulty was seemingly worked out. It is the thinking way of deductive logic through translating word which have controlled Japanese intellectuals since that time till today.
Soon after this doku ichi kojin appeared, ichi kojin which had lost doku was used as the translating word of individual, and soon still more kojin (個人) which was lost ichi became used, and has been used till today. In this process, Fukuzawa Yukichi was one of the man who has used the word included kojin almost for the first time, he also used the translating word of 'squared character' of shakai (社会) almost for the first time, while he had dared to use 'proper and ordinary Japanese' of kousai. And with these 'squared characters', the deductive logic of 'cassette effect' appeared, which may have meant the setback of Fukuzawa's thinking at this period.
Looking at it on the other side however, it was the setback at the end of the grapple with Japanese reality, of the pioneer who had pursued through original thinking with Japanese language to a boundary.
In "Eika wayaku jiten (English-Chinese-Japanese dictionary)" (1879-81), written by Tsuda Sen etc. 'an individual person was rendered as ichi kojin, hitori no hito, which may have been lost doku from doku ichikojin when looking back the pedigree of the series of Eika Jiten. In 1881-84, Matsushima Go who was a scholar of English language translated H.Spencer's "Social satatistics", in which for instance:
The land shall not be possessed by ichi kojin, but by dai kaisha (a big company), namely shakai to be held.
Ichi kojin was substituted for individual and shakai for society. And soon, ichi being lost from ichi kojin, kojin appeared. Since then, the time would come when having looked at society or individual, not so being perplexed with their meaning, one can think to have solved the problems of meaning through applying translating words shakai or kojin. The time became rapidly moving, there was scarcely spare time to stand still and to be perplexed.
In "Futsuwa jirin (French-Japanese dictionary)" (1887) by Nakae Choumin's * Futsugaku Juku (the private school of the study of French),
individu was explained as ichi kobutsu # (one thing), ichi kojin etc., and individualisme was dokuritsu ha [ri] # (independent sect [philosophy]), dokuritsu ron # (independent theory). And after four years,in 1891, in the revised edition of this dictionary, individu was the same as before, but individualisme was described as dokuritsu ha , dokuritsu ron and kojin shugi # (individualism), thus kojin shugi was added.
Since those days, the word kojin became popularly used.
