The Language of Feminine Duty

Acknowledgements

Since finishing my graduate work, I’ve never stopped thinking about my research on women’s speech and language policy in modern Japan. At its core is a problem I call “feminine duties” that various institutional and societal pressures imposed on women for decades. I would have liked to complete this book sooner; nevertheless it provides me with great satisfaction to see it published now. I offer sincere thanks to Peter Lang Publishing for taking on this project and Meagan Simpson, Jackie Pavlovic, Naviya Palani, and Philip Dunshea for their guidance in the editorial and production process. I also give special thanks to Caitlin Adkins who worked with me to polish the manuscript. I thank the editorial board of the academic journals, The US-Japan Women’s Journal and Nihongo to Jendā [The Japanese Language and Gender], for their permissions to reprint revised sections of my previously published articles “Constructing and Gendering Women’s Speech: Integrated Policy of Language through School Textbooks in Meiji Japan” and “Was Women’s Speech Included in the Official Language Policy of Meiji Japan?–The Case of Kōgo Bunten, Guidebooks for Grammar in Spoken Japanese.” The issue of women’s speech is still active in the present day, and women’s speech may be currently undergoing a transformational change. I hope that this study will contribute to the ongoing discussion about gender politics and women’s language issues.

There are three major groups of people and institutions whom I wish to thank for their various kinds of support. First, I wish to thank Western Michigan University (WMU), the College and Arts and Sciences (CAS), and the Department of World Languages and Literatures (WLL), my home department, for their financial support. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my current and past department chairs, Vincent Desroches, Molly Lynde-Recchia, and Cynthia Running-Johnson. I could not have completed this project without their generous guidance and encouragement. I am also grateful to my WLL colleagues for their collaboration, dedication and friendship: Jeffrey Angles and Carlos Pimentel with whom I work every day in the Japanese section, and Peter Blickle, Olivia Gabor-Peirce, Rand Johnson, David Kutzko, Mustafa Mughazy, Viviane Ruellot, Vivan Steemers, Xiaojun Wang, Li Xiang, and Shu Yang, who do research and teach in five other language sections within the same department. I am also very thankful for many other departmental and WMU colleagues, especially Noriko Tanaka, Jinko Oyake, and Yumi Takahashi-Ede, who teach or have taught Japanese courses at WLL with me, and past and recent staff members Laura Large, Jen Morrow, Jenaba Waggy, Nancy Landsberger and Mathew Alonso. I am very pleased to have opportunities to work with many CAS colleagues who share with me their academic passion and diligence, in particular, the colleagues and staff at the Michitoshi Soga Japan Center: Steve Covell, Takashi Yoshida, Priscilla Lambert, Ying Zeng, and Michiko Yoshimoto, who are engaged in promoting Japan, and colleagues in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, particularly Cathryn Bailey and Susan Freeman, who supported my research on gender at every possible opportunity. I am grateful for having many WMU undergraduate students who major or minor in Japanese, or take Japanese for fun, and am especially thankful for the students in my 2008 advanced course who showed an interest in women’s speech issues.

I owe a debt of thanks to the professors, colleagues, and staff with whom I worked as a graduate student and junior faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and the University of Delaware, and also at institutions where I collected research materials and data. Thank you to Ayako Kano, Linda Chance, Kathy Uno (Temple University), and Lee Yeounsuk (Hitotsubashi University), who were my dissertation advisors and readers; to Harold Schiffman and Nancy Hornberger who taught me language policy research at graduate seminars; to William LaFleur, Victor Mair, and Liliane Weissberg who inspired me through their academic expertise. My gratitude also goes to Nancy Steinhardt, G. Cameron Hurst, Frank Chance, Hiroko Kimura Sherry, Tomoko Takami, and Yoko Makishima, who helped me when I taught as a graduate fellow in the Department of East Asian Cultures and Civilizations at Penn; and to my fellow and senior ←x | xi→graduate students and friends at that time: Max Dionisio, Jeff Graves, Michael Laver, Sayumi Takahashi, Nona Carter, Jiajia Wang, Jia Si, Kyoko Waseda-Hida, Denis Gainty, Robin Orlansky, Kate Baldanza, Krinstin Williams, Gavin Walker, Jen Criss, Chuck Anderson, Hilary Smith, Eli Alberts, Tom Radice, Sungshin Kim, Megan Tracy, Maki Isaka, Noriko Horiguchi, Yoshie Endo, and Seiko Yoshinaga. I am grateful for support I received from Richard Zipser, Monika Shafi, Mutsuko Sato, Chika Inoue, Mark Miller, and Mayra Bonet at the University of Delaware. Penn’s Van Pelt Library and Japan’s National Diet Library were the main places for the primary source documents. In addition, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to use archival materials for my research at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University and the National Institute for Educational Research of Japan Library of Education [Kokuritsu Kyōiku Kenkyūjo Kyōiku Toshokan].