文化の多様性と通底の価値
-聖俗の拮抗をめぐる東西対話-
服部英二監修

麗澤大学出版会

Cultural Dibersity and Transversal Values:
East-Weat Dialogue on Spiritual and Secular Dynamics
UNESCO版の目次は後半にあります。



目次
はじめに 廣池幹堂 1
開会の辞 松浦晃一郎 11
 
I 歴史に見る東西の出会い
儒教倫理と東アジアの近代化の精神 杜 維明 16
フランス政教分離原則(ライシテ)における文化移転の影響 ジャン・ボベロ 25
明治時代の日本におけるデウス如来とキリスト教への恐れ ハルトムート・O・ローテルムンド 33
仏教とキリスト教との深みにおける出会い 石上美智子 44
普遍主義と通底主義‥地球的視野でとらえた対話と対話学 マイケル・パレンシア=ロス 57
     
Ⅱ 対話の(担い手)と手段
文明間の対話の道としてのシルクロード 服部英二 76
社会システムと価値システム-対話の道の立役者としての遊牧文化 ジャック・ルグラン 83
シルクロード上の異文化間に通底する世界観について 森本公誠 96
異文化間の対話様式 フレッド・ダルマイヤー 107
真と善の文明から美の文明へ 川勝平太 118
     
Ⅲ 文化の多様性と価値の多元性
宇宙の視点から見た現代文明の新しい見方 桧井孝典 128
道徳理論の一基盤としての科学的人間概念 ヘンリー・P・スタップ 136
時間の概念‥循環的か直線的か? オドン・ヴアレ 143
稲作漁撈文明のエートスから見た持続可能性 安田喜憲 146
日本における、森と聖域 フランソワ・マセ 153
日本語を通してみる文化の違いと普遍性 佐々木瑞枝 165
     
Ⅳ 文化移転に見る現代性の影響
儒教的価値-近代ヨーロッパの誘因 ダニエル・エリセーフ 180
東アジアと共通価値の進化 キム・エルスー 186
和辻哲郎における「人間の概念」- 近代の存在論的トポスの限界を超えて オーギュスタン・ベルク 194
グローバリゼーションの時代における生活世界のムンディアリゼーション チヤ・インスク 204
キリスト教的価値と現代性-良心を讃えて フランチェスコ・フォロ 211
     
Ⅴ 多様な世界における通底の価値
平和な文化のための「和」概念の更新 山脇直司 222
なぜ「市民社会」だけでは充分でないのか アミタイ・エチオーニ 229
「神聖言語」ユーラシア文明における神聖・伝統的言語の重要性 ジャン=ノエル・ロベール 247
イスラムと知識社会 ムハメッド・ハシン・ファンタール 259
通底の価値の基盤としての相互依存のネットワーク 岩佐信道 270
     
最終公式声明   282
     
解題 服部英二 289
あとがき    
執筆者紹介    







Table of Contents

Opening Statement
by Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

1st Session: The East-West Encounter in History
Moderated by Jean Pierre Boyer, Secretary-General ofthe French National
Commission for UNESCO

 
The Confucian ethic and the spirit of East Asian modernity
by Tu Weiming
7

The impact of cultural transfers on secularism in France
by Jean Bauberot
14

Deus nyorai and the fear of Christianity in Japan in the Meiji period
by Hartmut O. Rotermund
20

Buddhism and Christianity: an in-depth encounter
by Michiko Ishigami
28

Universalism and transversalism: dialogue and dialogics in a global perspective
by Michael Palencia-Roth
38

2nd Session: Mediators and Means of Dialogue
Moderated by Katerina Stenou, Director ofthe Division of Cultural Policies
and Intercultural Dialogue, UNESCO


The Silk Roads as routes of dialogue among civilizations
by Eiji Hattori
53

Society systems and value systems: nomadic cultures as means and actors of dialogue
by Jacques Legrand
58

Views ofthe world common among various cultures along the Silk Road
by Kosei Morimoto
68

Modalities of intercultural dialogue
by Fred Dallmayr
76

Towards a civilization based on beauty, from civilizations based on truth and goodness
by Helta Kawakatsu

84
3rd Session: Cultural Diversity and a Plurality of Values
Moderated by Frangoise Riviere, Assistant Director-General,
Executive Office of the Director-General, UNESCO


A new view of the present civilization from the universal viewpoint
by Takafumi Matsui
93

Science's conception of human beings as a basis for moral theory
by Henry Stapp
99

Concepts of time: cyclical or linear?
by Odon Vallet
104

Sustainability as viewed from an ethos of rice cultivation and fishing
by Yoshinori Yasuda
106

Woods and sanctuaries in Japan
by Frangois Mace
111

Perspectives of language: cultural differences and universality in Japanese
by Mizue Sasaki
119

4th Session: The Impact of Modernity on the Transfer of Cultures
Moderated by Moufida Goucha, Chiefofthe Section of Philosophy
and Human Sciences, UNESCO


Confucian values: a catalyst for modern Europe
by Danielle Elisseeff
129

East Asia and the evolution of common values
by Yersu Kim
133

From Watsuji's concept of 'human' to beyond the limits of modern ontological topos
by Augustin Berque
138

The impact ofmodernization on the conservation of historical heritage in China
by An Jiayao
145

The mundialization of lifeworlds in the age of globalization
by In-Suk Cha
150

Christian values and modernity: in praise of the conscience
by Francesco Folio
154

5th Session: Transversal Values in a Diverse World
Moderated by Eiji Hattori, Deputy Director ofthe Research Center
for Moral Science, Institute ofMoralogy (Japan) and Charge de mission
to the Executive Office ofthe Director-General of UNESCO


Towards a renewal ofthe concept wa for the culture of peace
by Naoshi Yamawaki
163

Why the civil society is not good enough
by Amitai Etzioni
167

'Hieroglossia' : the importance of sacred traditional languages to the great civilizations of Europe and Asia
by Jean-Noel Robert
179

Islam and the Knowledge Society
by Mhamed Hassine Fantar
187

The network of interdependence as a basis for transversal values
by Nobumichi Iwasa

196
Final communique
205





Perspectives of language: cultural differences and universality in Japanese

Mizue Sasaki

Introduction

I will address the subject of the individuality and universality of language using the Japanese language by way of example.

 
 
Japanese makes frequent use of the expression okagesama de:

Goshujin wa ogenki desu ka('Is your husband well?')Okagesama de, genki desu. ('He's fine, thank you.') -Musukosan, gokekkon da soo desu ne. ('I hear your son is going to be married.')Okagesama de, yoi kata to kekkon dekisoo desu. ('Yes, thank you for mentioning it, he seems to have found a fine partner.')


It is difficult to find appropriate substitutions for these greetings in other languages.Okagesama de conveys the meaning of thanks when someone has offered assistance or kindness. Kage fromokagesama de refers to a sense of protection or shelter that we receive from great Shintoist and Buddhist deities.
When people use this expression to talk about marriage or how they are, it is an expression of thanks to God - in this case, to the many different gods and deities found in animism.
   In reference to the rediscovery of animism deep within various civilizations of the world, Eiji Hattori maintains that fertile delta regions of the western Pacific Ocean share the 'ethos of the rice-producing civilizations'. The expressionokagesama de has its very foundation in animism. The sense of gratitude it incorporates, despite being difficult to translate into English, is a universal expression of greeting we find throughout the world. The basis of the expression includes a feeling of gratitude for all things in nature and of co-existence with nature. Hideki Yukawa proposed the explanation 'nature creates curved lines, humans create straight lines'.Okagesama de is an expression of Japanese origin that has come down to us from ancient times and suggests the feeling of a 'curved line'.
   In Japanese, words of Japanese (wago), Chinese (kango) and foreign origins (gairaigo) co-exist.Kango words are associated with men's language,
whilewago are typically recognized as women's language. In the termokagesama de, a phrase of Japanese origin, notably feminine, expressing thanks to the gods of nature, we cannot help but feel the strong sense of 'women's principles' that are deep-rooted in the Japanese language today, more surprising when you consider that it is 'men's principles' that have supposedly advanced civilization.

Languages - civilized and uncivilized


Almost 3,000 different languages are used on earth today, and an equal number of peoples or ethnic groups speak these languages. However, official languages of United Nations Member States number only about two hundred. With the number of newly independent states increasing, so too is the number of official state languages. At this symposium, French, English and Japanese fulfil the function of common languages. However, I feel we should bear in mind that, in the name of the 'unity of civilization', the people of countries that use the 'major languages' are in a favoured position, while those that use so-called 'minority languages' have to continually adapt.
   The mistaken ideology of the development model for language, whereby major languages are 'civilized languages' and minority languages are 'uncivilized' ones, was passed on to Marxism after the French Revolution. The Japanese language has experienced a similar history. There have been proposals to replace Japanese script with the Roman alphabet or to replace the language itself with French or English. This might be perceived as a desire to replace an 'uncivilized language' with a 'civilized' one; a 'mother-tongue
pessimism' reflecting the climate of the time.

Japan's national language in a period of turmoil


From the final days of the Tokugawa Shoguriate into the Meiji Era, Japan entered a period of civilization and enlightenment, along with enhanced national prosperity and defence. It was proposed that the use of Chinese characters in written Japanese should be totally abolished, to improve the efficiency of education. The first person to officially address this question (in 1866), was Hisoka Maejima, who established Japan's postal service.
   In 1872, Yoshikazu Nambu submitted a written petition arguing that 'since it is possible in Western scholarship to read with only twenty-six letters, the national language should be developed using an alphabet that is easy to learn.' The thinker Amane Nishi also supported the proposal to use the Roman alphabet. There were also those, including the diplomat and educator, Mori Arinori, who believed that the Japanese language should be completely replaced
by English. Mori had studied in the United States and Britain, and from 1886 to 1 889 was Minister of Education in the first Ito Cabinet ofthe Meiji Era. If Mori had not been assassinated in 1889, one wonders whether Japan would have had English as its national language, just as several other Asian countries do.
   In 1946, prominent writer Shiga Naoya, announced in an article entitledKokugo Mondai (The National Language Question') in the magazine Kaizoo ('Transformation') that the Japanese language should be replaced by French:



I feel that Japan should boldly take the best language - the most beautiful language in the world - and adopt it, as it is, as the national language. The reason that I am considering French is that France is a country with an advanced culture; when you read French novels, you have the feeling that there is something that can be understood by Japanese people and when you look at French poetry, it is said that it has a style which is common to Japanese poetry, such aswaka and haiku and in this sense, I think that the French language would be most appropriate.


That the so-called 'patron saint of Japanese novelists' could propose replacing the national language of Japan with French suggests that Shiga, at that time, felt no pride in the 'beauty ofthe Japanese language'. From a present-day Japanese outlook, this desire to change the language that constitutes the very nucleus of its civilization suggests an almost inconceivable sense of loss of self-
confidence; an inferiority complex concerned about lagging behind civilized nations, or merely a desire to catch up with 'civilized' countries.

Characteristics of the Japanese language

The sound of Japanese



There are certain characteristics of Japanese that are peculiar to it. When Japanese people hear the ring of a telephone, they would most probably translate it asrin-rin, where English speakers would say 'ring, ring' and French speakers 'dring, dring'. This is an example of onomatopoeia that differs from language to language. It is not that Japanese ears are anatomically different, it is that there are differences in the ways various languages verbalize distinctive sounds. Japanese is rich in onomatopoeia and mimesis, with established aural rules.

Characters,Hiragana, Katakana and Romanized letters


Japanese is unique in its use of both vertical and horizontal writing formats and in the fact that it is a language in which ideographic characters (kanji or Chinese characters) and phonetic symbols (thehiragana andkatakana syllabaries) co-exist. Foreign borrowings are written inkatakana script and in many cases fill a linguistic gap when a word is lacking in Japanese. This feature of the language is easily recognized on the covers of Japanese magazines, where often, for example.



・ vertical and horizontal styles of writing intermingle
・ four different kinds of script are used -kanji (Chinese characters),hiragana,katakana and the Roman alphabet.
・ words of Japanese, Chinese and foreign origin are used for different purposes


   In European cultures, the reader's line of sight moves from left to right. With Japanese, the reader assesses the magazine cover as if quickly glancing at an illustration, moving from top to bottom, left to right. The Western approach to reading is linear, while the Japanese approach could be described as trying to comprehend the whole surface at once - a spatial style of reading, if you wish. One might say that the covers of Japanese magazines have the ability to impart understanding at a glance through the association of various kinds of information.
   Kress (2003) states that modern pluralistic societies use visual literacy to derive meaning from language as a form of 'linguistic design'. But while English and French, for example, can be written with a flair for the visual impact, and so can be read from the perspective of 'visual literacy', I would go further to suggest that, in Japanese society, without the 'visual literacy' perspective it would not be possible to read signs, magazine covers or newspapers. One could say that when Japanese read text, they unconsciously adopt a 'visual literacy' standpoint. Kress explains this difference by asserting that in Western culture, when you divide a plane into four, there is a consensus that in the top left quadrant you have the given/ideal; in the top right, the new/ideal, in the bottom left, the given/real and in the bottom right quadrant, the new/real. In the case of Japanese, however, there is a consensus regarding height when the writing is arranged vertically (high or low); regarding the use ofkanji (Chinese characters),hiragana,katakana and Roman script for different purposes; and regarding the use of words of Japanese, Chinese and foreign origins.
   One important thing to note is that 'spatial meaning', engendering mutual understanding, is created in the cultures of various societies. Magazine covers and the like could be said to represent a new style of grammar, restructured through the interaction of the writers (creators) and the readers. Just as in Hong Kong, where both Chinese and English are common languages, in Japanese you have the co-existence of vertical writing and horizontal writing. Kress (2003) introduces photographs of road signs taken before and after Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, on which the positions of the English and Chinese writing had been reversed. While this illustrates the transfer of authority, we can especially appreciate the importance of the viewpoint of 'visual literacy'. Although Kress merely touches on the difference in ranking order, it is my feeling that it is possible to feel the sense of authority and the consciousness of the people from the (positions of the Chinese being written vertically and the English horizontally.

Japanese Vocabulary


The Challenge of Translation

The Japanese language presents a challenge to those wishing to translate it into English, French or other languages. One can only imagine the trouble Seidensticker had in translating Yasunari Kawabata's 1948 novel,Yukiguni (in English,Snow Country), from Japanese - a language that does not express the subject. Here is a quote from the novel - the well-known opening sentence:



Kokkyoo no nagai tpnneru o nukeru to, yukiguni de atta. ('The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.')


The subject is absent in the Japanese. The reader understands that the subject is 'the train', without it having to be stated: leaving things unsaid is one of the characteristics of Japanese writing. However, when it comes to translating it into English, without the subject 'the train', the structure of the sentence breaks down. This is only the opening sentence of the novel, yet when you carefully examineSnow Country, you come across any number of instances where Seidensticker has provided subject words. It is often suggested that Japanese do not mention the subjects because they do not like to bring themselves to the forefront. However, I feel it is more to the point that Japanese is a guessing culture, one in which things are left unsaid, allowing the person addressed to fill in the gaps him- or herself.
    When you wish to decline a person's invitation in Japan, you only need to sayKyoo wa yakusoku ga atte... ('Well, actually, I have a previous appointment today...'). You do not actually say 'I can't make it'; the person being spoken to presumes that part. I have given this kind of usage, where the person addressed to has to guess some details, the namesasshi yoohoo ('the usage of conjecture or guessing'). When tackling a translation, it can be necessary to fill in details that in Japanese demand this 'usage of conjecture'.



Osewasama desu wa (Thank you for all of your help! ')


    The heroine ofSnow Country, Komako, uses this expression in the novel. The wa at the end ofthe sentence is a sentence-final particle used by women, and inSnow Country, these sentence-final particles appear frequently. While the different usages of Japanese, depending upon the gender of the speaker, is an interesting aspect of the language, recently there has been a convergence of male and female speech, with a decreasing frequency of sentence-final particles used by men such as zo and ze and those used by women, such aswa. Nevertheless, sentence-final particles characteristic of women's speech are still used in Japanese subtitles. When subtitles translate a modern American female astronaut, for example, as using the sentence-final particles you would associate with the speech of a much older woman, it never fails to draw a wry smile.
    Translated Japanese, from the point of view of language and gender, makes for an interesting research topic. One reason for this is that you do not have sentence-final particles in English, French or Korean. Unable to translate the sentence-final particlewa, Seidensticker adds 'she said' after Komako speaks. Even when a conversation between two people continues for some time, Japanese people are able to ascertain whether something was being said by the man or the woman, however, when translated into English, if it is not specified who is speaking at a particular time, the reader is unable to differentiate one speaker from the other.
    Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for Snow Country, however, if it were up to me, I would have awarded Seidensticker a Nobel Prize for the English translation. Such is the significance of this translation.

Japanese as a lingua franca - the example of mottainai

Many words in Japanese cannot be translated into other languages and so are used as they are. Besides the typical examples ofsukiyaki andsushi, I would like to introduce to you today the expressionmottainai ('What a waste! '). This was introduced as a slogan for environmental protection by Wangari Maathai, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Kenyan Vice-Minister of the Environment, at a session of the United Nations.
   Dr Maathai, born in 1940, is a Kenyan environmental activist. She was the first woman from East Africa to be awarded a doctorate and the first woman to become a professor at the University of Nairobi. On a visit to Japan, Dr Maathai was deeply impressed by the expressionmottainai, and became determined to publicize it to the world. At the United Nation session, Dr Maathai, brandishing a t-shirt emblazoned with the term MOTTAINAI, explained that the meaning of the termmottainai encompasses the four Rs of reduce, reuse, recycle and repair. She appealed to those in attendance - representatives of government and non-governmental organizations - to shout it out in chorus: 'Come on everybody, repeat after me - MOTTAINAI! ' Doctor Maathai made the case that we should all use limited resources effectively and share them fairly if we are to avert wars arising from disputes over natural resources.
   Japanese society has been inundated with throwaway goods since the 1960s. Things that can still be of use - personal computers, washing machines and air conditioners - models that may have become slightly outmoded, are discarded almost every day in garbage collection areas outside apartment buildings. Dr Maathai's focusing on the expressionmotttainaiwas truly a wonderful discovery on her part. The term expresses the sense of regret felt when a valuable person or thing is not handled with due respect, or when something has not been effectively made us of. This meaning covers 'sacred' or 'important' things and the context for this is the Japanese polytheistic way of thinking.
    Japan was a polytheistic nation before Buddhism appeared on the scene.Kami or deities are to be found everywhere - in the mountains, the rivers, the trees and the rocks. The Japanese expressionmottainai, I feel, includes a sense of respect for the favour of the many deities. There is a belief in Japan that within all things in nature, there dwells a deity, as well as in all manner of everyday things - from the cooking stove in the kitchen to the clothes on one's back. A great number of expressions of greeting in Japanese remind us of these deities. The expression of gratitude arigatoo ('thank you') originally implied a sense of 'rarity' - something 'curious' and 'precious'. In the Middle Ages, the expression took on the meaning of a sense of religious gratitude for the mercy of Buddha - something one has received which is precious and not easily obtained. In early-modern times, the termarigatoo assumed the more general meaning of 'gratitude' or 'thanks'. We can gain a clearer perception of the mentality of Japanese people from the etymology of Japanese greetings.

Towards a multi-cultural society


 The Japanese language, with its characteristic phonological and writing systems and spoken language has survived into the twenty-first century and has even produced expressions that are shared throughout the world. Nowadays, large numbers of foreigners live in Japan. In 2005, the number of officially registered
 foreign residents stood at 1 ,780,000. In large train stations in Tokyo, directions are posted in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, and it is not unusual to come across information in municipal offices written in various foreign languages.
   Florian Coulmas has described Japan as journeying towards becoming a multi-cultural society. With the numbers of foreigners living in Japan on the rise, Japan will have to tackle the problem of the nation's future language policy, while simultaneously addressing the question of minority groups.
   I would like to consider, once again, the statement 'the nucleus of civilization is the ethos and at its centre we have language'. What will become of Japan's 'language regime' in the future? As Japan comes to accept its multilingual society, with the society becoming steadily more multilingual, I feel that there will be improvement in the teaching of Japanese to foreigners, while the Japanese language-focused linguistic regime continues to develop.

References


 Kawabata, Yasunari. 1957.Snow Country. Edward G. Seidensticker (trans.).
  Tokyo, Charles E. Turtle Company. (Original in Japanese:Yukiguni, 1948,
  Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten.)
 Kress, G. 2003.Literacy in the New Media Age. London, Routledge.
 Pei, Mario. 1949.The Story of Language. J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia.

Biography


 Mizue Sasaki teaches courses in Japanese language and the theory of cross-cultural communication at Musashino University. She is an expert in the teaching of Japanese, and specializes in sociolinguistics.
Professor Sasaki is the 44th holder of the Cultural Award from Sankei Children's Publications, and is currently President ofthe Society for Gender Studies in Japanese. She has published many works on Japanese language and culture, includingGaikokugo To Shite no Nihongo [Japanese as a Foreign Language], Tokyo, Koodansha 1 994, now in its eighteenth edition, andThe Complete Japanese Expression Guide, Tokyo, Turtle Press, 1993.






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