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The study of language in Japan: A historical survey . By Toshio Doi. pp. [xi], iv, 355. Tokyo, Shinozaki Shorin, 1976.

In this fascinating survey of linguistic scholarship in Japan, Toshio Doi, himself a Professor of English linguistics and an authority on Celtic languages, provides us with a real insight into the history of ideas in his country. From the time of the first contacts with the Portuguese in the 16th century, Japanese scholars have applied themselves to the study of foreign languages, often under extremely difficult circumstances. After Portuguese came Dutch, which played an important part in the Meiji Restoration. Then came English, bringing with it Victorian ethics, Samuel Miles's philosophy of industry and imperialism. The impact of English has been by far the greatest, leaving its mark on the Japanese language in the form of hundreds of loanwords, but the discussion of Japanese contacts with Russian, French, and German are equally interesting. Doi also deals in some detail with those Europeans, from the Portuguese missionaries on, who either studied Japanese or taught their own languages to Japanese students. The author is quick to point out that in the field of linguistic theory, the Japanese have been avid students rather than innovators. Virtually all the main schools of Western linguistic thought have been studied in Japan: the British influence of Sweet and Jones, the Prague School represented by Trubetzkoy, American structuralism, and more recently transformational-generative grammar. The main contributions of Japanese scholars have been in their application of Western linguistic techniques to the study of their own language, Okinawan, Ainu, the native languages of Taiwan, Manchu-Tungus, and others. There is also a long tradition of Buddhist scholarship in Japan and Japanese scholars have always been in the forefront of Sanskrit studies. In attempting to cover such a broad field Doi's treatment of individual contributions is necessarily limited, with the result that at times the text becomes little more than lists of unfamiliar works by scholars little known abroad. It is unfortunate, too, that as the emphasis is on Western linguistic influences we learn little of the beginnings of a native tradition of study in the Japanese language. Nevertheless, this is a very well researched, minutely documented, and interestingly illustrated study of the entire range of language scholarship in Japan. The book contains much of interest to the general reader and the footnotes, bibliography, and index with names and titles in both romanized and Japanese script make it a useful reference book for specialists.