Title: Linguist:
Author: Wolfgang Herbst - Max Niemeyer Verlag
Last saved by: Patrick Heinrich
Company: Max Niemeyer Verlag

Lexicon Grammaticorum     2.edition
Tōjō Misao

Tôjô Misao, b. 14. Dec. 1884, Tokyo. d. 18. Dec. 1966, Tokyo; pioneer of Japanese dialectology.

Born in Tokyo’s Asakusa district in 1884, T. studied National Literature and Lang. at Tokyo Imperial Univ. between 1907 and 1910. He worked as a part time employee at the Commission for Investigation into the National Lang. (Kokugo chôsa i’inkai) between 1910 and 1913. Afterwards, T. worked mainly as a high school teacher in Hiroshima and Shizuoka before he was appointed prof. at Gakushûin Univ. Tokyo in 1932. From 1942 onwards, he also taught courses on dialectology at Tokyo Imperial Univ. After the establishment of the National Institute for Jap. Lang. (Kokuritsu kokugo kenkyûjo) in 1948, T. assisted the institute as councilor. 
Although T. was at first deeply interested in natural sciences, particularly in natural history, he initially focused on Jap. literature upon enrolling at univ. He became drawn into lings. after attending the lectures of Japan's first western trained linguist, Kazutoshi Ueda, who stressed the importance of dialectology within lings. and deeply impressed T. by his highly scientific approach to the study of lang. Ueda later employed T. at the prestigious Commission for Investigation into the National Lang. where he was assigned to contribute to the analysis of data on Jap. dialects which had been collected in some 900 cities and villages throughout the country. It was during these early years after graduation that T. wholeheartedly turned to the study of Jap. dialects, the study of which he continued to pursue throughout his whole life.
Due to a reorganization of state bureaucracy in 1913, the Commission for Investigation into the National Lang. was dissolved before the analysis of the dialect data was completed. Nonetheless, T. continued to work with a number of collaborators on the material and compiled several hundred dialect maps which were unfortunately lost in the fires following the great Tokyo earthquake in 1923. Such misfortune notwithstanding, his early work led T. to devise his divisionist theory of Jap. dialects which exerts authority in Jap. dialectology up to today.
His first classifications published in the early 1920s, made a tripartite division of the national lang. (kokugo), dividing it into the eastern and the western dialects on the main island Honshû and the dialects of the southern island Kyûshû. This partition, as well as his further sub-divisions, closely reflected established regional conceptions in Jap. geography.
From 1927 onwards, T. included the varieties spoken in the Ryûkyû Islands, close cognates to Jap. which had split off from Jap. at some point between the 3^rd and the 7^th century, into his treatment of Jap. dialects. Subsequently, he first divided the national lang. into two greater dialects (dai-hôgen), the Ryûkyû or Okinawa dialects and the main island dialects, in spite of the fact that both greater dialects are mutually unintelligible. T.'s inclusion of the Ryûkyû varieties under the rubric of national lang. reflects patriotic attitudes widespread in Jap. lings. at that time. His definition of dialect and nation was dialectical in the way that he defined the boundaries of the national lang. by the borders of the Jap. homeland (naichi). As a consequence, all linguistic varieties spoken in the homeland, the typological Ainu varieties aside, were a priori classified as dialects of the national lang. Criticism on T's inclusion of Ryûkyû varieties into the national lang. was pointed out relatively early by scholars of Okinawa studies such as C. Kinjô who stressed that a cognate relationship between two lang. is a diachronic concept whereas that of a dialectological relationship is synchronic. Such criticism notwithstanding, T.’s classification of Jap. dialects was never seriously challenged and he continued to elaborate on his dialectal divisions which became increasingly refined and accurate over the years.
Analysis and classification of data aside, T. was actively involved in numerous field studies conducting his first field work as a young high school teacher in Hiroshima Prefecture. T. was furthermore among the first to have conducted linguistic field work in the remote Ryûkyû Islands. He combined synchronic description with geographical consideration which he interpreted historically in his extensive works on Jap. dialects. His approach to dialects was thus half diachronic half synchronic. This direction of lang. study was a result of the combination of his own divisionist theory with the theory of concentric circles promoted in Japan by folklore scholar Kunio Yanagita. In essence, T.’s approach to dialectology supported the view according to which all innovation originated at the political and cultural centre and spread from there to the peripheries.
T.’s second most important involvement in the field of Jap. dialectology was his contribution towards the standardization of methodological guidelines for the gathering and description of data. Due to his authority in the field of dialectology they quickly met wide recognition allowing, as a consequence, for comparison of data collected in independently conducted surveys. In order to classify dialects T. relied on three levels of description: phonology, word-formation and lexicon. Beginning from the 1930s, he started to include accent into his analysis of phonology. Such comprehensive study of dialects aside, his treatment of phonology and particularly morphology remained little developed. It expanded only in the 1950s when a new generation of Jap. dialectologists, most of them trained under T.’s guidance, started to incorporate Neo-Bloomfieldian structuralism into T.’s methodology.  
T.’s influence on the lang. attitudes of the Jap. public, the study of Jap. and the development of Jap. Lings. is huge. He has authored several widely used school textbooks for national lang. education and has successfully directed attention to peripheral dialects. He vigorously promoted a study of Jap. which included all regional dialects. T’s ideas and views have influenced several generations of Jap. dialectologists and his work continues to be referred to in many publications. Any university course on Jap. dialectology will at some point inevitably touch on his divisionist theory. The fact that dialectology has always received great attention in Jap. lings. since the early 1930s and that university courses, publications and broadcasts on dialects enjoy a popularity in Japan unknown to many western countries is partly due to the continuous influence of his work.  
Linguist's works:
(1923): Nantô hôgen shiryô, Tokyo (^21930, ^31969). (1927): Kokugo no hôgen kukaku, Tokyo (^21966). (1927): Dai-nihon hôgen chizu, Tokyo. (1928): Hôgen saishû techô (^21950), Tokyo. (1932): Hôgengaku no gaikan, Tokyo. (1937): Hôgengaku, Tokyo. (1937): Kokugo no akusento, Tokyo. (1938): Hôgen to hôgengaku (^21944, ^31949), Tokyo. (1950): “Hôgen shûken-ron to hôgen kukaku-ron”, Kokugogaku 4, 1-12. (1953): Hôgen to kokugo kyôiku, Tokyo.
Literature:
Doi, T. (1977): The Study of Language in Japan, Tôkyô. Heinrich, P. (2002): Die Rezeption westlicher Linguistik im modernen Japan bis zum Ende der Shôwa-Zeit, München. Kinjô, C. (1944): Naha hôgen gaisetsu, Tokyo. Koyama, W. (2003): Language and its double. A critical history of dialects, languages and metalanguages in Japan, Chicago (Diss.). Osa, S. (1998): Kindai nihon to kokugo nashonarizumu, Tokyo. Sanada, S. (1999): Tenbô. Gendai no hôgen, Tokyo. Sanada, S. (2000): Datsu-hyôjungo no jidai, Tokyo. Shibata, T. (1958): Nihon no hôgen, Tokyo. Tokugawa, M. (1991): Shin-hôgengaku o manabu hito no tame ni, Kyoto. Yasuda, Toshiaki (1999): ‘Kokugo’ to ‘hôgen’ no aida, Kyoto.

Patrick Heinrich

1. Correction	17.12.2003	page