This feature began with an overview and has read words like itoshi, haikara, hashi and kataoka, kotodama, and sakadaru in Orikuchi Shinobu’s lecture and paper. To close, we sort out how each is treated today.
Note that the “present treatment” in this article is a generally known summary of Japanese linguistics, not a one-by-one check of individual dictionaries or papers. To avoid overstatement, we separate what is firm from what is not.
A picture of meaning change that still holds — itoshi and haikara
That itoshi takes itou (“to shun”) as its root and originally had a sense near “unpleasant” is an idea ordinarily seen in classical-Japanese dictionaries. Orikuchi’s interpretation of being “pulled by itawashi” can be read as an easy-to-follow hypothesis explaining the process by which meaning moved.
That haikara comes from the “high collar” is still the usual explanation today. The movement of meaning from insult to praise is also widely told. Orikuchi’s telling includes details (who, which newspaper) not confirmed in other sources, but the general course of the change agrees with present understanding.
An observation later organized in other terms — sake → saka
The phenomenon of a word’s form changing inside compounds (sake → saka, ki → ko, hi → ho): Orikuchi’s point that it is “not mere sound change” was later organized more precisely in research on Old Japanese. It is understood to have been pursued, as research on the A/B sorting of Old Japanese kana (Type A and B), seen in the Hashimoto Shinkichi and Arisaka Hideyo features, advanced, as a phenomenon in which an independent form and a form within a compound alternate regularly. That Orikuchi, in his 1931 paper, took up this phenomenon and grasped it as a “rule” is of high value as an observation.
However, the part where Orikuchi explained the reason as “word roots being close to u-column sounds” was not carried on as it stood in later research, as Orikuchi himself says it is conjecture.
Read as hypotheses — ancient word order, the etymology of fuyu
Orikuchi’s theory that ancient compounds had a type with the main part first is a distinctive view. Reading hashidate and kataoka as examples of it is not necessarily widely accepted among later researchers. There are also views that explain hashidate otherwise, as hashi with date attached, and Orikuchi’s reading is one among them. In this feature we only read it as Orikuchi’s view.
One more example from Orikuchi’s paper. In “Gokon-ron no danpen,” Orikuchi considers the word fuyu (“winter”) to come from the fuyu of mitama no fuyu matsuri (the festival of “dividing/increasing the spirit”). This is interesting as an idea, but as an etymology of fuyu it is Orikuchi’s own conjecture among several theories. Orikuchi writes this explanation with conviction — “there is no doubt.” But there are several other theories of the etymology of fuyu, and Orikuchi’s cannot be treated as established.
A viewpoint of reading words within belief and life — kotodama
Orikuchi’s point on kotodama no sakiwau kuni — that it is not a phrase praising the beauty of language but one based on belief in a spirit dwelling in words — is a viewpoint still consulted as an attempt to pull the meaning of kotodama away from later rereadings and return it to its original context. That Orikuchi pointed out, from the form of the phrase, that “kotodama no sakiwau” is new in the Man’yōshū period is also an evidence-based argument.
But on the content of the ancient belief itself, as Orikuchi said “one cannot say flatly that it did not exist,” parts remain that can’t be settled.
What we can learn from Orikuchi
The certainty of Orikuchi’s word stories differs entirely from story to story. Even so, a consistent stance runs through his writing.
- Put words back into life and belief. (Kotodama, haikara) Read not from dictionary meaning but from the lives of the people who used the word.
- Find old rules inside familiar words. (Sakadaru) Ordinary words hold traces of old types.
- State the limits of conjecture yourself. (Gokon-ron) “Beyond a certain point, it inevitably becomes conjecture.”
From Shinmura Izuru to Orikuchi Shinobu
In the Shinmura Izuru feature, we saw an attitude of chasing the history of one word by documentary evidence and marking how far to assert. Orikuchi chased the same subject — the history of words — by an entirely different method: imagining ancient belief and life. If Shinmura was a man who staked everything on the firmness of evidence, Orikuchi was one who opened a new way of seeing Japanese through the richness of ideas. The two show that there are two contrasting roads to the same work of seeking a word’s origin.
Note that in this paper Orikuchi left a passage criticizing scholars who attack Dr. Kanazawa’s theory in the study of “the common origin of Japanese and Korean” (comparing Japanese and Korean). Kanazawa Shōzaburō we read in another installment of this “Modern Classics of Japanese” series.
Summary
| Verdict | Subject |
|---|---|
| Still holds | Itoshi (from itou), haikara (from the high collar): pictures of meaning change |
| Observation organized | sake → saka, ki → ko, hi → ho: the point that it’s “not mere sound change”; the reason offered is separate |
| A viewpoint consulted | Kotodama: an attempt to read words within belief and life |
| Read as hypotheses | Ancient word order (hashidate, kataoka), the etymology of fuyu, and other conjectures of Orikuchi’s own |
| The stance that remains | Read from life and belief; see old rules in familiar words; state the limits of conjecture yourself |
In a nutshell — Orikuchi Shinobu’s word stories are ones whose observations remain and whose conjectures are to be read as hypotheses. But the viewpoint of reading words within life and belief, and the stance of stating the limits of conjecture yourself, do not lose value even as the answers change.