The Meiji period brought with it a massive upheaval of the written language. The Meiji government decreed Tokyo-Japanese to be the standard, the writing system was reconsidered, and the vocabulary exploded with new concepts. However, there was one important movement that brought the written language into the modern day: genbun itchi.
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ToggleWhat is Genbun Itchi?
Genbun itchi (言文一致) is a movement that refers to the concept of the unification of the written and spoken language. As previously mentioned, the writing and spoken forms of the language had been diverging for centuries. As the malleable spoken form evolved, the rigid written form did not. By Meiji, they had differed to the point where special training was required to be able to write. The Genbun Itchi movement arose in order to bring literacy to everyone.
These two forms are differentiated in Japanese by the following two terms: bungobun (文語文) refers to this classical writing style (the mixed kanji and kana writing style, NOT kanbun or washiki-kanbun), and kōgobun (口語文) refers to spoken Japanese.
A Short History of Written Japanese
If we look back to when the spoken and written forms were the closest together, we have to go all the way back to the hiragana-written texts of the Heian period. The hiragana-writing of these nobles was in an oral style and eschewed some of the stuffier forms found in the written style.
However, as we enter the Kamakura period, a gulf starts to develop. Or, rather, as the spoken language evolved, the conservative written language almost completely stayed the same. After all, a language can be more easily preserved if it is written down. Not only this, the fact that writing was an activity restricted to mainly the elite class could have prevented any major changes.
By the Edo period, this difference was keenly felt. Those who wrote works in the kokkeibon and sharebon genres, which were targeted at the masses, wrote the vernacular ad verbatim. However, the low-brow nature of these works meant that they were very much an exception. The majority of written works were in bungobun. Kanbun was still used, but it had very much been replaced by the mixed kana and kanji written style in most cases.

At any rate, there were a number of differences between the written and oral forms aside from just grammatical issues.
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One of these was that written texts had a tendency to use specific vocabulary not present in spoken Japanese. Sometimes, this was kanji based vocabulary. Sometimes, it was poetic diction from the Heian period. On top of this, even the structure of writing followed the strict forms of translated kanbun or contained flowery styles mimicking old hiragana texts. Occasionally, everyday words were used. But from the grammatical structure down to the lexical choices, written Japanese was far different than its contemporary oral iteration.
In short, many felt the need to draw the two forms together. And thus the genbun itchi movement was born.
The first recorded use of this term was by Kanda Kōhei in 1885. Western scholars such as Kanda realized that western languages did not make a difference between their written and oral forms. If one wanted to bring Japanese to the masses, he reasoned, this disparity needed closing.
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The Beginnings of Change
Some of the Meiji oligarchs such as Fukuzawa Yukichi were keen to bring writing to the masses. Fukuzawa himself attempted to write as clearly as possible. The writing of many of the Meiji oligarchs was stiff; it almost seemed as if kanbun had been translated into Japanese. By contrast, Fukuzawa’s writings were written clearly and were, as a result, very successful.
Among his hits was the book Recommended Learning (gakumon no susume). Interestingly enough, there are two versions of the first part of Recommended Learning. One used katakana – the other, hiragana. Fukuzawa recommended the use of hiragana.

Certain grammatical forms of bungobun remained in Fukuzawa’s writing. In general, however, Fukuzawa helped push written Japanese towards a far more widely comprehensible state. Fukuzawa’s ideals about a Japanese that was understandable by all was a key tenet of the genbun itchi movement.
A Difficult Path
However, although the concept seemed simple enough, it was not a smooth transition. There are two posited reasons why it was so hard to unite the spoken and written forms. The first is the idea that centuries of feudal hierarchy was so ingrained into the populace who were thrust into a new era. The elites had benefited from possessing knowledge the lower classes did not, and they did not wish for education to spread throughout the former lower classes. They wished to maintain the status quo, for that meant that their position of power would remain unchanged, even if society was supposedly equal on paper.
The second possible reason is the leveled nature of the Japanese language. During oral speech, one is always speaking to another person or party directly, and so changing the register of one’s speech is necessary. However, in a neutral text with an unknown reader, the question arises of what register should be used. What pronouns should be used, what level of honorific language is required, how should one’s sentences end (文体; buntai) – there was a lot to consider in making the transition from spoken words to paper.
A Solution Through Literature
As a form of written material accessible by a wide readership, literature acted as a vessel to help bring about genbun itchi. Futabatei Shimei was an author and key proponent of genbun itchi. However, while penning his first work, he was unsure in what style to write in and so consulted his good friend and author Tsubouchi Shōyō. Tsubouchi’s suggestion was that Futabatei should try and emulate in his writing the style San’yūtei Enchō’s rakugo performances. Renowned for being the father of the revival of Meiji rakugo, San’yūtei’s performance of the ninjō-banashi genre Kaidan Botan Dōrō was published in 1884 (in an edition dictated by Wakabayashi Kanzō), and in its foreword, Tsubouchi praised the work for how even though it was full of supposedly low-brow colloquialisms, each sentence, each word was full of life. It proved an invaluable example of how spoken speech could be replicated in writing. Most importantly, unlike Ukiyoburo, it also proved an example of how this oral speech could be used for narrative sections, not just dialogue.

(Source: http://ranshi2.way-nifty.com/blog/2011/08/post-f751.html)
And so Futabatei followed San’yūtei’s advice and wrote Ukigumo (Floating Clouds), first published in 1887. Ukigumo was a groundbreaking novel in that it was written completely in an oral style following oral grammar. He debated on what type of speech to use, in the end he decided not to use the more formal “desu” but instead use the non-honorific “da” – a decision backed up by Tsubouchi. Ukigumo was a success, most likely in part due to the decision to write in a vernacular style, and is now regarded as Japan’s first modern novel.

These decisions were not exclusive to Japanese writing. Translated literature was often written in a stiff style that felt as if it had originally been written in kanbun. However, using what he had learned in writing Ukigumo, Futabatei translated literature from Russian in this oral style, translating works that seemed as if they had been written in Japanese first. Futabatei helped to revolutionize the translation landscape as well as the literary one.
Of course, it wasn’t just Futabatei who was attempting to revitalize written Japanese. Another author Yamada Bimyō, famous for penning many works of historical fiction, also received influence from San’yūtei Enchō. He was a huge proponent of genbun itchi. His 1887 novel Musashino received attention for its oral style, and he even penned the Outline of Genbun Itchi Theory in 1889.
Yamada experimented with different registers of voices in his novels. In Japanese, there are a number of different sentence-ending forms – the most common nowadays being desu for polite situations, and da for casual ones. But there are more, including de gozaimasu, de arimasu, de aru, etc. Futabatei used “da” for the narrative sections in Ukigumo. But when Yamada wrote Kochō, he thought this would be too bland for this work. In the end, he settled for “desu”, which perhaps was aided by the fact that this was a historical novel. It was clear that authors of the time were experimenting with the different ways of choosing to write. This playfulness helped push the genbun itchi movement slowly forward.
Setbacks to the Movement
Although Futabatei, Yamada, and other authors worked towards a united oral and written Japanese, there were those who opposed it. Works such as Kōda Rohan’s Fūryūbutsu and Mori Ōgai’s Maihime used the traditional written form of Japanese, But instead of littering it with Chinese-based vocabulary, they instead used traditional Japanese words (such as those found in the Manyōshū). Smattered with praise, this flowery bungobun gained a new prominence in the face of the more banal oral style.
In the general written world, there were also calls to adopt futsūbun – a style that also used the bungobun written style but freely used common kanji words and colloquialisms. In the late 1880s, Hagino Yoshiyuki, a famed literary scholar, and Sekine Masanao devised an updated form of futsūbun called shin-wabuntai. Whereas it followed Heian grammar, the vocabulary used were words still in use in the Meiji period. Forming the Bunshōkai with others, they moved to promote this style of writing. Indeed, futsūbun was soon adopted by newspapers and textbooks.
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Written Japanese was undergoing a struggle as these two major sides fought between keeping bungobun as standard or updating the written language to be in line with spoken Japanese through genbun itchi.
Breaking the Deadlock
The genbun itchi movement was struggling. However, the deadlock was broken by the author Ozaki Kōyō.
Ozaki originally derided genbun itchi, claiming bungobun had more beauty, and was at odds against people like Yamada Bimyō. However, he eventually realized that bungobun does not allow the narrative and dialogue sections to gel together. He believed a work came to life through the harmony between dialogue and narration. This change of heart was so drastic that he even began writing in the oral style midway through the serialization of his work Ninin Nyōbō.

As previously mentioned, other authors had attempted various types of sentence endings – the aforementioned da, desu, and more. Ozaki decided to emulate Hirotsuri Yūryō and use “de aru.” He polished this style over the course of his novels. Other authors, including Yamada, followed suit and used the de aru form as well. De aru was, ultimately, the form that allowed genbun itchi to break the deadlock with bungobun.
What is ‘de aru’?
Although common now, de aru was not as ubiquitous during the Meiji period. In the past, it had an official air, being used in lectures by Edo period scholars. During the Meiji period, scholars used it in the translation of European writings. It was not a style used in daily life.
So why did de aru helped to break the deadlock in the genbun itchi debate? The reason is that all other sentence- ending forms have a natural bias to the reader. Desu, de gozaimasu, da – none of these were truly appropriate in capturing an objective voice. On the other hand, due to its roots in being used in lectures and similar scenarios, de aru lacked the subjectiveness of these other forms. It was perfect for relaying an objective voice.
Many people had qualms with genbun itchi not sounding objective enough. The de aru form resolved this issue. Thanks to this choice, the genbun itchi movement gained more prominence.
Outside of Literature
Outside of the literary sphere, however, it took a longer time for genbun itchi to take root.
The Genbun Itchi Kai was formed in 1900 within the Imperial Education Association. The group succeeded in convincing officials that textbooks should be written in an oral style. This began with Jinjō Shōgaku Dokuhon in 1903. By 1910, it had reached all educational materials. The group, its mission accomplished, disbanded in the same year.
As earlier mentioned, newspapers were against genbun itchi. But in 1921, well into the Taishō period, the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun were the first to adopt it. The Asahi Shimbun following the next year – a change which took all the major papers into the oral style.
Government documents, however, have a far more checkered history. Until Meiji, they were all written in kanbun or kanshiki-wabun, and the Meiji elite decided to put an end to this centuries-long tradition. In implementing the kana and kanji mixed style, it inched closer to modern Japanese, however it was still very distant from contemporary spoken Japanese.

Unfortunately, it took far longer for the government to adopt genbun itchi. Governmental documents revised weren’t revised until after World War II. The genbun itchi movement, from its conception, took over 80 years to fully accomplish its goal.
Conclusion
Thanks to genbun itchi, anyone can write freely and easily. Indeed, thanks to the sentence end forms, it is also possible to freely express one’s level of respect etc while doing so, and with it, allows for one’s own personality to shine through in writing as well as speech. The genbun itchi movement revolutionized Japanese writing and brought an unrestricted method of writing to one and all.
Sources
Yamaguchi, Nakami, Nihongo no rekishi, 29th edn., (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2019)
Britannica, Ozaki Koyo, Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ozaki-Koyo
Suzuki, Tomi, Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JUIlTzPhItgC&pg=PA44&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
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