Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

INOUE Tetsujirô’s view of multi-lingualism

 

Prof. Dr. Sanada Haruko, Rissho University, Tokyo spricht über:

"Japanese philosopher INOUE Tetsujirô’s view of multi-lingualism:

A reference to his diary and notebooks written during his study in Europe 1884 - 1890"

 

INOUE Tetsujirô (1856-1944) was the first Japanese teacher at the Seminar for Oriental Studies (SOS) of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin which was founded in 1887. Mori Rintarô Ôgai met him in Leipzig and in Berlin, where during their discussions on Buddhism and Christianity in Auerbachs Keller Ôgai promised Inoue to translate Goethe’s „Faust“. He kept this promise in 1913, hundred years ago.

 The works of the philosopher INOUE Tetsujiro  in the Meiji era are recently seen as important in the process of introducing and stabilizing new words in modern Japanese. The lecture focuses on how Inoue’s studies in Europe influenced the style and format of the third edition of Tetsugaku Jii (Dictionary of philosophy), a list of scholarly terms and one of Inoue’s best-known works. He wrote of discussions with English, German and French professors in his diary, and we can trace his foreign language studies through his notebooks. He insisted in his speeches and in his autobiography that it is very important to study several foreign languages if you study in Europe. It is thought that the multilingual style with English, German, French, Greek and Latin which Inoue employed in the third edition derived from his studies in Europe. Referring to his diary and notebooks written during his stay in Europe (1884 - 1890), it is discussed in the lecture how his view of multilingualism was developed.

 

Haruko Sanada (Rissho University)

真田治子 (立正大学)

Born in Tokyo, she earned her master degree (Japanese linguistics) and her doctorate (Japanese linguistics) from Gakushûin University in Tokyo. In 2005 she joined Saitama Gakuen University in Saitama where she was Associate-Professor from 2005 to 2008 and Professor in 2009. Since 2010 she is Professor of Rissho University in Tokyo. Her areas of scholarly interest are historical linguistics of Japanese from the Meiji era (1868 - 1912) to the present, lexicology, and statistical methods in linguistics. She is the author of Investigations in Japanese Historical Lexicology (2004, 2008), and currently an editor of the Journal of the Study of Japanese Language and Literature (文学語学).