Customer Reviews

Historical Grammar of Japanese

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Why "tentative"? Because I am not convinced that Sansom's Historical Grammar is of no further interest or use to students of Japanese literature just because, like so many other classics, it has been tossed aside by later generations in their mad pursuit of cutting-edge modernity, the common feature of whose manifestations (such as the recent comparative literature critical jargon) would seem to be that they be presented as opaquely as possible. Sansom's Grammar, by contrast, was written in clear, literate, unpretentious English which is still a pleasure to read. Modern research has doubtless solved some earlier usage riddles, but have the advances been so great as to completely discredit Sansom's pioneer work? Time will tell, but I doubt it. . . Oxford Clarendon Press produced the first edition in 1928, with reprints in 1946 and 1960 lithographically "from corrected sheets of the first edition." The current 1995 Curzon reprint appears to have been reproduced directly from one of these.

After an introductory 68-page historical overview of Japanese language usage, Sansom discusses the various parts of speech and their usages over time, chapter by chapter -- II. The Substantive, III. Predicative words, etc. He avoids introducing the traditional labels for "bases" (mizenkei, renyokei, shushikei, etc.), but he does provide a table (p. 50) in which the structure is clearly present, although not in the traditional order, and he provides his own English equivalents for the Japanese distinctions. Harold Henderson's Handbook of Japanese Grammar [Houghton Mifflin, 1943] retained many of the English equivalents while introducing the Japanese nomenclature and restoring the traditional order, which was then adopted by Ivan Morris's Dictionary of Selected Forms in Classical Japanese Literature (1966). It should be noted that the traditional structures and distinctions for analyzing Japanese grammar are still employed in standard Japanese dictionaries and grammar books published today, and learning them first in an English context provides a convenient bridge both to dictionaries of contemporary usage (kokugo jiten) and classic usage (kogo jiten). But the Henderson and Morris dictionaries are also things of the past. I cannot imagine how this material is taught today, if at all. But I am convinced of one thing -- that newer is not always better.

If you find the price of the reprint a bit steep, you might consider going for a used copy. For the most part I have been quite satisfied with used copies ordered online.

It can be fun as a change to flip through a book about learning Japanese a long time ago. You'll always find something interesting, if you're that kind of person. If you are not that kind of person, skip this book and review :)

My primary interest is learning to speak and write modern Japanese, but I'm also interested in history. I find it useful to have some old books to flip through as well. I read them in a different way, but they can still be useful. This book is impressive in its modern style of writing. There is a long essay in the beginning about kanji and the language and it reads very well even in 2010. That is not always the case with old books. The discussion on usage of different pieces of vocabulary is interesting. Naturally, only if you have the historical interest. But it does enlighten your knowledge about the language today.

I've only used the first edition so I don't know anything about the later editions. You should probably check out how major those revisions have been.

I only give the book four stars because everything is written in romanji (except some characters in the introductory essay). I know that used to be the standard, but it does detract a bit of the value. In

I don't know anything about the quality of this reprint edition.