Japanese Language Nationalism and the History of Japanese Language Education in Postwar Japan : A Historiographical Review

This paper aims to review previous research on linguistic nationalism, especially before the war. Through this review, I showed the issues which the research on linguistic nationalism after the war should address. Sakai(1996) and I(1996) described how the Japanese language had been constructed as a unified entity and how the Japanese language had contributed to create an image of Japan as a unified entity. Research subject of Yasuda (1997) and Komagome (1996) is the role of Japanese language education in the imperialistic government system of Japan. According to Komagome, Japanese language education played a role which hid a legal discrimination between Japanese and non-Japanese. Because Japanese language education was the system which made non-Japanese believe they could assimilate to Japan if they got Japanese language competence. In reality, however, Japanese institutions as a whole, never intended them to assimilate. Research on linguistic nationalism after the war should follow the above-mentioned research, ascertaining whether the Japanese langugage education system has continued to play the same roles as the previous research showed