Integr Psych Behav (2010) 44:156–161

DOI 10.1007/s12124-010-9122-y
C O M M E N TA RY

How Japanese Language Has Been Used

and Transformed—Focused on Social-cultural
Context and the Use in Communication

Tomoo Hidaka

Published online: 17 April 2010

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract In this paper I address that flexibility and vagueness of mimic word,
especially Gitai-go, can provide the communication with tension leading us to the
continuous process of meaning construction, focused on the history of Japanese
characters as the core of mimic words. I present that Hiragana, as the character for
Gitai-go, was started to use by people viewed as of no public authority such as
women at that time while Kanji had a position as an official characters. As unofficial
character, Hiragana was received and transformed by common people as the
character which is more flexible and vague suited to express persons’ experience
than Kanji. Most of Gitai-go is written in Hiragana, and people can also create
original and personalized one based on their experience. We can be driven by
necessity to search the meanings of Gitai-go when we meet unknown one, through
its vagueness. This undifferentiated nature and indefinite feature of Gitai-go provide
us with tension of communication.

Keywords Mimic words . Japanese language . Social-cultural context . Gitai-go .

Continuous meaning construction

In his paper ‘How signs function in the process of meaning construction: An

exemplification from Gitai-go in the Japanese language’, Komatsu (2010) discusses
the semiotic function of mimic words in Japanese which enable us to create diverse
form of meaning construction, through its flexibility and vagueness. The article also
implies our personality can be described and communicated by these words.
Two premises are important for his contention: first, Gitai-go, as one subtype of
Japanese mimic words, is “vivid in sense, vague in meaning” in relation to Kanji
expression which is very important to determine the meaning of words in the
Japanese language; second, the characteristics of mimic words lead the process of
meaning construction to continuous diffusion rather than elaboration of it.

T. Hidaka (*)
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
e-mail: [email protected]
Integr Psych Behav (2010) 44:156–161 157

The first will become clearer considering the history of mimic words including
Gitai-go. Every word in each language has not only lexical meanings but also social-
cultural background of how people have used and transformed it. In Komatsu
(2010), it is mentioned that athletes and pregnant women may create new Gitai-go
words based on their physical state. We need to emphasize that words or expressions
are in the midst of ongoing processes of transformation, and to know how people
have established and transformed them in history. The second is how the relationship
of the structure and functions in communication can be investigated in the case of
Gitai-go. Thus, we need to consider the history of Japanese language to argue
Komatsu (2010)’s discussion in detail.

Origin of Japanese Characters: “Hiragana”, “Katakana”, “Kanji”

The feature of the mimic words including Gitai-go in writing expression is in the
difficulty to write them with Kanji which plays very important role to determine the
meanings of the word. Japanese notation system uses three types of characters,
“Kanji”, “Hiragana”, and “Katakana”—these can co-occur even in one sentence.
Today, it is considered that role and feature of each type of character are summarized
as follows. Ideographical Kanji charaters were more formal and abstract in their
meaning and used in official documents. Phonogrammic Hiragana characters are
originally formed from Kanji characters and were used for unofficial documents.
Another type of phonograms, Katakana characters mainly express the sound of the
words. It is used to write the word of imitation sound called “Gion-go”, and also
used for showing the things which is difficult to be replaced by the concept in
Japanese such as the name of foreign people.
According to Kabashima (1977), the history of introducing and transforming
Kanji from Chinese language begins in the 4th century. Before that time the
Japanese did not have the characters for representing the language, and Chinese
Kanji were the first characters for the Japanese. They needed to maintain continuous
and periodical communication with China, for learning the technology and fashion.
Geographically, China was very powerful important neighbor for Japan from these
ages. From this background, Kanji as the international language attained its
authoritative positions for official works such as diplomatic documents.
However, there was the problem how to combine specification of Japanese
language with Kanji, and people solved it by eighth century. Although Kanji became
the official way of writing, the characters were not enough to explain “the mind of
the Japanese” (Kabashima, 1977). The solutions were as follows: first, to
systematize the Japanese pronunciation of each Kanji so that people can use Kanji
as phonogram for representing original Japanese language; second they developed
new characters based on Kanji, for writing words which are difficult to present with
Kanji. These new characters are called “Kana”, an original version of “Katakana”
and “Hiragana”.
Katakana was made to write a pronunciation of Kanji, because of the necessity of
assistance for speaking and annotation for it. On this ground Katakana was required
to be combined with Kanji, and the form of Katakana is derived from a part of
Kanji. On the other hand, Hiragana is deformed and “easy style” of Kanji, and it
158 Integr Psych Behav (2010) 44:156–161

was started to use for writing unofficial documents such as in diaries and letters.
Both of them were established in around eighth and ninth century.
The important feature of Hiragana is that the character was used by people
viewed as of no public authority—such as women—at that time. It was not preferred
that women use or learn Kanji (Kabashima 1977). However, such women
accomplished great work in literature while they couldn’t take part in official,
political life. Subsequently men also tried to write unofficial documents by using
Hiragana, to inquire the richness of expression. One of the remarkable achievement
of that case is well-known diary/travel note named “Tosa-nikki” (reference?) written
by man of noble class background in the tenth century. He pretended to be a woman—
to get his use of Hiragana fitted with the expectations of his times. It is claimed that
the reason why he did so is to express his feelings and experiences more flexibly
than a male role—and writing in Kanji—would allow. Hiragana aimed to achieve
relatively free expression rather than precise communication (Sakakura 1989).
Hiragana also allows abstractions more easily compared to Kanji, therefore it
enables people to take another ways to express their experience freely and vividly by
constraining the stable meaning of Kanji (Kawabata 1975).
Komatsu (2010) mentions same features of vagueness and vividness, especially
pointing out that Gitai-go is written in Hiragana. When we focus on the historical
background of Gitai-go and Hiragana as its component, this kind of flexibility is
also worth noting. Because the vagueness which could open richer process of
meaning construction has been extended and restricted by particular social-cultural
context, and we also develop the study to following question—how have the
Japanese people dealt with—and transformed—the Gitai-go? Although some
research shows general picture of how people have used and dealt with Kanji such
as literatures for common people were written in Hiragana in Edo era (from
seventeenth century to nineteenth century) (Kabashima 1977), and official
constitution of Kana orthography was established in Meiji era (late nineteenth
century), we need to focus on the micro history of change for studying the possibility
and limitation of the function.

Gitai-go and Hiragana in Their Social-cultural Contexts

Gitai-go has been transformed historically by its users. Yamaguchi (2002) points out,
in the study about Gion-go, the howling sound of dog was described “Biyo” in
Muromachi era (fourteenth century) while it is recognized as “Wan” nowadays. It
may make present Japanese people feel strange, because “Biyo” is very far from the
expression of dog’s howling as we see it now. Though this is not an example of
Gitai-go but a Gion-go, it implies the perception of world could be changeable
depending on the word we use. Briefly, the howling of the dog was perceived as
“Biyo” by the people at that time, same as now people feel it as “Wan”.
As mentioned above the way of expression has been changed, but the use of
Gitai-go (and Gion-go) itself has been kept up. The reason why Gitai-go has been
used throughout the ages involves its position as a slang term. Koike (2002) reported
that an unofficial entertainment such as children’s song including more Gitai-go
expression than official one—such as Waka which is an art and entertainment for the
Integr Psych Behav (2010) 44:156–161 159

noble class. Koike (2002) explains Gitai-go consists of dairy vocabulary and sensitive
nuance including not only subject (feeling) but also object (phenomenon) so that
children can understand it easily and also artists can explain complexity of experience.
Similar case is found in the folk story. Kuramochi (1989) pointed out storyteller of
folk story often create original Gitai-go especially when they talk with children. Gitai-
go didn’t have a position as an official way of speaking, hence common people could
take advantage of it and open another world of expression far from Kanji.
On the other hand, as Komatsu (2010) mentioned, Gitai-go is mainly written in
Hiragana which is also distinctive feature between Gitai-go and Gion-go. However,
in history, there was attempt to write Gitai-go by Kanji or Katakana, especially in
Meiji era (19 century). Sato (2006) discussed about the usage and component of
Gitai-go and Gion-go in newspaper at that time. She pointed out that there were
many attempts to write Gitai-go in Kanji, because Meiji era was a time for reviewing
Japanese language and also establishing the modern orthography of it. Among them,
Gitai-go was focused because it was considered to be a problem for reading when it
appeared in the sentence with other components written in Hiragana. For example,
Gitai-go “Odo-odo”—Komatsu (2010) listed up as Okubyosa (Cowardliness)—can
be written in both of Hiragana and Kanji (Table 1).
Underlined parts are same Gitai-go “Odo-odo”, and bold typed are written in
Hiragana. These sentences consist of following components: “彼” means “he”, as noun;
“は” as case particle; “おどおど” and “躊躇” as Gitai-go; “して” and “いる” as
verb and its conjugation. As above, Hiragana is used for not only Gitai-go but also
other components. Therefore, distinction between Gitai-go and other components
written in Hiragana can become difficult depending on the sentence (Kato and
Sakaguchi 1996). Sato (2006) pointed out that more established and well-known
Gitai-go was replaced by Kanji than not, almost of Kanji used for Gitai-go had
lexically similar meanings to target Gitai-go, and suggested that people at that time
tried to improve the readability of the sentence through this attempt.
Importantly, today most of Gitai-go is written in Hiragana despite of the efforts
to write it in Kanji in the past. We need to discuss how features of Hiragana relate
with the function of sign in communication so that we can get a key of why Gitai-go
has been described by Hiragana even though it had had a possibility to be written in
Kanji, in history.

Tension for Communication: From the Perspective of the Semiotic Process

of Gitai-go and Mimic Words

As Komatsu (2010) mentioned, mimic word has been studied based on several
perspective, but they have had close relationship of usage dealing with dynamic,

Table 1 The example of sentence “He looks nervous” with same Gitai-go written in Hiragana and Kanji
(Kanji expression is referred from Sato (2006))

a. 彼はおどおどしている。(in Hiragana)
b. 彼は躊躇している。(in Kanji)
160 Integr Psych Behav (2010) 44:156–161

physical, or affective aspect of our senses. For example, pregnant women improvise
uncommon mimic words to express their sense of fetal movement (Okamoto et al.
2008). Existing mimic words can be changed for expressing or regulating the
feelings which is based on personal experience.
On the other hand, we may consider the difficulty of understanding such unique,
personalized, and uncommon mimic words. When we meet such word, how do we
understand it? In terms of readability, as shown Table 1, Sato (2006) suggested that
to write Gitai-go in Kanji could be an option to make sentence easy to read. Also,
Kanji is originally ideographical characters and it has relatively stable meaning than
Hiragana (Kawabata 1975), it may be useful when people communicate with others
for transmitting well-known and established information.
However, diverse form of meaning construction is supported rather by this
“undifferentiated nature of mimic words and their indefiniteness” (Komatsu 2010).
In the perspective of the function of sign, Kanji can be considered as sign which
have only narrow possibility of meaning construction because Kanji is relatively
stable. In contrast, Gitai-go made from Hiragana is sign which have rich possibility
because it is unstable and then it makes us keep translating the meanings of the
word. Transformability of Gitai-go, based on the feature of Hiragana, requires us to
search the meanings when it takes another form.
Briefly, this transformability provides a tension for the communication. We can be
driven by necessity to search the meanings of Gitai-go when we meet unknown one,
through its vagueness. It leads us to discard any fixed notions of the Gitai-go,
moreover, personality. Komatsu (2010) pointed to the typical example that the
meaning is changeable depending on the way of expressing the “slowness”—“Osoi”
or “Ottori”.
Gitai-go is the sign making us find the meanings of it continuously. Importantly,
as Komatsu (2010) mentioned, the characteristics of mimic words reflects universal
nature of the semiotic process in the communication. People also can make new sign
through Gitai-go based on the feature of vagueness of Hiragana, and we need to
focus on the process how the sign functions in particular context and relationships.

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Tomoo Hidaka is finishing his Ph.D in Psychology at the Graduate school of Letters, Ritsumeikan
University, Japan. He has studied about how ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) patients have created
the art for living at home-care by themselves, through fieldwork.
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