Manual for Reading Japaneseby Dale P. Crowley; Yoshiyuki Kawata; Yoko Kawata

Manual for Reading Japanese by Dale P. Crowley; Yoshiyuki Kawata; Yoko KawataReview by: Marleigh RyanThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 91-94Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489016 .

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REVIEWS

Dale P. Crowley with the assistance of Yoshiyuki and Yoko Kawata. Manual for Reading Japanese. Honolulu, The University Press ofHawaii, 172. 996 pp. plus index. Paper.

Essentially, this Manual is a listing of the five hundred characters which occur most frequently in con- temporary written Japanese. Professor Crowley has concluded that by learning these five hundred characters, "the student is assured of being able to read 75 percent of all the high-frequency words he will encounter in modern literature." (p. xv). The list was constructed by combining the results of two studies done by the Japanese National Language Re- search Institute: Research on Vocabulary in Cultural Reviews (1957); and The Use o- Written Forms in Jap- anese Cultural Reviews (I9T07. The characters are presented in the order of their frequency rank with the page numbers corresponding to the rank. In addi- tion to some rather technical information, each entry contains the basic definitions of the character, compounds in which it is most commonly found, and examples of the use of the character and these compounds. At the back of the book there is an index which lists alphabetically all the readings of the Toyo kanji.

In his introduction, the author states that this is to be a manual for those engaged in the onerous task of learning Japanese and should not be viewed as a textbook. A manual, according to the Concise Oxford, is "a small book for handy use, a handbook." Bearing that definition in mind, it must be said that this volume would be of only limited use for reference and review. The primary difficulty lies in the ques- tion of who is to use it. In his introduction it becomes clear that Professor Crowley thinks of it as a tool for beginning or early readers, for he says that "when the student of Japanese is sufficiently curious and motivated to learn to read the language, he is then ready to take advantage of the features of the manual . . ." (p. xviii) Other passages in

lApparently the word "literature" is used to mean "written language" and not "belles lettres."



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the introduction confirm that the author has beginning language classes in mind as the audience for his book. The Japanese used in various examples is also on an elementary level.

It would, in fact, be impossible for a beginning student to use the book. Every character listed, from the very first ichi (one) requires the ability to read a considerable number of other characters to get through the page since the entries are largely in Jap- anese orthography. English definitions and romaniza- tion accompany about half the material included under each entry but are inadequate for reading the remain- der. The beginning student would have to go to a dictionary constantly to find out what the examples meant. This Manual, it would seem, is not too "handy" for beginners and requires a considerable knowledge of the language for the entries themselves to be useful.

What about approaching the book in some other way? Suppose, for example, the relatively advanced student had forgotten how to write the character kaku in the word kakumei (revolution). He might turn to the index but since it lists all the officially acceptable readings, he would find, to his horror, that there are seventeen characters listed with the on reading of kaku. Five of them are among the 500 of highest frequency and are thus included in this book, while the balance are on the list but not in the book. He would then, presumably, turn to each of the five in the hope of finding his kaku, never being sure, of course, that it would be one of those included in the book. Happily he would in fact find it but not until he had come to the fifth and last one on the list. He could, of course, have gone to his Japanese-English dictionary and found it in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, his dictionary would have provided him with examples accompanied by English translations, while this Manual offers no translations for the examples and the student is left to guess at the mean- ing. His dictionary then is both faster and more rewarding; certainly "handier" by any definition.

For whom would this Manual be most useful? Prob- ably the student who had studied written Japanese for two or three years and wanted to review those



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characters considered most essential. One could easily imagine a third or fourth year language student who would feel the necessity to go back and reinforce his knowledge of the basic characters after being exposed to two thousand or so in rapid succession. Because of the tradition of overkill so prevalent in Japanese language teaching, it is common for students to reach fourth-year Japanese classes having seen the basic 1875 characters somewhere at least once but having internalized very, very few indeed. This Manual would provide him with a tool for review which is not duplicated elsewhere. He could go profitably through each character, page by page, reinforcing his knowledge as he went.

Even for this student, however, certain hazards exist. Throughout the style used in the examples is that special one invented for foreign students of Japanese fondly referred to as the -masu, desu style. Nobody speaks Japanese this way consistently except when facing foreigners in a classroom and certainly no one ever writes this way. Regrettably Professor Crowley makes a special point of the authenticity of the examples, labeling them "Typical Conversational Usage." While the words may be used in conjunction with the other words in the sentences by native speakers, the sentences themselves as expressed here are certainly neither commonly voiced nor written by natives.

Throughout the book one is confronted with the most monotomous and unreal style. It is simply wrong to present anyone--most especially students--with a language which does not exist. Professor Crowley is a trained linguist and surely believes most strongly in this basic principle. But he is here continuing the very flaws we have long since rejected in language training; this is la plume de ma tante all over agin, albeit dressed up with more elaborate scientific trappings. There is simply no excuse for this at our current stage of linguistic sophistica- tion. We have already seen that this Manual would be useful only to advanced students; pity the student who already knows what Japanese really sounds like and then tries to use this book for the purposes of re- viewl That is not to suggest there is any legitimate reason for presenting unnatural Japanese to the beginning student either. The -masu, desu style employed here is commonly regarded as easier for foreigners to



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understand and is therefore deemed proper for use when addressing them in the classroom. But this is a deception and as such has no place in academic life; furthermore it is dysfunctional since it would do one no good to anticipate hearing it or seeing it anywhere else.

The flaws in this Manual are regrettable since the idea of a character review book is a sound one and could have served advanced students well. It would never have functioned as a beginner's guide in any case, but it could have helped that student lost in the limbo between elementary texts and true reading ability. As it is, he can use the Manual only if he is willing to grit his teeth and endure a language condescendingly put together for his delectation.

Marleigh Ryan (University of Iowa)



Documents

Manual for Reading Japaneseby Dale P. Crowley; Yoshiyuki Kawata; Yoko Kawata