Exploring Words

: Kunio Yanagita's Study of Dialect and Its Influence on Zhou Zuoren

Abstract

　The present thesis examines the influence of the dialect research work by Kunio Yanagita on Zhou Zuoren and the difference between their views regarding the effect of dialect in shaping national consciousness.

　Inspired by Kunio Yanagita, Zhou Zuoren became active in dialect research. In his book, On Snails, Yanagita demonstrated that many animals and plants received their trivial names from children. He also analyzed the life and feeling of ordinary people associated with the dialect's use. Yanagita's work greatly influenced Zhou. He not only criticized the neglect of the study of trivial names in the field of traditional Chinese natural history but also wrote a well-known prose work named The Trivial Name of Wild Grasses.

　Yanagita appreciated people's ability to use language in their beautiful, popular names; he believed that if people could use their own languages to fully express their ideas, they would not be easily fooled by abstract and empty slogans of politicians and would become citizens with sound mind and wisdom. This belief informed his academic study that bore an emphatic ideology of social practice. In contrast, Zhou's research was limited to the criticism of traditional Chinese culture and remained within academic circles. This difference may indicate a presence of optimism among Japanese intellectuals in the Meiji period and pessimism dominating modern Chinese intellectuals who bore a heavy burden of history.