2016 Volume 67 Issue 1 Pages 73-88
This study analyzes how the usage pattern of shakai (Japanese word meaning “society”) has evolved over the years since the Meiji era. Similar to studies conducted in western European languages, this study aims to find historical evidence in the Japanese language for analyzing the different implications of the word “society.” However, the purpose of this study is not to find conceptual particularity or immaturity in Japan but to interpret the historical process by which the usage pattern of the term society evolved worldwide. The representation of shakai as society has made it possible to imagine individual volunteer organizations, wide communication ranges, and normative paradigms for political practices. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the governmental redistribution system has been expected to subsume various aspects of a nation's living standard. The representation of shakai as an adjective (meaning “social”) has been used for the image building of these aspects. The usage pattern of society has undergone worldwide development with intermingled representations, rather than having developed separately inside a specific country. Moreover, the prepositional representation of shakai could sympathize with the criticism of capitalism, because “capitalism” as a noun had also been used since the beginning of the 20th century.
