「日本語ワープロ」の銀河系 : 「書くこと」の電子化と「編むこと」のデザイン(<特集>メディア変容時代のジャーナリズム)

抄録

In this paper, I seek to re-examine the significance of the digitalization of "writing". The mediation of "writing" by digital technology has become a normal and ever expanding aspect of contemporary society. My first task is to examine this condition on the meta-level. The specific subject matter of my inquiry is the Nihongo-wapuro (Japanese word-processor) whose history I have attempted to trace here. Written Japanese texts are composed of a heterogeneous mixture of different types of characters, including hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The vast number of characters required in order to produce such texts has rendered the mechanization process far more difficult in Japanese than it has been for European languages that use alphabetic scripts. When computers were introduced into the world of business in the 1970s, newspaper journalists continued to write by hand, despite the appearance of electronic systems for newspaper compilation and editing. The first word-processor for writing Japanese, the Toshiba JW-10, appeared in 1978. It then became possible to produce Japanese texts mechanically with the aid of electronic processing. The adoption of word-processors in Japan has spread rapidly since the mid-1980s. Besides being used in offices, they came to be employed in schools and in the home as well. People with no prior experience of using electronic devices quickly developed a keen interest in the Japanese word-processor. At first, word-processors were viewed primarily as devices for the production of "clean copies" or for printing. However, with time, many books came to be written extolling the Nihongo-wapuro as much more than a mere typewriter for the Japanese language. The Japanese word-processor, it was claimed, had brought about a "great revolution in intellectual production". The bodily action of typing had long been an unrealized dream of those who wrote in Japanese. The Nihongo-wapuro was the means that at long last brought this to reality. Nevertheless, the most widespread everyday use to which word-processors were put was the production of New-Year greeting cards (which according to Japanese custom are sent out in great numbers at the beginning of each year). At the same time, these mechanically produced New-Year cards were criticized as lacking in human feeling. In this paper, I examine the Japanese word-processor from the three perspectives of technology, the body and society. I investigate how the word-processor was able to provide a foundation for the digitalization of "writing" in Japan. In addition, I look at the significance of the Japanese word-processor's function as a machine for the production of "clean copies" and printed texts. This was related to the fact that "writing" always took place in relation to "editing". Thus, the adoption of the word-processor in Japan has brought to light the emerging problematic of "editing".