Katakana Analysis Draft

みなさん、こんにちは!

In this post I will speculate on the nature of Katakana usage in modern Japanese and the reasons behind this usage. According to a compilation of various introductions to Katakana provided, Katakana usage can be divided into three main categories: foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis (analogous to the use of italics in English orthography).

In my fellow classmates’ posts you can clearly see a marked role for the Katakana syllabary in manga (Japanese comics) to express sounds and exclamations. The shape of the Katakana syllabary itself, more angular and thus more immediately recognizable than Hiragana or Kanji, seems well suited to such a stylized context. As a sort of hybrid artform/periodical targeted mainly at younger Japanese, Manga capitalizes on the accessibility and visual form of the Katakana syllabary But Katakana can also be commonly found throughout mainstream periodicals, newspapers, and advertisements, contexts in which Hiragana and Kanji could equally suffice. Here is the homepage of mainichi.jp:

Katakana is easily spotted both in the ads at top and bottom right, the section headings under the main banner, and the headlines of the news stories themselves in center. In fact, when browsing such a website (Mainichi.jp is the homepage of one of the most popular newspapers in Japan), the visual contrast between the three Japanese scripts particularly stands out. The Kanji characters in the center headlines and the アクセスランキング (Access ranking) frame at right seem dense and demand close focus to read, but the Katakana, and to a lesser degree the Hiragana, is easily glossed over at a glance. Here is a close up of the top toolbar:

From right to left, it reads: hoomu (home), nyuususerekuto (news select), supootsu (sports), entame (entertainment), and raifusutairu (lifestyle). These drop down menus are, by design, the most frequently clicked buttons on the site, so why are their labels written in Katakana as foreign (English) words? I think this reflects both the immediacy and ease with which Katakana is recognized by Japanese readers, and the pervasive influence which foreign, especially English, linguistic and cultural influence has had on the interaction of Japanese readers with popular media.

A quick web search reveals that Mainichi Shimbun, along with the other large Japanese newspapers, was founded in 1872 in the early years of the Meiji emperor, whose reign marked a break from Japanese isolation from the outside world and a concentrated program of modernization encompassing all aspects of life and society. As a product of this incipient modernization, Mainichi Shimbun and its fellow newspapers were used as a means of broadcasting and propagating foreign (Western) ideas and knowledge, so it is not so surprising that the primary navigational tool of the site (and thus the structure and process by which readers use the site) organizes news topics in English terms written in a syllabary used mainly to represent foreign terms.

In the 4th floor hallway of Kent I came across a poster advertising a Japanese translation competition:

The top section, displayed most prominently along with a stylized “translation” against a red image, first attracts the target audience’s attention - an audience whose first language is likely English. Then, under the English comes a Japanese translation of the phrase “translation competition”, which comprises two Kanji characters (meaning translation), and a Katakana word, コンクール (konkuuru), which is in fact a transliteration of the French word “concours”, meaning competition. I found this usage interesting, not only because one must surely image an equivalent Japanese word for competition, either in Kanji or either a version strictly written in Hiragana, but also because the usage of a French loan word in the advertisement for a Japanese translation competition itself alludes to the multilingual and multicultural exchange which has shaped Japan and Japanese since its opening to the West following the Meiji Restoration. In short, the orthographical diversity of Japanese reflects a diversity of cultural influences which have shaped the way Japanese approach the world and, in turn, the way in which foreigners, such as myself, must approach Japan - an approach which acknowledges the inherent contingency in translation and the piecemeal method by Japan understood and assimilated the West.