Minae Mizumura - The Fall of Language in the Age of English

With the spread of colonialism and European influence worldwide, French became a language revered even by non-Westerners. La gloire of the French language naturally reached all the way to Japan, which had, following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, finally opened its doors to the West. Until then, during more than 250 years of isolation, the Edo government allowed trade only with the Dutch, with the consequence that Dutch was the only Western language that any Japanese — and just a tiny segment of the population — knew. As the initial chaos brought on by the Restoration subsided, people turned their eyes to the outside world. While eagerly acquiring new knowledge, they also became sensitive to the relative cachet of different Western languages. And since those on the periphery embrace snobbery with greater earnestness than those closer to the center — a phenomenon well attested to by the fact that East Asia is now the biggest global market for European-brand products — the Japanese cultural elite espoused veneration for the French language with even greater enthusiasm than did Europeans themselves. Along with British military, political, and economic supremacy, British cultural prowess was already becoming evident. And yet, in Japan, the cultural elites regarded English as the language for practical affairs and French as the language that symbolized the soul of Western civilization. This was especially true of the new generation of writers who tried to embrace that soul by devouring Western arts and letters.

I should like to go to France,

But France is far too far.

So I shall don a new suit

And roam where fancy leads. 1

These simple lines (the full impact of which is untranslatable [see chapter 7]) by poet Hagiwara Sakutarō eloquently express the longings of Japanese writers of the Taishō period (1912–1926), which came on the heels of the Meiji. Successful writers squandered their earnings to realize their dream of spending time in France just breathing the air of Paris. Yet for most, France was a country “far too far,” which intensified their yearning all the more. Another poem by Hagiwara begins, “Like the scent of a French cigarette / One whiff and I’m transported.” The yearning for France spread from writers to readers, and translations of poems by the nineteenth-century French poets Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud came to be as familiar to the Japanese middle class as waka poems from more than a thousand years ago that girls were often required to learn by heart. And then there were the French films that reached the country during the first half of the Shōwa period (1926–1989): Sous les toits de Paris, A nous la liberté, Quatorze Juillet, Le grand jeu, Pension Mimosas, Un carnet de bal, Pépé le Moko . Rendered into Japanese, these titles became embedded in the Japanese psyche, reflecting the widespread infatuation with France around that time. Songs like “Quand refleuriront les lilas blancs” and “Mon Paris,” routinely performed on the all-female stage of the Takarazuka Revue — whose audience was also nearly all female — became so popular that even men who usually had no interest in such trifles could hum the tunes. Moreover, after Japan’s defeat in World War II, Shiga Naoya, a novelist often referred to — for reasons I personally cannot fathom — as shōsetsu no kamisama (patron saint of novels), made an astounding comment. After arguing that the Japanese people started the disastrous war in large part because they were using the Japanese language, he suggested that they abandon their language altogether and adopt French: “Perhaps Japan should take the leap and adopt the world’s best, most beautiful language as its national language. I think French would best serve the purpose.” 2If only the French had known, he might have been awarded the Legion of Honor.

It was after the end of World War II that the decline of France finally became evident to everyone, including the Japanese. The end of the war marked the decline not just of France but of Europe as well. The United States, already the world’s richest nation before the war, did not suffer from air raids; with its factories and infrastructures intact, its economic superiority became even more prominent. During the immediate postwar years, the country’s GDP amounted to approximately half that of the world (today it is a little less than one-third). At the same time, war-weary people around the world hungrily consumed American culture through the media of music, film, and television, and the world’s cultural center shifted from Europe to the United States. Japan, occupied by the United States, became virtually an American colony.

Still, French culture managed to bloom one more time. If American culture was for the masses, French culture still held sway over educated and semi-educated Japanese. In the 1950s, existentialism was the craze, and every college student was familiar with the names Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, along with that of the chanteuse Juliette Greco. Then in the 1970s, when structuralism and then poststructuralism became trendy, works by the next generation of French philosophers and writers were widely and reverently read by the Japanese, who joined in the critique of Western metaphysics quite as if forgetting that they themselves were not Westerners. French cultural influence remained strong until the mid-1980s, and at its core proudly stood, as it had always stood, la gloire of the French language.

When frequenting Paris as a student in the 1970s, I was struck by the difference between Japanese students who came to the United States and those who came to France. Those who came to America did so with the purpose of mastering a particular subject, be it journalism or nuclear science; English was merely a means to achieve that goal. Conversely, most of those who came to France did so with the sole purpose of learning French and just being there. Their highest goal in life seemed to be sitting in an outdoor café smoking Gauloises and speaking French like a native. In retrospect, that the French language no longer functioned as a means to learn something else portended its dark future.

Consider what has happened to the French language since then. Today a Japanese person who “should like to go to France” can board a direct flight from Tokyo and arrive the same day, for the kind of money a college student earns on the side. At the same time, the decline in the prestige of French as the language of high culture has become all too apparent. Books written in French will certainly continue to exert influence, but it is now difficult to imagine a whole intellectual movement originating in France that would gain the momentum it once did. (The decline of the humanities in general only adds to the decline of the power of the French language.) Woe to those around the world who have devoted years of their lives to learning French. Woe to the girl I used to be, holed up in her room listening to “ Voilà Monsieur Thibault ” while letting go to waste the privilege of growing up in the United States. But woe most of all to the French themselves.

The illustrious history of the French language is carved into the French mind since childhood; there is no way the French would stand back and allow their language to fall without a fight. Politicians travel to former French colonies around the world — Quebec, Haiti, Martinique, Vietnam, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Madagascar — to deliver speeches in beautiful incantatory French and mesmerize audiences in an effort to preserve these regions as Francophone. Yet that is no longer the real issue. Now the urgent priority is preventing the French language from falling in France itself.

France made the decision to protect its language and turned doing so into a national project. The Toubon Law, named after a minister of culture, was mandated in 1994 and enforces the use of French in government documents, public announcements, commercials, state-funded schools, workplaces, and so on. French television stations are under obligation to allocate at least 40 percent of airtime to programs produced in France. French films receive hefty state subsidies to counterbalance the onslaught of Hollywood films. The Académie française — whose honorable members are known as les immortels because they are to ensure the excellence of the language in perpetuity — is valiantly trying to stem the invasion of English loanwords by recommending French alternatives: logiciel for “software,” courriel for “e-mail.” But no amount of effort can stem the flood of English at this point. Today it is both a sign of distinction and a pastime among French intellectuals to lament the fall of the French language.