Language Policy and Planning in Japan, Nepal and Taiwan + Chinese Characters: Some Common Issues

Robert B. Kaplan

Professor Emeritus, Applied Linguistics, University of Southern California Mailing Address: PO Box 577, Port Angeles, WA 98362 USA

Richard B. Baldauf Jr.

Professor, TESOL, School of Education, University of Queensland, QLD 4072 Australia

Introduction

This volume brings together three language policy and planning polity studies related to three countries in Asia as well as a study of Chinese characters, the dominant script form in the region. (See the 'Series Overview' for a more general discussion of the nature of the series, Appendix A for the 22 questions each study set out to address, and Kaplan et al. (2000) for a discussion of the underlying concepts for the studies themselves.) In this paper, in addition to providing an introductory summary of the material covered in these studies, we want to draw out and discuss some of the more general issues that these four studies have raised.

The polities covered do not in any useful sense constitute a geographic cluster, though as we note they do share some common elements in addition to the fact that all of them are in Asia. While both the Nepal and Taiwan study were initially completed about a decade ago – and have now been updated as unquestionably matters in those polities have changed over time – there are still some commonalities.

One of the important general issues raised by these studies has to do with literacy. Both China and Japan, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, recognized and began to try to solve the complex problem of trying to overcome widespread illiteracy in an environment of extremely complex writing systems. Character standardisation and simplification in China in the decades after the middle of the 20th century was driven by the need for mass literacy to push social reform. Literacy is still a pressing issue in Nepal, with women and minorities having very low literacy rates.

A second issue which has arisen out of the initial literacy concern is related to the use of script-based writing (except in Nepal) in the modern technological era and the ensuing problems of selecting, standardising and modernising character-based systems. A common standard based on Unicode for the overlapping character systems used in Japan, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China would increase the ease of intra- and inter-lingual written communication, making technological communication on the internet and on mobile devices like phones more reliable, and therefore making possible more widespread characters use. However, the mystique of the traditional forms, and their cultural associations, as well as different political agendas, have made agreement on standard forms of characters nearly impossible to achieve (see Zhao & Baldauf, 2008). One of the interesting things about these standards for characters is that they apply to government use and more generally to printed work. Although a guide for handwriting has fairly recently been published in Taiwan, handwritten texts in Japan and P.R. China are unregulated.

A third common issue is the increasing use of, demand for, and teaching of English as a first foreign language. It has even been suggested in Japan and Taiwan that English should be a second de facto national language (Kaplan & Baldauf, 2007). In all of the polities, there has been a move to begin the study of English earlier in order to gain communicative advantages that many people believe this will bring, and this demand has meant that English has begun to spread to primary schools, despite a lack of resources, especially of trained teachers (see, e.g., Butler, 2007 for Japan; Li, 2007 for P.R. China). In the character-using polities this spread also has implications for literacy in the national languages, as students are required to learn a new script form before mastering their own writing system. Furthermore, the growth of English as a world language has increasingly marginalized the study of other foreign languages in all these polities (see Baldauf et al., 2007) as the demands for English take increasing quantities of language-related space in the curriculum.

A final common issue relates to the status of minority languages in each of these polities. In recent years, we have seen greater support for indigenous minority languages, especially in Taiwan where their study and greater public acceptance has become a mark of an alternate Taiwanese identity. Nevertheless, minority languages still remained squeezed by the need for the national language to be taught on the one hand and by the demand to learn English, the world language, on the other. In Japan, exogenous minority languages like Spanish, Portuguese or Korean, spoken by guest workers or returning ethnic nationals, are generally ignored by the government and the educational system, and students with these backgrounds are faced by submersion language-in-education policies. In Nepal until recently, there has been an almost total disregard of minority languages and their teaching, although some signs of bilingual programs are emerging.

Nepal

In the intervening decade since the initial study was first written, Nepal has been marked by continuous instability – protests, riots, civil war, bombings, strikes, school closures, and general unrest. The elected government and the parliament have been quite unstable; Parliament was frequently dissolved, and several political parties and their respective policies have been overturned. The Maoist 'people's war' commenced, and the build-up of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), as well as a larger people's militia, continued to undermine the elected government. At one point, the Maoists claimed to control two-thirds of the nation. Over 13,000 deaths can be attributed to both sides of the insurgency; schools were taxed or closed, often converted to training grounds and barracks. Originating in west Nepal, the unrest and civil war soon spread throughout the country.

On June 1, 2001, a massacre took place in the palace, murdering the reigning royal family and everyone in the immediate line of succession to the throne, an action regarded as devastating in a Hindu country where the king and his family were considered to be of divine descent. The official investigating commission blamed crown prince Dependra (who also died) for the massacre, but conspiracy theories were plentiful (see, e.g., Gregson, 2002; Raj, 2001; Willessee & Whittaker, 2004). Gyanendra – the younger brother of the murdered king, Birenda – and the new crown prince – Gyanendra's son Paras – were very unpopular and in some conspiracy theories were even suspected of having played a role in the massacre. Since the Maoist insurgency continued and the elected government was not able to control the uprising, in February 2005 King Gyanendra dissolved parliament and took complete control of the government. Civil and political rights were suppressed, large numbers of people, including politicians and journalists, were arrested and imprisoned, and the media were brought under the direct control of the King. Conflict between Maoist troops and the national army and police increased; indeed, many people who were not Maoist sympathizers opposed the actions of King Gyanendra and joined the insurgency. In April 2006 hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against King Gyanendra in cities and villages throughout Nepal – a demonstration that became a spontaneous 19-day-long people's movement. On April 23, 2006, the leaders of the seven-party alliance re-instated the parliament. On May 18, 2006, the House of Representatives stripped the King of his powers, declared Nepal to be a secular state, and removed the King as commander of the army. The House of Representatives removed the word Royal from the name of the Nepal Army, and designated the Prime Minister head of the Nepal Army. A hastily written interim constitution deprived Gyandendra of any administrative rights and removed from him all royal possessions of the massacred family members. Nepal, as a secular state, has pledged to secularize all Hindu symbols associated with the royal family, including the national anthem, and the national bird and flower, and to replace the image of the King on Nepalese currency with the image of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest). In November 2006, the seven-party alliance and the Maoist party signed a comprehensive peace agreement. An interim parliament was empanelled, and an interim constitution was framed, allowing the appointment of Maoist party members to ministerial positions in the interim government. Elections were scheduled to empanel a government body to write a new constitution. In the interim, under the supervision of United Nations peacekeepers, 31,000 Maoist soldiers, deprived of their weapons, have been placed in seven large camps and several smaller camps throughout Nepal. The Maoists have been granted amnesty and promised that consideration will be given to allowing some of them to be integrated into the Nepalese Army. Finally, in June 2007, the government agreed to give a monthly stipend of 3,000 rupees (US$46.00) to those confined in the camps.

Given these vast changes in the social and political environment, much that was reported a decade ago is no longer of any significance. The innumerable meetings that have occurred over the intervening decade have not specifically taken up the question of language in the polity. Unfortunately, the people's war and the unrest throughout Nepal have drastically limited or stopped the educational plans (i.e. expansion of education and introduction of second language education to first grade) reported in the initial (now decade) old study. For example, first language education was initiated for some Indo-European languages in the Terai and for Newari in the Kathmandu Valley. However, the lack of textbooks and of trained teachers, and the presence of ineffective management have seriously hindered the establishment of both first language education and first grade primary English education. In September 2007, the Ministry of Education and Sports issued a planning draft (for discussion) entitled 'School Sector Reform, Core Document: Policies and Strategies' (Ministry of Education and Sports, 2007). The report:

• emphasizes the need for a holistic and integrated approach to education, from grade one to grade twelve;

• notes the cultural and linguistic diversity of Nepal;

• states that a child's mother (first) language will be used as the medium of instruction up to the third grade;

• states that existing Sanskrit schools and other traditional schools may continue to operate if they follow the National Curriculum Framework (NCF);

• states that a regulatory framework will define 'the governance, management, quality, and finance functions' of English medium schools which will also follow the National Curriculum Framework;

• asserts that textbooks will be selected based on NCF guidelines;

• states that, in high school, the medium of instruction may be either Nepali or English as determined by the School Management Committee and the local government;

• states that priority will be given to recruiting and training for the teacher corps females, dalits, and other disadvantaged groups.

• avows that scholarships and training programs will be set up to improve the skills of disadvantaged teachers, especially for those who teach first language classes, and

• states that a minimum of 20 per cent of the national budget will be reserved for education.

These are important expectations; unfortunately, given the chaotic situation, they remain expectations.

Japan

Japan has long considered itself to be a mono-ethnic and therefore monolingual society, despite the existence of substantial old-comer ethnic minorities, and this – with the instrumental exception of English – has been reflected in its language planning and policy until quite recently. Increasing immigration (and hence emergent new-comer multilingualism), technological advances affecting the way people write and a perceived need to improve the teaching of English, however, mean that policies have begun to undergo rethinking. The study of Japan is divided into three main sections: the first discusses in detail the national language and minority languages; the next discusses language spread and maintenance through the education system and by other means; the last concludes with some thoughts on how language planning and policy might develop in the future, in order to give the reader a sense of how major language issues in Japan are evolving in such a manner that many of the policies developed during the 20th century may no longer be totally relevant.

Throughout its modern period (i.e. from the beginning of the Meiji period [1868] to the present), Japan has consistently represented itself in both internal and external discourse as a monolingual nation; for example, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Aso Taro referred to Japan in a speech at the opening of the Kyushu National Museum in October 2005 as the only nation in the world having '... one civilization, one language, one culture and one race' (The Japan Times, 18 October 2005). Official policies and a highly influential essentialist literary genre called Nihonjinron (theories of what it means to be Japanese) have both reflected and supported this view.

Historically, Nihonjinron theories have constituted a key influence on much of the government, academic and cultural discourse on Japanese society, including ideas about language. A large body of academic research has directly challenged those notions over the last two decades; however, they remain influential in some circles. In this discourse, the Japanese language is portrayed as somehow uniquely different from all other languages; at the same time, Japan is resolutely viewed as linguistically homogeneous despite all evidence to the contrary. The Japanese language is seen as too difficult for any but Japanese themselves to master by virtue of its orthography and its much-touted preference for ambiguity over directness. Race, language and culture are inextricably tied together, so that issues surrounding language carry a heavy burden of sensitive historical, political and cultural significance (Schneer, 2007). This has informed language policy to date, explaining in part the snail's pace at which planning and policy at the national level have responded to demographic change. The national language has been used as a key part of Japanese nation- and empire-building, and diversity has not been encouraged; indeed, in the early modern period the use of minority languages on both the northern and the southern borders was suppressed under a policy of assimilation designed to foster and reinforce the ideology of one whole and unified nation. In the colonies of Taiwan (1895 to 1945) and Korea (1905 to 1945), and later in the occupied territories during World War Two, inculcating use of the Japanese language became a key element in the formation of good subjects of the emperor. During this time, efforts were made to transform the language in both spoken and written form into something that could function as a modern standard – i.e., an effective instrument in the service of national unity. By the 1920s, several major steps in this process had been achieved: a standard language had been designated and was being disseminated through the education system and the national broadcaster (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, widely known as NHK). The classical-oriented written styles that had previously been the language of public life were well on their way to being replaced by a modern written Japanese based on contemporary speech rather than on centuries-old literary conventions.

Monolingualism is certainly a myth, built upon an equally shaky foundation of mono-ethnicity, but it has been an enduring and strongly entrenched pillar of what might be called the foundation myth of modern Japan. It is certainly true that nearly everybody in Japan does speak Japanese, that the language used for official purposes is Japanese and that the bulk of the population is Japanese. However, to insist that Japan is consequently monolingual disregards the existence of large ethnic communities from Korea, China, Brazil and other parts of the world, of the languages of the indigenous Ainu people and of the fact that Japanese students must study English for at least six years.