The Fall of Language in the Age of English
ISBN: 9780231538541
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Japanese language -- Social aspects; English language -- Influence on Japan;

A bestselling sensation in Japan, this erudite but accessible volume from novelist Mizumura (A True Novel) functions as a stirring call to consciousness about the role of language. Originally focused on concerns particular to Mizumura's native Japan, the book has been revised and translated with an eye to reaching a broader audience. This is either apt or ironic, considering its main concern is with the fate of national languages at a time when English has become the world's dominant "universal" language. To explore the subject, Mizumura offers a collection of smartly written meditations, history lessons, and theories about language. She also delves into autobiography to illustrate how her thinking was formed: after living in the United States for 20 years from the age of 12, without ever feeling completely at home there or with English, she first studied French and then moved back to Japan to write in her first language. Though less concerned than the original version with threats posed to the Japanese language by English's ubiquity, this translation still depicts the country's linguistic and literary heritage with mesmerizing vividness. For English speakers, the book presents an important opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Minae Mizumura was born in Tokyo, moved to New York at the age of twelve, and studied French literature at Yale University. Acclaimed for her audacious experimentation and skillful storytelling, Mizumura has won major literary awards for all four of her novels--one of which, A True Novel , was recently published in English. She lives in Tokyo.

Mari Yoshihara is professor of American studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She is the author of Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism and Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music .

Juliet Winters Carpenter studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. In 1980, Carpenter's translation of Abe Kobo's novel Secret Rendezvous ( Mikkai ) won the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
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