Introduction to Special Issue on Writing-Restricted Variation in Japanese

This special issue is a cross-disciplinary examination into the social concerns and motivations behind writing-restricted variation (that is, script, punctuation, emoji, and other features that are ‘lost’ if a text is read aloud) in contemporary written Japanese. By necessity, generalist introductions to written Japanese tend to describe its simultaneous use of multiple scripts as a complex but ultimately regular peculiarity. However, once we dive into the reality of contemporary written Japanese, it becomes clear that descriptions of Japanese writing norms as static rules are problematic. A quick trip to a local store is all that is required to encounter loan words like kōhī (coffee) or bīru (beer), normatively the exclusive domain of katakana, written in hiragana or kanji (Kunert, 2020; Robertson, 2021). Scanning billboards, shop names, manga dialogue, or television teroppu (‘subtitles’) will similarly lead to encounters with wordplay employing formally ‘incorrect’ uses of kanji, or instances of native vocabulary written in katakana or the Roman alphabet (Maree, 2015; Robertson, 2017; Tranter, 2008). Even in ‘formal’ texts one can easily find common terms like isu (chair) or megane (glasses) written in distinct scripts across a single document (Joyce, Hodošček & Nishina, 2012), and attention to newer digital spaces will quickly bring about encounters with additional forms of writing-restricted variation like emoji (digital artefacts like ) and kaomoji (vertically oriented emoticons like (^_^) and . Indeed, as the articles in this special issue show, in contemporary Japan it is hard to read a novel, send a text message, play a video game, or even visit a shrine without seeing writing that contains contrasting, creative, or formally nonstandard ways of representing Japanese.

Certainly, the study of writing-restricted variation in Japanese is not new. Research on variant script use dates back to the 1950s at the latest (Saiga, 1955). The topic saw a particular deluge of attention in the 1980s, motivated mostly by social consternation over the playful writing-based innovations of young Japanese women, and steady but scattered attention has continued to date (Iwahara, Hatta & Maehara, 2003; Kataoka, 1997; Miller, 2011; Satake, 1980; Yamane, 1986). Broadly speaking though, these studies on Japanese script use have been limited in applying a fairly top-down and functionalist approach to understanding the variation they discuss (Robertson, 2021). It is only recently that researchers have applied a wider and more dynamic lens to the study of Japanese script play, explicitly recognizing that ‘any linguistic form’ (Silverstein, 1985: 256) has multiple potential interpretations, and both understanding and use of script can therefore differ in relation to ‘sets of beliefs attributed to and expressed by means of graphic phenomena’ (Spitzmüller, 2012: 255). Research on the use of emoji and kaomoji (both inside and outside of Japan) has followed a similar path. Initial discussion of these variants described them as ‘a new “universal language”’ (Giannoulis & Wilde, 2020: 2) in a manner that attributes static meanings to individual items, but these items have been shown to have their own social uses and functions as well (Abel, 2020; Giannoulis & Wilde, 2020; McCulloch, 2020). The papers throughout this special issue explicitly build on the findings of studies that have employed these more dynamic approaches to the use of writing-restricted variation (for example, Abel, 2020; Dahlberg-Dodd, 2019; Kunert, 2020; McCulloch, 2020; Robertson, 2021; Sebba, 2009; Spitzmüller, 2015; Unseth, 2005), adding new insights into how social concerns are inherent to graphic variation and writing-based play. Each study here uses a distinct theoretical perspective or data source to look at forms of writing-restricted variation in Japan(ese) in new spaces, through new lenses, or in ways that uncover new socio-cultural factors that can be involved in writing-based communication and language variation. By coming together in this way, the articles also provide a more holistic perspective on Japanese writing-restricted variation than has been possible to date, producing insights which are individually distinct but all shed light on the social lives and importance of writing-restricted forms of variation and play.

The special issue opens with three studies that draw new conclusions by applying novel theoretical perspectives to recognized data sources in prior studies of script variation in written Japanese. We begin with Tamaki Mihic’s examination of the motives and meanings underlying unconventional hiragana and kanji use in Kuroda Natsuko’s Akutagawa Prize-winning Japanese novel ab sango (2012). Here, Mihic explores the author’s style as a form of ‘defamiliarization’, looking at how Kuroda’s script choices cannot be understood as just ways of conveying ‘semantic emotional information’ (Iwahara et al., 2003: 378) associated with certain scripts (for example, hiragana is ‘cute’, kanji feels ‘old’), and therefore require a perspective distinct from what is generally found in examinations of script use in Japanese novels and poetry (for example, Gardner, 2006; Heldt, 2005; Hiraga, 2006; Zielinska-Elliott & Holm, 2013). Mihic’s detailed analysis of Kuroda’s writing instead shows how the author uses script not just to alter the meaning of individual words, but rather to illuminate the arbitrariness of Japanese script choice-related norms themselves, and push for a more intuitive way of expressing Japanese in writing. In doing so, Mihic finds that Kuroda’s script use has aims outside the text itself, providing readers with a novel and open reading experience that leaves them questioning their fundamental understandings of written Japanese.

Wes Robertson then follows with an analysis of ojisan gokko, a form of SMS-based play where young Japanese women imitate the texting habits of lecherous older men. Just like Mihic’s use of Japanese literature as a data source, Robertson’s attention to young women’s writing is not new in studies of writing-restricted variation (Kataoka, 1997; Nakamura, 1983; Yamane, 1986). However, Robertson’s analysis differs from prior research in going beyond just evidencing that a certain form of non-standard script use is popular with a particular social group. Using a corpus of ojisan gokko acts shared or conducted on Twitter, Robertson instead shows how the complex and highly specific uses of kanji, katakana, emoji, kaomoji, and punctuation interwoven through these imitations all serve multiple indexical functions, and arise from a series of social actors with distinct language ideologies paying detailed attention to how other groups write. Furthermore, in addition to ‘exaggerating a style stereotypically associated with a social category’ (Nakamura, 2020: 253), the play is shown to simultaneously serve as a form of social resistance and method of positioning oneself as part of an ‘acculturated audience’ (Coupland, 2007: 154), evidencing how multiple social actors can engage in incredibly complex and often hostile forms of identity work through written play.

Finally, this initial set of articles concludes with the first English-language article from Hitomi Masuji, a researcher who has done extensive work to date on how script use and interactional contexts work together to create meaning in Japanese. In collaboration with Tamaki Mihic, Masuji’s study here uses questionnaire surveys to examine how interpretations of the word sumimasen differ depending on the script used to write the word, and the writer-reader relationship. The article therefore builds on the success of similar surveys in psycholinguistic research on script selection, but provides new insights by focusing on the understudied area of how specific script and word combinations create meaning across distinct contexts. Ultimately, Mihic and Masuji compare and contrast their survey responses to show how multiple interpersonal and pragmatic concerns work in tandem to influence understandings of sumimasen. Rather than producing a single static meaning, each representation of sumimasen is shown to produce distinct implications and feelings of appropriateness depending on both the interpreter and context of use, with this word/script combination functioning as an active vehicle for complex acts of meaning negation.

The second set of articles then bring discussions of writing-restricted variation into new and exciting spaces, using data to question boundaries between the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds. Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd examines the marked use of katakana in text-heavy video games, a space unexplored in studies of script variation to date. Through looking at uses of katakana in the represented speech of outsiders, robots, anthropomorphic animals, gods, and the like, Dahlberg-Dodd draws on sociolinguistic studies of ‘othering’ (see Coupland, 2010) to evidence how marked applications of katakana can transpose ‘real word’ ideologies of ‘foreignness’ and linguistic difference into new contexts, causing marked script use to function as a form of characterological categorization. In doing so, her findings go beyond katakana’s recognized use as a marker of ‘real-world’ disfluency or ideological conceptions of non-native speakers (see Kinsui, 2014; Robertson, 2015), evidencing how the script can transpose ideologies of linguistic difference in a multitude of distinct – yet ultimately othering – ways.

Finally, Dale Andrews closes the special issue by further complicating assumed boundaries between digital and analogue worlds, using his data set to challenge any perceived limitations on the locations where forms of socially meaningful writing-restricted variation might occur. Andrews looks at fluid and often comedic mixtures of Japanese syllabaries, Roman letters, Arabic numerals, internet slang, kaomoji, and manga-influenced art and expressions across over two thousand votive prayer tablets (ema) from four separate Japanese shrines. Analysing the writing across these ema from a material culture approach that incorporates folklorist Elliott Oring’s concept of ‘appropriate incongruity’ (1995: 230), Andrews shows how the graphic practices on the tablets serve to unite an otherwise disparate fan community, and bring both established and novel forms of writing-restricted variation into new spaces to create texts that are cultural, written, and visual experiences. Ultimately, Andrews argues that the writing across the tablets thereby creates bridges between two- and three-dimensional worlds, with the graphic features across the humorous texts allowing authors to immerse themselves further in an ‘alternate’ reality through acts conducted in the ‘real’ one.

Taken together, the studies here therefore shed important new light on the importance, meanings, locations, and forms of writing-restricted variation in Japanese. They also drive home the fundamental point that this type of play is an active and commonplace element of how Japanese language users make, understand, and contest meaning throughout their daily lives, being neither predictable nor something only of relevance to ‘casual’ spaces. Increased recognition and discussion of these items’ marked, novel, or contrastive use from a wide range of theoretical perspectives across an even wider range of data sources is therefore vital to a full understanding of how Japanese users make meaning through language, and how language use can be involved in and shed light on social issues in Japan. Furthermore, while the studies in this special issue are focused on items and contexts that are (for now) specific to Japan, this special issue’s broader interest in how and why people play with graphic forms is not. It is of course true that languages like English do not allow for marked use of multiple scripts across most writing, and some phenomena we discuss (for example, anime pilgrimages) may not currently have exact correlations in contexts outside Japan. But as a growing body of research over the last decade has shown, the way people represent language is absolutely an issue of social concern around the world, and individual actors utilize variant forms of language representation as part of their social practice even when the avenues available to them are much more restricted than in Japanese (Giannoulis & Wilde, 2020; Sebba, 2012; Spitzmüller, 2015). Furthermore, as variants from Japan like emoji and kaomoji have become truly international, the study of their use in Japan becomes even more important, as doors open for the use of once-‘Japanese’ variants or practices to become part of cross-cultural interactions in new venues, on new scales, and as part of new (or newly) global subcultures and trends (Birnie-Smith & Robertson, 2021; McCulloch, 2020). The works here consequently both build on and contribute to the broader study of writing-restricted play and ‘graphic ideologies’ (Spitzmüller, 2015: 133) to date, ultimately demonstrating how the study of Japanese writing provides invaluable insights that expand global understandings of the expansive, common, complex, and – most importantly – social nature of writing-restricted variation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).