The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Minae Mizumura, Mari Yoshihara, Juliet Winters Carpenter

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231538541
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, The Fall of Language in the Age of English lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in this period of English-language dominance. Born in Tokyo but raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge yet also embraces the different ways of understanding offered by multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity.

Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of humanity. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional—and yet, particular kinds of knowledge can be gained only through writings in specific languages.

Mizumura calls these writings "texts" and their ultimate form "literature." Only through literature and, more fundamentally, through the diverse languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression.

1. UNDER THE BLUE SKY OF IOWA

THOSE WHO WRITE IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

September mornings in Iowa City get pretty chilly.

Stepping out of the hotel, I saw a scattering of writers waiting for the minibuses, standing stooped with mugs of steamy Starbucks coffee in hand. Writers tend to be stooped specimens to begin with, and these looked particularly so in the cold morning air. At their feet was a variety of luggage in all shapes and sizes.

Before I left Japan, I had gone to the Web site of the International Writing Program, or IWP, and printed out the list of writers participating in this Fall Residency. Intent on familiarizing myself with their faces, names, and brief biographies during my flight to Iowa, I made a point of putting the printout in my carry-on bag. Yet even now, the morning when we were about to set out together on a four-day trip to Minneapolis, I still hadn’t studied the list. My physical ailments and the medication that I had been taking left me groggy, unable to muster the energy to browse through it. Besides, nearly all the names on the list were foreign ones I could hardly pronounce.

Today was going to be the day I would meet most of the other writers for the first time. Some were engaged in a friendly chat, while others stood apart, looking all the more aloof in the cold morning air. They had already been in Iowa for a month or so, whereas I had arrived just a few days before. Not only that, I had arrived with a hidden vow to keep my participation to a minimum. Still, as I stood there alone with my overnight bag, not knowing what to do with myself, I felt that as a newcomer I should at least introduce myself to some of the others. But this morning, as on so many other mornings, I was feeling lethargic, and so I only kept eyeing them.

Two minibuses soon arrived. Most of the Westerners headed toward one, and shortly afterward, Asians with uniformly black hair began trooping toward the other. The group seemed to split naturally into two as for one reason or another the Westerners stuck together, leaving the Asians behind. I see, this is how it goes, I told myself. I then headed toward the second bus, the one with mostly Asian passengers.

Seated at the back of the bus were several buff East Asian men at the peak of their manhood, Chinese or Korean or both. In the middle of the bus was a woman with the air of a girl. The line from cheekbone to chin, as keen as if carved with a knife, reminded me of the women in the film The Scent of Green Papaya, which I had seen about ten years earlier. She must be Vietnamese, I thought, or some other Southeast Asian nationality. Toward the front of the bus was a man who looked just like a Japanese, with plump cheeks and small eyes slanting downward. He seemed close to sixty, not exactly the peak of manhood. I wondered what nationality he was, knowing that I was the sole Japanese participant. There were three whites on the bus, among them the program director, Chris, to whom I had already introduced myself the day before; he was doing double duty as our driver. I was the last one to board the bus through the front door, so I ended up sitting in the passenger seat beside him. A journalist and a poet, Chris was a handsome man whose blond-bearded face still looked a bit boyish.

Soon after Chris started us on our journey, I turned around to greet the man sitting diagonally behind me, the one with typical Japanese features, only to find him looking vacantly out the window. Rather curiously, I thought, he occupied the aisle seat, leaving the window seat next to him empty. Across the aisle from him was a young white man who likewise occupied the aisle seat, leaving the window seat next to him empty, and he too was looking vacantly out the window.

Once we left the college town behind, tall buildings disappeared and modest, two-story houses typical of the American countryside took their place, lit by the white morning light. The view was not particularly beautiful. There was none of the poetry one sees in scenes of the countryside in American films. There was neither order nor coherence, much as in life itself.

Turning to Chris, I roused myself and said exactly what an American might say at such a moment: “Beautiful day!” Chris responded, “Yes, very beautiful!” as one would expect of an American constitutionally blessed, as most Americans are, with an admirably positive outlook on life. And with that began something of a conversation. When I engage an American in conversation, typically the exchange follows a pattern: I try to come up with a question, and the almost always talkative American responds with a lengthy answer. On this day, I had no trouble coming up with one question after another, for, having arrived late and missed the orientation week, I knew next to nothing about the IWP.

While effortlessly steering the wheel, Chris, who has an astonishingly orderly brain—a trait common among American intellectuals but rare among speakers of Japanese, a language that doesn’t even require a clear distinction between “and” and “but”—gave me a succinct summary of the IWP, including its history and its current financial situation. He was relaxed enough to turn toward me and show me his blond-bearded smile as he spoke. He was, of course, constantly checking the rearview mirror. He also reached out an arm from time to time to find a radio station that played classical music or to adjust the volume. I myself am a bad driver who hardly ever took the wheel and ended up losing my license by forgetting to renew it; as I listened with an occasional “Oh, yes?” or “Really?” I was in secret awe of Chris for being able to talk coherently while simultaneously driving and doing so many other things.

Meanwhile, I felt the presence of the Asian writers in the bus weighing on me, especially the middle-aged man sitting right behind me, the one who looked so Japanese.

Fifteen minutes or so passed. When Chris paused, I made an overt gesture this time to turn myself around, feeling I should at least introduce myself. In such a situation, the longer you wait, the harder it is to begin a conversation. The man was still looking vacantly out the window, but this time he noticed me. I put on the brightest smile I could and said, “Hi! I am from Japan.”

The man had a gentle face. It also seemed full of wisdom. I wondered if he might be Korean or Chinese. Mentally I combed through my meager knowledge of expressions from classical Chinese, searching for one that might describe him, and came up with shunpū taitō (serene as the spring breeze).

Where was he from, I asked.

“I am from Mongolia.” A smile filled his gentle face.

Mongolia? Quickly I spread out the world map in my head. At the same time, a vague memory came to me that on the list of IWP participants there was indeed a leader of the Mongolian democratic movement, a one-time presidential candidate. Now that I looked at him armed with this knowledge, he suddenly acquired an aura peculiar to a great man—an aura we can hardly expect from Japanese politicians today. Perhaps when a nation goes through a period of upheaval, those who should become politicians, do. Mongolian sumo wrestlers are a familiar sight on Japanese television, but this was only the second time in my life that I had met a Mongolian in person. The first time was about twenty-five years ago, when I encountered a girl in Paris who claimed to be one. Her ancestors had left Mongolia in the seventeenth century and taken three more centuries to make their leisurely way to Paris. “I know this sounds incredible, but it’s true,” the slim, tall, and strikingly beautiful girl said in perfect Parisian French. A picture unfolded before my eyes, as if on wide-screen CinemaScope, of clusters of the round tents called “ger” moving ever westward across the Eurasian continent at a timeless pace.

The man on the bus was a bona fide Mongolian, born and raised in Mongolia. To me, the word “Mongolia” itself sounds as if it transcends the worldly. Hearing it, I felt a rush of fresh wind from the steppes sweep through my mind, clearing away the clouds that had been ever-present since my first illness a couple of years before. I may have looked too inquisitively at his gentle face when I asked, “Are you a novelist or a poet?”

“I’m a poet.”

“Is this your first time in America?” I asked, assuming that of course it was.

“Yes, it is my first time.” The Mongolian poet then motioned to the young white man sitting across the aisle. “He’s from Lithuania.”

Really? Was there someone from Lithuania in the program? I couldn’t remember a Lithuanian youth on the list of participants. And because as a child, instead of learning anything useful, all I ever did was read novels, now when I tried to check the world map in my head I could not begin to locate Lithuania. I knew that it must be somewhere near Russia, but as to what sort of country it was, what the capital was, or whether there were any Lithuanian historical figures I should have heard of, I was clueless.

Like many young men around the globe, he had an edgy style, with spiky hair and piercing in one ear. I asked him, “Are you a novelist?”

“No, I’m a poet.”

“I see. I’m a novelist.”

Thus ended our conversation that sounded like an excerpt from an English textbook for beginners. Both the Mongolian poet and the Lithuanian poet had what looked like a smile playing around the mouth, but they said nothing further. I too smiled, then faced front again, relieved that I had now made my obligatory greetings as a newcomer and so let others know that I am not excessively antisocial. It was a shame that I had nothing to say about either Mongolia or Lithuania, but the conversation ended not only because of my ignorance: their half-smiles eloquently conveyed their discomfort in speaking English.

On both sides of the road were cornfields spreading endlessly flat under what was now a blue sky. Only later did I learn that cornfields are symbols of industrial agriculture, which is destructive of nature. At the time, as I looked at the long stretches of cornfields, all I vaguely felt was that the sort of poetic country scene that appears in American films was now finally here before me. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it became as bright as midsummer. Several minutes passed before the Lithuanian poet leaned forward and asked me a question.

“Do you know bonsai?”

Bonsai? He was obviously trying to find a topic he could talk about with a Japanese person, I thought. Turning back, I answered, not hiding my sense of being at a loss, “I know what bonsai is, but I really don’t know anything about it.”

That there were bonsai fans in the United States, I knew. But it had never occurred to me that the pastime of elderly Japanese bending over to trim dwarf pine trees had reached all the way to the youth of a country I couldn’t even locate on a map. He actually seemed interested in bonsai. Apparently he was trying to ask something about a particular kind of tree; he mumbled incoherently while drawing the shape of a tree in the air with his finger. I could not understand what he was trying to ask, let alone visualize what tree he had in mind. When it comes to tree names, I hardly know any even in Japanese.

Pine? No. Plum? No. Cherry? No, no, much smaller. But all bonsai trees are small, aren’t they? Mmm, yes, but much smaller. As this exchange went on, the Mongolian poet volunteered to help by leaning in and saying something to the Lithuanian.

I gasped.

He was speaking in Russian. I could tell immediately because of all the Soviet films I had seen screened on campus when I was a student. In the same fluent Russian I’d heard in those films, he was asking something of the young Lithuanian poet. I knew that on the Eurasian continent there are people who look perfectly Japanese and speak fluent Russian, yet this was the first time that I had actually seen one. Had I known the first thing about the modern history of Mongolia, this would have come as no surprise. But at the time, I was surprised. Bonsai dropped from my mind.

“You speak Russian?”

“Yes, I studied in Moscow.”

The Lithuanian poet interjected, “His Russian is much better than mine.”

Hearing this, the Mongolian poet laughed heartily. I then understood: these two men did not just happen to be sitting across the aisle from each other. This unlikely pair had become friends through the medium of the Russian language. I see, I said to myself. One could be born in Mongolia, study in Moscow, learn Russian, and later in life be invited to an American university and use the Russian learned in Moscow to become friends with a young Lithuanian with a pierced ear. “The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended the Cold War and handed the United States a single-handed victory”—similar words had been said over and over in the intervening years. It felt as if that history was laid before me, in front of my very eyes. Little did I imagine that barely six months later, the U.S. invasion of Iraq would usher in a new era of instability.

The two of them went on talking in Russian. Soon a white middle-aged woman sitting one row behind the Mongolian, in the window seat, joined in. I later learned that she was a novelist from Ukraine with the name of a princess in Greek mythology, Yevgeniya.

From farther back in the bus, I heard the Chinese and Korean languages being spoken.

The minibus kept driving through cornfields, carrying onboard the history of the vast Eurasian continent. After a lunch break, we crossed the Iowa–Minnesota border and kept on. By the time we got to the hotel in Minneapolis, it was close to evening and the air was beginning to feel chilly again.

Perhaps because I had been locked inside an enclosed space with other foreigners all day, when we got off the minibus and entered the hotel, I had the visceral sensation of being thrown back into mid-America. Americans grown tall and stout on too many hamburgers and French fries were talking loudly. American English emerged from the full movement of chins and lips, both consonants and vowels pronounced with force. The white columns and walls of the atrium lobby were made to resemble a Mediterranean villa—not as horrific as Japanese imitations, but still fake looking—and every corner smacked of America. In this very American lobby, we multinational writers gathered with our luggage of all shapes and sizes, our tired faces on full display.

From Asian countries, besides me, the lone Japanese, there were two Chinese, three Koreans, a Vietnamese, a Burmese, and a Mongolian. From Africa, there was a Botswanan. From the Middle East, an Israeli. From eastern Europe, two Poles, a Romanian, a Hungarian, a Ukrainian, a Lithuanian, and a Bosnian; from western Europe, an Englishman, an Irishman, and a German. From northern Europe, there was a Norwegian, and from South America, a Chilean and an Argentinean. In total, there were twenty-some writers. After a few days in Minneapolis, we drove back together through the cornfields, and then for a month, the duration of my stay, we all lived on the same hotel floor in Iowa City.

THE PALM READER’S PREDICTION

My invitation to participate in the International Writing Program hosted by the University of Iowa had come earlier that year, in the spring. The IWP is a fine program that brings together novelists and poets from around the world. Participants are free to keep on writing while getting a taste of life in an American university. Round-trip transportation, accommodation at the university-owned hotel, and a daily stipend are provided, as well as some extra money to buy books during the stay.

As is always the case when I am invited abroad, I felt conflicted. My upbringing was not typical for a Japanese. When I was twelve, my family moved to New York because of my father’s business, and I lived in the United States for the next twenty years. Even so, I never felt comfortable with either American life or the English language. As a teenager, I immersed myself in classic Japanese novels of the modern era, a set of books that my great uncle gave my mother for her daughters—my sister and me—to read lest we forget our own language. In college and then in graduate school, I even took the trouble of majoring in French literature as a way to continue avoiding English. I was the prisoner of an intense longing for home—a kind of longing perhaps unimaginable in the age of the Internet, which allows one never to leave home, wherever one’s body may be. A confluence of circumstances forced me to go on living this incomprehensible life. And the kind of life I lived so affects everything about me that I can scarcely write a word without addressing it.

After reaching thirty, I finally went back to Japan. One day, as I was about to walk down a bustling street in Tokyo’s Shibuya, I caught sight of a palm reader—an exotic sight for me at the time. He was wearing a Chinese-style hat and had auspiciously full cheeks. In my mind, he even ended up with a drooping mandarin moustache. When I held out my palms, he took one look and said, “I see you have a strong tie to foreign countries.”

I was shocked. I told him that I had been living abroad but now intended to stay put in Japan.

“Oh, no, your tie with foreign countries will last all your life.” He sounded oddly confident.

By then Japan was a rich country, and one did not have to be particularly privileged to travel abroad. It was thus unlikely that the palm reader had said this just to please me. Of course, he wouldn’t have said it just to upset me, either. But I had only recently returned to Japan, at long last, with dozens of cardboard boxes in tow. That I was finally back in my home country had apparently not quite sunk into my psyche, for I still had dreams in which I was dismayed to find myself living in the United States—What’s going on? When will I ever get back to Japan?—and I would let out a sigh of relief when I woke up and saw the low ceiling of my small Tokyo apartment. During those first months, when the voices of screaming children on their way to school came through the window, in my half sleep it would eventually register that the screams were not in English but in Japanese, and I would repeat to myself, “Yes, those are the screams of Japanese children. The same as I heard when I was a little girl going to elementary school myself. Those are Japanese children, and I am in Japan.” And as I went from being half awake to awake, the awareness that I had finally returned to my homeland would fill me to overflowing.

The palm reader’s words were carved into my memory, along with the accompanying shock.

Whether one’s palms can show a “tie to foreign countries” remains a mystery to me, although it’s true that sometime thereafter an unexpected development took me back to the United States. It’s also true that, contrary to what I had dreamed for years, I ended up writing my first novel there. Many flights across the sea then followed. Of course, there are people who constantly crisscross the globe on business or pleasure. I am certainly not in their league. Still, for someone who expected to stay in Japan for the remainder of her life, rooted like a tree, I was making more than my share of trips abroad, though seldom willingly. And now, having passed my prime, to put it mildly, I was finding transoceanic flights an increasing burden, one that took a toll not only on my nerves but also on my never-very-robust health.

Meanwhile, airfare dropped dramatically, a phenomenon giving rise in recent years to more and more events with the word “international” somewhere in the title. Writers too are now frequently invited to foreign countries for one reason or another, though typically to a university. Universities are usually modestly funded—university literature departments in particular. I have no doubt that Nobel laureates are treated differently, but someone like me has to fly economy as a matter of course. I do not have the money to pay out of pocket to upgrade to business class. Consequently, if I accept an invitation, I have to squeeze myself into a seat so cramped that it feels like I’m being transported by a prison security van or cattle truck, eat meals served as unceremoniously as if they were fodder, and, unless I am going to Korea or China, remain stuck in my seat for well ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Series Page
• Contents
• Preface to the English Edition
• Introduction. Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter
• 1. Under the Blue Sky of Iowa: Those Who Write in Their Own Language
• 2. From Par Avion to Via Air Mail: The Fall of French
• 3. People Around the World Writing in External Languages
• 4. The Birth of Japanese as a National Language
• 5. The Miracle of Modern Japanese Literature
• 6. English and National Languages in the Internet Age
• 7. The Future of National Languages
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index