ABSTRACT
When in 1868 the feudal shogunal Edo period ended, formal written Japanese was diverse, ranging from bungo 文語 (grammatically Classical but lexically a mix of Classical Japanese (CJ) and contemporary; orthographically diverse), through sōrōbun 候文 (kanjiheavy CJ with intricate turns of phrase and a polite marker -sōrō 候 < LMJ -sååråå), to kōgo 口語 (more vernacular but still diverse).2 Kōgo was found mostly only in sermon transcriptions and in dialogue in fiction. The following Meiji period (1868-1912), characterized by rapid modernization and competition with the West, saw some attempts to overcome this diversity – Western-influenced punctuation appeared in some texts (Twine 1984), woodblock printing shifted to type, and vocabulary was modernized (see 10.6) – and intellectuals discussed the idea of genbun itchi 言文一致 ‘spoken-written unification’ (Twine 1991: 74ff ).
