Another Short History of Linguistics (73)

When English scholar intend play down the influence of Leibniz, some new linguistic idea appeared the world from Asia, an idea not for scientific study but rather a sort of revenge. It appeared from Japan. After the successful Meiji restoration in 1866, they thought they were no more the backward Asia, they were a higher level nation, so they had a policy called Departing from Asia for Europe.

From history, we know that the Japanese had no writing system themselves until 645 A.D. they introduced the Chinese writing system that was the characters into their country. From then until 18 century, their national power and economy were still no match for China also they work harder than Chinese. Of course they wanted a stronger country than China but after 1,000 years learning from China, their situation didn’t changed anymore. The arrival of European people gave them a new hope of beating China, if there was no way to learn from China, the only hope could be the new culture from western world. Japanese is a native learner. Without any great thinker, they had to learn from any country of the world. The new culture gave them the inspiration and chance of surpass the traditional Chinese culture which had over their head for more than one thousand years already.