ruiner wrote:

BTW, yudantaiteki, you've cited those two authors/republications and the orthographic edits before (edits which sound a bit weird to me, to be honest, I try to imagine parallels but all I can think of are mass market paperback versions of very vintage classics marketed for kids--no idea whether those even exist, though ;p) are you referring to two specific things you've read, or are you saying that you've checked out quite a few of them, a representative sampling? I guess I'm saying I'm wondering whether you're expanding your personal experience too far, or if this is a major trend in publishing that reflects the idiosyncrasies of old/modern kanji/kana? I feel if it's the latter, I'm going to have to make a mental note to condescend heavily to those editors/publishers.

The 新潮文庫 company, which publishes a lot of literature bunko, does this (presumably with all their older works); they include a page at the end describing the changes.

They're not marketed for kids, these are the standard (affordable) editions of these works that you get in bookstores.  Different publishers may have varying standards but I'm not sure you can get any editions of these works published in the last few decades that are completely unmodernized.  (I have no basis for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if even editions contemporary with Soseki had orthography differences between them...)

As for other countries, note that English spelling is very often modernized in modern editions of things like Shakespeare and the King James Bible.  This is what I would consider a close analogue.  In both cases you have at least the impression of the view of the editors -- that changing the orthography does not actually change the underlying work of literature.  In neither case are words or grammatical patterns changed.

What do you think of audiobooks of Japanese literature?

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2010 March 18, 8:31 am)

True, but on the other hand, it's obviously not the case that every time a native English speaker writes "antennas", they are making a deliberate stylistic choice.  In the same way, I think it would be wrong to suggest that every single time a native speaker writes ください instead of 下さい he or she is making a deliberate stylistic choice.

EDIT: Because I can't resist talking about Genji whenever possible...

I was doing some research on the poems in the first chapter of Genji and came across some pretty wide variations in orthography.

Here's how the first poem in the tale appears in an edition that takes the orthography directly from a reliable old manuscript with no changes except for changing 変体仮名 to standard kana forms:
かきりとてわかるゝ道のかなしきにいかまほしきはいのちなりけり

I was comparing commentaries, and in the 6 modern editions of Genji I looked at, there were five different ways to modify the orthography of this poem:
かぎりとてわかるる道の悲しきにいかまほしきは命なりけり
かぎりとてわかるゝ道のかなしきにいかまほしきは命なりけり
かぎりとて別るる道の悲しきにいかまほしきは命なりけり
限りとて別るる道の悲しきにいかまほしきは命なりけり
限りとてわかるゝ道のかはしきにいかまほしきは命なりけり

Unfortunately the editors never fully explain their decisions, they usually just say in the introduction that they change some kana to kanji to make it easier to read, but you wonder why only 3 of the 5 thought it was necessary to remove the ゝ kana repetition mark, why only 2 of the 5 wrote かぎり in kanji, why they all thought 命 should be in kanji, etc.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2010 March 18, 9:17 am)

Kubelek wrote:

what about other words like ありがとう? where am I likely to see it as  有り難う (outside of jpod101 transcripts)?

I saw 有難う printed on a cardboard box in my apartment. I saw it everyday for months without knowing what it meant until I finally looked it up. It said "thank you for buying this product".