Historical research of hiragana grapheme with special attention to the relationship between Japanese language textbooks and beginners' handwriting in the Meiji period

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H05981
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
• Principal Investigator: Okada Kazuhiro 東京外国語大学, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 特任研究員 (80761220)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 日本語学 / 文字史 / 国語教科書（読本） / 平仮名字体 / 明治時代

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Aiming at investigation of the graphemic history of hiragana in the authorized Japanese textbooks in the Meiji period Japan, this project has worked on: 1) in collaboration with Dr. Egusa Yuka at the National Institute for Educational Policy Research, transcribing and cropping of major textbooks, in preparation for the grapheme corpus of authorized Japanese textbooks, and preliminary analyses, and, 2) constructing the Wakan Meien hiragana grapheme database in the hope of making it a reference in description of old hiragana graphemes, and conducting a public trial.

Free Research Field

日本語学