Study of original Japanese names of human body and physical concept of the ancient Japanese

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K18497
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literature, Linguistics, and related fields
• Research Institution: BIWAKO PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY OF REHABILITATION (2020-2022); Aino University (2017-2019)
• Principal Investigator: Noda Toru びわこリハビリテーション専門職大学, リハビリテーション学部, 教授 (50156204)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 身体語彙 / 大和言葉 / 解剖学 / 古代日本人

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project is aimed to collect the names of the body parts in the original Japanese words (the Yamato-Kotoba) before the Chinese culture has been imported to Japan. The ancient Japanese names of human body were mainly collected from several classical dictionaries compiled in the Heian, and Kamakura periods. Among collected words, we recognized that many names of the body parts containing the derived words of one syllable words such as “te” and “a”, indicating the basic names of upper limb and lower limb. We could trace development of the body names from simple words into more complex words along the long history. Moreover, we found the concept of the ancient Japanese to the derives of the body, such as hair, nail, saliva, etc., as the parts of the body with the owner’s soul. All these outcomes of this project were made public through 11 presentations in the academical meetings related to the anatomy and the medical history fields, and also published in 3 papers of journals.

Free Research Field

解剖学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は、単に古い身体語彙の収集という成果にとどまらず、それらの語彙の持つ古代日本語の音節上の特徴、畳語、擬態語が身体語彙にも表れていたこと明らかにした。また古代日本人の身体観について、身体から分離した物質について特別な認識を有していたことが研究の過程で気づいた。すなわち、毛、爪、唾液等を身体派生物としてまとめ、このような観点から用例を古典文学などで通観すると、それらの由来する個人の分身、あるいは個人の魂を含むものと捉えていたことが明らかとなった。このように本研究は解剖用語上の意義にとどまらず、日本語学、日本における文化人類学などにも関わる重要な成果をもたらしたと思われる。