The previous articles traced how Sōseki commanded an elevated Japanese, through parallel clauses, Sino-Japanese vocabulary, and switching between styles. But there is another side to Sōseki’s Japanese. He never hesitated to place dialect, or the speech of the uneducated, at the very center of a story.
The Matsuyama students’ Iyo dialect
As read in the feature on Botchan’s language, a Matsuyama middle-school student answers the Edo-born narrator “I” like this:
It’s too fast, I can’t follow, kere. Could you go a bit more zura-zura, oh, please, mos. (working translation)
Kere, mos — endings distinctive to Iyo dialect. This dialect is used not as mere background color but as the very engine of the story’s comedy and drama (examined in detail in this article).
The rickshaw man’s tomcat, in coarse Edo speech
The neighborhood stray, “the rickshaw man’s tomcat,” read in the feature on I Am a Cat’s language, likewise speaks in the broken-down speech of the uneducated.
What, a cat? Don’t make me laugh. Where the hell do you even live? (working translation)
“Don’t make me laugh,” “where the hell” — a spelling meant to capture the traditional, broken-down pronunciation of old downtown Edo (examined in detail in this article).
Why this matters
In the Meiji era, when the norm of a “standard language” had not yet been sufficiently established through education and media, bringing dialect and slang directly into a literary work’s dialogue was not an obvious choice. The literature of the time could easily have unified its narrative prose in an elevated register and kept its characters’ speech reasonably tidy as well. Sōseki chose the opposite. He repeatedly adopted a technique of deliberately colliding an elevated narrative prose (parallel clauses, Sino-Japanese) against broken-down speech (dialect, slang) within the same work.
Symmetry with the parallel clauses and Sino-Japanese
Set this dialect-and-slang technique beside the technique of parallel clauses and Sino-Japanese seen in article 2 and article 3.
| Parallelism / Sino-Japanese | Dialect / Slang | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | The tradition of classical Chinese prose | The living speech of each region and class |
| Effect | Signals elevation, a compression of thought | Instantly conveys a character’s background and status |
| Where it appears | Narrative prose, interior monologue | Mainly dialogue |
| Shared ground | Both are elements that actively draw on something outside a “correctly” standard written language |
Both a classical-Chinese-derived parallelism and a regional dialect stand, in a sense, outside the norm of what was, at the time, becoming a standardized genbun itchi register. Sōseki wrote both extremes — classical elevation, and living slang — with the same pen, without fear.
Worth checking as you read
First, as already noted in the feature on Botchan, Sōseki’s depiction of dialect is likely, to some degree, exaggerated and simplified from the actual regional speech, for the sake of the novel’s effect. This article, too, weighs that limitation while still crediting the posture itself — the willingness to bring dialect into literature at all.
Second, this article only sketches the broad picture of how far the norm of a “standard language” had actually been established in the Meiji era. The history of how the standard language spread through school education and the media is a more specialized field of research, beyond this article’s scope.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| Iyo dialect | The Matsuyama students’ “zona-moshi” — used as the engine of the story |
| Edo slang | The rickshaw man’s tomcat’s “don’t make me laugh” — conveys a lack of education through speech alone |
| Why it matters | Placing dialect and slang at the center of literature was not an obvious choice at the time |
| Symmetry with parallelism/Sino-Japanese | Both actively draw on elements outside the standard genbun itchi register |
In short — Sōseki wrote both extremes of the norm — classical-Chinese-derived elevation, and dialect and slang — with the same pen, and without fear.