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| James Curtis Hepburn |
James Curtis Hepburn is the person who published the Japanese-English dictionary and created the Hepburn styled Romanization. At first, he came to Nagasaki with his wife in 1859, and soon moved to Kanagawa and opened his own clinic at Sokoji-temple. Although he was an ophthalmologist, he conducted many kinds of surgery like leg amputation . He also treated two victims of “Namamugi Incident” [in which a British merchant was killed by samurai - Ed].
He really loved Japan and he had a strong wish to have Japanese servants in order to get used to Japanese customs, although many foreigners tended to have Chinese servants at that time. In addition, he declared to the American consul that he would never treat Americans in Japan, and would take care only of Japanese. Moreover, he thought obsessively about Japanese grammar with his friend, Brown. Actually, they were able to speak Chinese; therefore they thought that Japanese would be easier for them because they are similar. However, they realized that these two languages are completely different and Japanese is so deep and interesting. While Hepburn was sleeping, if Brown found a new answer for Japanese grammar, ho would sometimes wake him up and they would talk about it overnight.
In 1867, he published Japanese-English dictionary using Hepburn styled Romanization. Also he established Meiji Gakuin which is now Meiji Gakuin University. In Meiji Gakuin, there was a Hepburn building, and on September 21st 1911, the Hepburn building was burned with uncertain cause at the same time on the same day as Hepburn died.
Discussion
For the first discussion question, we thought about that the difficult points of learning Japanese. My group members told that we have so many kinds and ranks of expressions using honorifics, like Sonkei-go (the honorific expression), Kenjou-go (the humble expression), and Teinei-go (the polite expression). They also mentioned the difficulty of distinguishing between using kanji (Chinese characters), Hiragana and Katakana. Personally, I thought that the use of Joshi (the postpositional particle) might be difficult in Japanese. However, I have heard that listening to Japanese is easier than learning other languages. It was the first time to think about Japanese as the target language, and it was really interesting to talk with my members from the other point of view.
Furthermore, for the second question, which was more difficult than the upper one, it required imagination skill, that is “How do you think of the relationship to Hepburn’s death and the fire of the Hepburn building?” At first, some members thought that the person who really respected Hepburn burned the Hepburn building because of their sadness at his death. However, after I told that, actually Hepburn was not in Japan when he died, so many members told that Hepburn came and burned the building as a ghost because of his great love for Japan.
Reflection
In conclusion, it took only 8 years to publish the Japanese-English dictionary after Hepburn arrived in Japan, which means it was only 8 years since he started studying Japanese to publish the Japanese-English dictionary. I was really shocked to know the fact because it was more than 10 years ago when I started learning English, but I am still not a good English speaker. I think that the reason why he was able to be a good Japanese speaker in a short time is that Hepburn had a strong wish to master the language and to be like real Japanese. Therefore, he finally became the person who is really famous in Japan, and also his achievement made Japanese people more familiar with foreign languages.
References
Mochiduki, Y. (1987) Hepburn’s life and Japanese. Tokyo: Shincyou-sensyo.
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