Sophia Magazine vol.3 / SUMMER 2016

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in turn maintains and remanufactures the existing order. In Japan and in the Japanese language itself, there still remain strong traces of the system where the government commands and the people obey, which originated in the Edo period, an era when a stable regime founded on feudalism was first established. This serves as a barrier to building a flat space for dialogue and with it modernization of Japanese society,” Mizubayashi points out.“If that is the case, changing Japanese society may neces-sitate first re-examining the Japanese language.” With this thought in mind, Mizubayashi says he took it upon himself to disconnect from the Japanese language for a while and write in French in order to deeply implant in himself French mo-dernity as a historical and social experience.It was in high school that Mizubayashi encountered the words of Arimasa Mori, the philosopher who spent half his life in Paris.“They had a major impact on me, weary as I was of the cli-ché-ridden Japanese used in the student protest movement of the time. His words came out of deep reflection, and I felt that they were neither imitations nor imitable.” Having learned that behind Mori’s expressiveness in Japa-nese lay his study of French and French culture, Mizubayashi enrolled in French Studies at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. “Actually, I also continued recording every single les-son of the beginner French course on NHK radio for over three years, listening again and again, never assuming that I fully understood. Mori’s humility towards other languages and cultures was something I wanted to emulate,” reflects Mizubayashi.Also influenced by both the war experience related by his father and a zeitgeist that valued democracy and opposition to war, Mizubayashi instinctively knew that the focus of his study should be the architects of modernity: Rousseau, Mon-tesquieu and others of the Lumières movement. Following two years of study in France and graduation, he chose the path of academia and entered graduate school at the Univer-sity of Tokyo.“Language is like a prison that confines the thought pro-cess. Learning a foreign language matters in terms of freeing yourself from this condition,” says Mizubayashi, noting also his concerns about how the tide of globalization is reshap-ing foreign language education into something lopsided and Anglocentric.“In that respect, Sophia University offers an environment well equipped for learning multiple languages, with the Faculty of Foreign Studies as the keystone. This is one of its major strengths. In particular, I believe French is the most important foreign language for not only the Japanese but for all people including those in the English-speaking world, if we are to know the foundational value of modern society that for which the language served as a catalyst, and make a place for those values in our future,” Mizubayashi concludes.It represented a complete reversion of thought: a doing away with royal rule wherein an absolute ruler commanded the subjects, and in its stead creating a system where the people commanded the authorities. The term “constitutionalism” de-scribes only a part of this sea change.“Therefore, the Liberal Democratic Party’s proposed revi-sion to the Constitution, which blatantly aims to place state power above the people, is a denial of the modern state,” Mizubayashi says bluntly, “and represents a regression to an era before the French Revolution, in the case of Japan, to the Edo period, when the samurai ruled the country.”Mizubayashi has published three books in French since 2011 and received accolades in France, including the Riche-lieu International Award for Francophone Literature (Prix Littéraire Richelieu de la Francophonie). On the other hand, he published nothing in Japanese for a number of years fol-lowing his last Japanese work in 2007. What was behind this?“I came to write only in French, and there is an intimate con-nection between this decision and the fact that I live the real-ity here in Japan,” says Mizubayashi.Even in the Japan of the 21st century, important issues such as deploying troops overseas in contravention of the Consti-tution are decided with almost no national dialogue, in stark contrast with what he knows of French society. What was par-ticularly disappointing to him was the way both the institu-tions of Japan, despite being main actors in the event, and the people of Japan utterly failed to learn from the nuclear calamity following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.“Between society and language exists mutual dependence, wherein a social order breeds a concordant language, which Japanese Language Holds Back Japanese SocietyTo Learn French is to Learn the Value of Modernity12Research

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