Fujitani Nariakira

Who was Fujitani Nariakira?

Fujitani Nariakira was an Edo period scholar of the kokugaku tradition and one of the most eminent scholars of Japanese grammar. He made the first serious attempt in Japan to classify the words of the language according to their grammatical functions.

He analysed Japanese poetic language and did work in periodising Japanese. He is best known for setting up four "parts of speech" in Japanese based on an analogy with clothing: na, kazashi, yosōi, and ayui. This division can be found in Kazashi shō, and corresponds to Itō Tōgai's division into jitsuji, kyoji, joji and goji as described in Sōko jiketsu.

He later published Ayui shō, where he put emphasis on yosōi and azashi/ayui rather than on na, and describes the system of particles. First he makes a division of particles that can go with nouns and particles that can't. The first group then divides into tagui – sentence-ending particles, and ie – particles "inside" a sentence. The second group divides into tomo – particles of tense and mood, tsura – inflexible suffixes, and mi – other particles. Fujitani is describing both kazashi and ayui as "kotoba wo tasukuru mono". This work includes also the study of katsuyō. Pointing out the word order and relations of words and sentences is considered one of his greatest contributions to the study of Japanese grammar.