Mr. W. G. Aston says, “I believe no parallel is to be found in the history of European letters, to the remarkable fact that a very large proportion of the best writings of the best age of Japanese literature was the work of women.” The “Genji Monogatari” is the acknowledged standard of the language for the period to which it belongs, and the parent of the Japanese novel. This, with the classics, “Ise Monogatari” and “Makura Zoshi,” and much of the poetry of the time, are the works of women. It is to be noted that the borrowed Chinese words were taken entirely from the written, not the colloquial, language of China, the latter having never been spoken by the Japanese, except by a few interpreters at Nagasaki. The Japanese literary style is more concise, and retains archaic forms.
As in the English speech, the child of the wedded Saxon and Norman, the words which express the wants, feelings and concerns of every-day life -- all that is deepest in the human heart -- are for the most part native; the technical, scientific, and abstract terms are foreign. Hence, if we would find the fountains of the musical and beautiful language of Japan, we must seek them in the hearts, and hear the flow from the lips of the mothers of the Island Empire.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
