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Wartime Memories
K-College prof’s language research breaks new ground by
Olga Bonfiglio
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Noriko Sugimori speaks about her research at the 2016 inauguration of Kalamazoo College President Jorge Gonzalez. Photo: Kalamazoo College/John Lacko.
12 | Encore AUGUST 2017
ack in 2000, when Kalamazoo College linguist Noriko Sugimori was a graduate student at Boston University studying Japanese honorifics for her doctoral research, she had no idea she’d embark on an oral history project that would open unexpected doors to innovation in research, teaching and the use of technology. Honorifics, which are used to address or refer to people, show the degree of intimacy between people. The suffix “san,” for example, is commonly used after a person’s name and is a title of respect akin to using "Mr.," "Miss," "Ms." or "Mrs." in English. Sugimori, who is a native of Japan, was examining honorifics used by the media and individuals for the Japanese emperor and his family during World War II. She collected and examined newspaper articles about the emperor’s birthday and the media’s editorial policies. She also conducted and recorded interviews with occupation censors and 62 Japanese civilians born before 1932. Her research showed a dramatic increase in the frequency of imperial honorifics from 1928 to the end of World War II in 1945. She also discovered that the news media and military promoted this use of honorifics in order to gain civilian support during the war. “The emperor was seen as a divine entity, above human beings,” says Sugimori. “The government even kept him from speaking to the public in order to emphasize his divine nature. Only at the time of Japan’s surrender did the Japanese people hear his voice for the first time.” One aspect of honoring the emperor came in the form of laws forbidding lèse-majesté, which is the crime of violating the dignity of a reigning sovereign or a state. “There were strict laws against lèse-majesté,” Sugimori says, “and the people acted in extreme ways.” For example, people avoided stepping on newspapers because they could be arrested for violating lèse-majesté if there were articles in the papers about the emperor. Some people avoided reading newspapers altogether because of these fears. “There is an explanation for this extreme behavior,” says Sugimori. “Soldiers were taught to fight to the death for Japan, and this patriotism spilled over to civilians.” One woman Sugimori interviewed talked about the experience of her high school class’s visit to a shrine in