In the early modern period, literary Sinitic (also known as classical Chinese) was a shared writing system and cultural asset in East Asia. The Sinitic text, while being voiced in various local languages, remained largely the same across the region. The shared Sinitic writing enabled educated people in East Asia who spoke different languages to engage in conversation through writing. It was the silence of literary Sinitic that enabled it to be a trans-local communicating system. However, where is the place for the Chinese sound in the neat picture of the Sinitic writing system versus its various local vocalizations in different countries? Focusing on the effort of Japanese scholars in restoring Chinese sound to the Sinitic text, this dissertation brings the conceptualization and practice of spoken Chinese in the eighteenth century Japan into the supposedly silent Sinitic culture. The early modern Japanese learners of contemporary spoken Chinese intended to vocalize the written Sinitic.

When they realized that contemporary spoken Chinese and literary Sinitic writing were actually not compatible, they solved the problem by resorting again to writing. One solution was to propose a new form of Sinitic writing using colloquial expressions, the zokugo (colloquial [Chinese]) writing. The other was to retreat to the comfortable zone of how to pronounce individual sinographs and Sinitic terms—the phonological study of tōon (contemporary Chinese sound). This dissertation studies vocality as the interrelation and interaction of speaking and writing, to illuminate an early modern East Asian concept of language that cannot be contained in the modern, Western phonocentric view. Through examining the language learning and fiction writing that related to contemporary spoken Chinese in eighteenth-century Japan, this dissertation argues that spoken Chinese and literary Sinitic were not the two opposites of a binary, nor was the spoken language the preliminary to the colloquial Chinese writing.

In both the spoken language and the colloquial writing, vocality was a spectrum of speaking and writing, the proportion of which was attuned to the preferences of different speakers, social settings, and literary genres. The chapters of this dissertation delineate the trajectory of early modern Japanese engagement with contemporary spoken Chinese in relation to writing. It begins with chapter 1 on Chinese popular fiction—the primary learning material for the study of contemporary spoken Chinese—and its colloquial style that imitates storytelling performance. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to the study of contemporary spoken Chinese in early modern Japan. Chapter 2 contextualizes the study of contemporary spoken Chinese in the early to middle Tokugawa (1600–1868) period—a time when Chinese language study gradually gained attention. Chapter 3 reconstructs the learning of tōwa (contemporary spoken Chinese) in eighteenth-century Japan by pointing out its spectrum of vocality. Chapters 4 depicts the contemplation of the incompatibility of contemporary spoken Chinese and literary Sinitic writing, as well as the transformation from the language learning tōwa to the phonological study tōon.

Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the other transmutation of the tōwa study from language study to the zokugo writing, as showcased in the spread of colloquial Chinese fictions in early modern Japan. Chapter 5 examines how Chinese popular fiction was conceptualized and approached in early modern Japan. Chapter 6 shows how eighteenth-century Japan witnessed a gradual increase in the attention paid to the literary format of colloquial Chinese fiction, despite a general emphasis on the colloquial vocabulary. The epilogue discusses colloquial Chinese fiction in nineteenth-century Japan. Together, these chapters delve into the vocality of early modern Japan, as a fascination with speaking that is complexly entangled with writing. The early modern era offers illuminating cases of vocality, with fiction writing intending to capture the essence of oral performance and spoken language, and speech making full use of the literary Sinitic to enhance its cultural flavor. Whereas the eighteenth-century study of contemporary spoken Chinese did explore the spoken language, it was not based on modern phonocentric concepts but to seek to vocalize the written language in its most authoritative version.

The multiple efforts to invite speaking into a conversation with writing reveal an early modern perception of language that could not be fully comprehended without considering writing-centered literacy.