The relationship of Japanese to other languages is not well understood even by native speakers, and, in The Japanese Language, Professor Kindaichi sets out to examine this. He concludes that
Japanese is indeed only remotely related to other world languages, although it has many features in common with the languages of so-called primitive societies.
After a brief discussion on the unique isolation of the Japanese language, the author moves on to consider the varieties of ordinary speechùdialects, jargon, sex- and role-based distinctions,
and the differences between informal, formal, and literary language. He then examines the structure of Japanese pronunciation, its rhythm, and accent. Kindaichi also investigates the
so-called vagueness of Japanese and traces it to its sourceùthe unusual sentence order.
