＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Added 7/23/2021> The entrance march for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be in alphabetical order of “aiueo”!
First was Greece, the birthplace of the modern Olympic Games, and last was host country Japan (206th), but the other participating countries marched in alphabetical order of “aiueo”.
This is probably a case of the host country’s motto, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
The 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as well as the Sapporo Olympics (1972) and Nagano Olympics (1998), also marched in alphabetical order.
The current Olympic Charter does not explicitly stipulate the order of marching, and the custom is for Greece to march first, the host country to march last, and the rest to march in the order of the host country’s language.
1. The Origin of “Aiueo”
How was the order of the Japanese 50 sounds, “aiueo,” decided?
Before the war, I think the order of the “Iroha Song” was the norm. (I was born after the war, so I don’t know if that was actually the case…) There’s the “Iroha Karuta” (Iroha Karuta), which was created during the Edo period, the “Iroha 47 Groups” of the Edo Firefighters (later adding one to become “Iroha 48 Groups”), and the use of “i, ro, ha” to separate items in prewar documents and family registers.
So, did the “aiueo” order come about after the war?
I wondered about this recently, so I looked into it and found that the “aiueo” order actually comes from ancient Indian “Sanskrit.”
There is a school of thought called “Siddham Studies,” which is the study of phonology in China and Japan in relation to Sanskrit characters. “Siddham” is a Chinese word that is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word siddham.
In a narrow sense, “Siddham” refers to vowels, but in a broader sense, it refers to all Sanskrit characters, including consonants.
In “Siddham Studies,” “a” is the base, and with “i” before it and “u” after it, a vowel triangle is created. “aiu” is one of the three main vowels, so to speak. It is joined by guna (e) before it and bhudi (o) after it, which are located between the high “iu” and the low “a.”
There is a theory that this order of vowels, “aiueo,” comes from the Chinese word “fansetsu” (rebellion).
You may also be wondering how and why the order of the consonants “a-ka-sa-ta-na” was decided.
This is the order of Siddham, which is the order of consonants from the back of the throat (e.g., k) to the lips (e.g., p). At each point of articulation, the order is as follows: aspirated unvoiced sounds, aspirated unvoiced sounds, aspirated voiced sounds, and nasal sounds (k, kh, g, gh, n).
Following these stop consonants, the order is liquids (the “ra” row) and semivowels (the “ya” and “wa” rows). Skipping those that don’t exist in Japanese, the order becomes “a-ka-sa-ta-na.”
Deviations from this order are due to variations within Japanese, such as the “ha” row of roll call sounds.
Books related to “Siddam studies” include Anzen’s “Siddham Zo” (880), a compilation of his works from the Heian period, and Myokaku’s “Han’on Sakuho” (1093) and “Siddham Yoketsu” (c. 1101).
2. Who Determined the “Aiueo” Syllabary?
Based on this, it appears that the “aiueo” syllabary was completed by the 12th century.
However, it was Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), a Japanese classical scholar, philologist, linguist, and physician, who finalized the 50-sound chart in its current form.
Although 50-sound charts existed before Norinaga, he researched ancient words and swapped the positions of the “wo” and “o” in the A and Wa rows, which at the time were “aiueo” and “waiueueo,” respectively, to finalize the chart used today.
Meanwhile, when the Dutch studied Japanese at Dejima in Nagasaki, and when Dutch scholars studied Dutch in Nagasaki, they used the 50-sound chart written in Roman letters, so not only Japanese classical scholars but also Western scholars were familiar with the chart.
3. Transition from “Iroha” to “aiueo”
(1) Period of Transition
In the early Meiji period, elementary school Japanese language textbooks still used the Iroha alphabet. However, it seems that the order was changed from Iroha to Aiueo around the mid-Meiji period.
The turning point was the publication of “Introduction to Reading” in 1886 (Meiji 19). This is a language textbook compiled for use in the first semester of the first year of elementary school. Incidentally, this was also the year the “Textbook Examination System” was adopted. Until then, the suitability of already published textbooks was judged by an open application or approval system, but in order to enforce stricter regulations in the examination process, the Ministry of Education compiled and presented model textbooks.
In “Introduction to Reading,” the 50-kana chart of the Iroha alphabet appears at the beginning, and the Iroha is included at the end as a sort of appendix.
In the field of dictionary compilation, Otsuki Fumihiko (1847-1928) compiled Japan’s first modern Japanese dictionary, Genkai, in 1886 (Meiji 19). The index was in alphabetical order, “aiueo.”
However, surprisingly, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901), who actively sought to introduce Western thought and theory, was a supporter of the Iroha, saying, “You can’t even be a shoe-shiner without knowing the Iroha.” He seemed to believe that the Iroha alphabet was purely “science,” and that the Iroha was the “knowledge” useful in people’s daily lives.
(2) Reasons for the change
I think there are two possible reasons.
① The “scientific” nature of the system’s regular correspondence with vowels and consonants.
As can be clearly seen when written in roman letters, the 50-syllable chart of “aiueo” (letters “a, i, u, e, o”) properly corresponds to vowels and consonants, making it “scientific.”
On the other hand, the “Iroha” uses each of the 47 kana characters of Japanese once to create a continuous, meaningful sentence. It could also be described as “writing kana characters in one stroke.” While this is quite clever in terms of “word play,” it does not regularly correspond to vowels and consonants, making it “unscientific.”
As a result, I believe the “scientific” system of “aiueo” was chosen.
② The Meiji government disliked the “Buddhist flavor” of the Iroha song.
The “Iroha song” is said to have been created by Kobo Daishi Kukai, known as the “Five-Curtain Priest,” and its content expresses the Buddhist view of “impermanence.”
However, from the perspective of “State Shinto,” the Meiji government issued the “Shinbutsu Bunri Edict” in the early Meiji period (abolishing the custom of syncretism between Shinto and Buddhism and clearly distinguishing between Shinto and Buddhism, gods and Buddhas, shrines and temples). This, along with the influence of the “Haibutsu Kishaku Movement” that arose from this, may have led to the government avoiding the heavily Buddhist “Iroha” and adopting the 50-syllable alphabet chart of “Aiueo.”