Esperanto: Linguistic Constructions of the International

In an increasingly globalized world, transnational communication is a given. The mechanics of transnational communication however, were not as straightforward when the international community first began organising. Early efforts to enable this communication were centred around the language Esperanto – the most widespread planned or artificial language.1 Iacobelli and Leary explore Esperanto to argue that language is central to transnational activity.2

A global outlook and a tendency towards expansion characterised early 20th c. Japan.3 This extended to the broader population beyond just people in power. The Esperanto community in Japan reflected this tendency. Rhetoric in Japan was centred around the notion of a new international order, one where Japan would the correct the material civilisation of the West with the spiritual civilisation of the East.4 Thus, Esperanto as a medium for construction of the international was a compelling force. Japanese notions of the international hinged on an interaction between East and West, guided by Japan at the forefront.5 I will be arguing that an interrogation of Esperanto reveals the challenges characterising this vision for the international.

There has been increasing academic recognition of the use of Esperanto in Asia.6 Decentring the study of Esperanto from Europe is useful to undermine the universal nature of terms like ‘the international’ and ‘global’. Though Esperanto was conceived as a medium for international communication, it is a language of European intellectual and cultural origin, drawing from European languages for much of its semantic and structural content.7

Esperanto gained a large following in Japan.5 The largest Esperanto speaking community outside of Europe was in Japan.5 Critiques of Japanese constructions of modernity like Takeuchi Yoshimi argue that with time, Japanese notions of modernization were increasingly equated with Europeanisation.8The frictions of Esperanto reveal the challenges of extricating modernity from European hegemony.

These challenges shaped interactions across Japanese society. The Japanese Esperanto community shifts the focus of Esperanto as an international language away from halls of power. The Esperanto speaking community transcended the world of diplomats and policy-makers. Ordinary people were also increasingly interested in engaging with the world beyond national borders – in ‘thinking and feeling beyond the nation’.9

Tracing the Japanese Esperanto community highlights a large network of actors engaging with the language.10 Motivations for doing so ranged from pragmatism to idealism.5 For some, it reflected attempts to master a European language to gain access to a wide array of disciplines. For others religious and political views (across the political spectrum), motivated a desire to engage with the international and work towards a fairer, more equal world.5

Iacobelli and Leary emphasise the need to recognise and acknowledge the difficulties involved in transnational communication — the frictions of language creating obstacles to expressing the higher level meanings these encounters sought to express.5 It raises the question of how successfully Japanese thinkers were able to synthesise East and West, to translate the Eastern spirituality they heralded into terms that could speak to the scientific frameworks of the West, and to transform Western structures of modern welfare and political control within Eastern contexts.11

Was Esperanto a sufficient medium shape the international order through transnational engagement? I believe the Japanese community of Esperanto revealed attempts to construct agency within the international for actors who were previously merely subjects of the international. The difficulties of transnational communication revealed by the use of Esperanto however, reflect a failure to transcend the existing hierarchies and power structures of the Western dominated international order.

  1. A Language for Asia? Transnational Encounters in the Japanese Esperanto Movement, 1906-28, in Pedro Iacobelli and Danton Leary (ed.), Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration,
    and Social Movements (Basingstoke, 2015), pp. 167-185, pp. 167-168. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p.167. [↩]
  3. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, 2004 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p.104. [↩]
  5. Ibid. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  6. Iacobelli and Leary, A Language for Asia?, p.168. [↩]
  7. Ibid., p.167. [↩]
  8. Takeuchi Yoshimi, What Is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi (New York, 2005), p. 47. [↩]
  9. Ibid., p.168. [↩]
  10. Ibid. p.169. [↩]
  11. Prasenjit, Sovereignty and Authenticity, p.104, 114. [↩]