Sino-Japanese Hybrids between Writing Systems:

The most accepted explanation is the one considers the wakan konkōbun as a particular form of the written language, which, developed from Insei period (1086-1185) based on the syntax of wabun and of kanbun kundoku of the Heian period (794-1086), has in its framework typical elements of these two particular written styles and completes them with the so-called zokugo and elements of hentai kanbun. Thus, according to this point of view, the wakan konkōbun should be a form that has such peculiar characteristic features allowing us to number it with other typical forms of the Japanese written language as wabun, kanbun and hentai kanbun. The difficulty of its classification, mainly due to its hybrid nature, helped a lively discussion about it and the term was used by and large to indicate any style that combined, in different ways, classical Chinese and Japanese. As a result, from the point of view of the writing systems, distinctions between wakan konkōbun and kana majiribun are not as clear as one might like. Both can be understood as “a mixed form of Chinese and Japanese” and can be traced back to the late Heian and Kamakura periods (1185-1333). One persistent point in definitions concerns the type of kana used; hence wakan konkōbun is a mixture of Chinese characters and katakana, as in the medieval war tales such as Heike monogatari, as Japanese scholars had been unanimous in supporting that gunki monogatari may be considered as a wakan konkōbun model. A survey of the history of written Japanese, nevertheless, reveals the presence of Sino-Japanese hybrids, albeit at a latent stage, since the very beginning of Japanese history, and the evolution of wakan konkōbun doesn’t seem to be direct linked to the development of writing systems as variations in copying texts and manuscripts might alter the style of a text at surface level. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the key features that defined the formation process of written Sino-Japanese through an analysis of some representative texts trying to focus on the controversial and scarcely debated issue of the possibility of studying wakan konkōbun from a grammatology perspective.