In July of 2020, I published my first monograph: Scripting Japan. This text was the result of a long running interest in the Japanese writing system. Arguably this interest truly sparked in the final year of my undergraduate Japanese study, but it really built up steadily throughout my postgraduate career, becoming the main area which I currently research. Scripting Japan stands as the first statement of my work in this area so far, being the culmination of around a decade of thinking about – arguably way too much thinking about – variation in written Japanese. My goal in this post is not simply to advertise or discuss the contents of the book though, but rather detail how it came to be. More specifically, how scattered research found its shape into a book form, and my reflections on the process of publishing itself. I know there are already countless guides to “getting in published”, and indeed some excellent books that I certainly used. However, I do hope that in putting my own story out there, I can at least provide some further assistance in navigating the academic publication process. I’ll begin by briefly detailing how I even began thinking about Japanese writing as a topic of research, and then move into the meat of how I turned my work in this area into a publication.
I believe that my first interest in the Japanese writing system as a topic of study (rather than something studied as part of gaining literacy in Japanese) begin during my final year of my undergraduate studies. The capstone for my Japanese major was a translation project, and I decided to attempt a select groups of poems by the poet Takahashi Mutsuo (高橋 睦郎). I had stumbled across translations of his early work a year earlier, and acquired a copy of この世あるいは箱の人 (kono yo arui wa hako no hito, A Person of this World or a Box) out of curiosity. Apparently used copies now range up to 300 dollars? This certainly wasn’t the case in 2004. Maybe if it was I my entire career would have been different, because I certainly couldn’t afford that at the time.
I immediately found Takashi’s poems, or what I could of understand of them, beautiful. Their difficulty also intrigued me, and inspired me to use poems from この世あるいは箱の人 as my project. I soon found there was a bit of hubris in my choice, as many of the poems were beyond the level of a learner with only four years under their belt. Still, I was able to eventually translate five poems in a way that I was satisfied with, and the project was well received.
My final presentation focused on some of the particular difficulties of translating Takahashi’s work. For instance, my translated title of A Person of this World or a Box is certainly awkward, but this was intentional. The Japanese is, in my understanding, a bit awkward too, and the translation maintains an ambiguity (is the person of a box, or is the box a separate possibility) in the Japanese. However, one element which I just had to say “I have no idea how to translate this” during my presentation was Takahashi’s particular uses of script. Takahashi has a penchant for writing things which “should” be in hiragana, like the question word どこ (doko, where) or the reference pronouns これ・それ・あれ (kore, sore, are, this (near me), that (near you), that (away from us), in kanji. He also enjoyedkanji which are so obscure that even most dictionaries won’t pick them up. I particularly remember 泛 being a source of misery, as it took extensive effort to find out that it was read as ukabu (to float). Both standard dictionaries and most online sources did not even recognize it as an extant kanji. I immediately understood that these choices were important, but I had no idea how to render this into English.
At the time, I checked Takahashi’s orthographic peculiarities up as a personal foible. But when I moved to Japan and started living there, I began to see more and more script variation occurring around me. Some of this was obviously the nonstandard use of a script for emphasis, as has been commented on by many people to date, or forms of play wherein “incorrect” readings were attached to kanji. But what really grabbed my attention was the use of katakana for non-loan words (for non-Japanese speakers, this is considered highly nonstandard) in non-native speech. This is common in Japanese media, but my first encounters were via “the gaijin clown” Mr. James who slung hamburgers in katakana-represented Japanese for McDonalds for a few years, or a Toshiba commercial for a bread maker wherein an actress pretends to be low-level non-native Japanese speaker (fake nose and all, see below). At the time, this katakana use was explained to me as expressing accent. I of course understood that this interpretation existed, but I couldn’t follow it to the end. How exactly does changing か to カ indicate that ka should be accented? Why do all non-native speakers have the same “script accent”? Once again though, I kind of just put a pin in this and didn’t think about it for a number of years. I actually applied to graduate school intending to study how Japanese learners of English learned/engaged with revision strategies.
As a chance assignment though during my coursework, I happened to revisit this question of marked katakana use in non-native speech after encountered a few manga which used it extensively. The small assignment was well received, and I was encouraged to expand it into my Master’s thesis. Through this study, I was able to secure my first two publications, which ultimately argued that an ideologically defined “gaijinness” was motivating the script use (pronunciation issues were then an assumed trait from this identity, not the main motive). After this, I then branched out into looking at variant use of all three major scripts across the dialogue of all speakers in a selection of manga for my PhD. When I completed the PhD, I was lucky enough to receive a small publication grant which allowed me to spend three months focusing on turning my PhD into publications. It is here that in many ways my book writing process began.
That said, it is quite likely that I made a massive mistake early on. Rather than attempt to turn my thesis into a book, I instead cut it up into three articles. My supervisors smartly encouraged me to avoid this particular path, but I sort of stubbornly soldiered on. I believed that getting publications out in journals would be easier than finishing a book (this is true), which would help my career prospects (this is debatable); that my book would be better if I could expand my PhD data to include some extra studies (this was very true); and that potential employers would be happy to know I had a clear plan for a book once hired (this would have been true… if I’d had a book out already). I knew that in some fields, like history, looking for a job without a book/book contract was akin to printing an application directly into the trash, but I had been told that in linguistics/languages it was possible to get hired off good articles. As I have found a job I can attest that this is true, but I definitely misunderstood the tone in which “possible” is uttered. Ultimately, even with some solid publications, I had no success with job hunting. I didn’t get call backs, much less interviews, from over 95% of the applications I sent to. Some of this was of course network related. I found it very hard to break into work in the United States especially. But a lot in retrospect was probably based on the fact that I had no book or book contract.
While working part time at one institution, my direct supervisor mentioned that a contact from Routledge was doing quick visits with staff interested in publishing. So I sent the contact an email, and set up a brief five minute meeting. I made my pitch, and they told me they were interested. I wasn’t sure if it was a boilerplate comment at the time, but soon enough information on how to submit a book proposal came through. At the time though, I wasn’t supported to do research, so I didn’t make much progress. That Christmas though, another email came asking me if I was still interested in publishing via Routledge. I mentioned that I really couldn’t start on the book yet because I didn’t have a full time job, but that I was certainly still keen. They said they could wait, and that made me realize that my initial pitch actually did go well. I then set out with a general outline of the book in my mind, the studies I would need, and a timeline, and changed my CV to state that I had an interested publisher. Not as good as a contract, but better than before. Here is perhaps then the first concrete piece of advice I have: at least make initial contact with a publisher and see if they are keen at accepting a proposal. It’s not as good as a contract, but it’s a step in the right direction, and more trustworthy than the “oh yeah, sure, I’ll have a book for you once you hire me” route I had taken up until then.
After another year or so I finally grabbed a full time position. To be honest, I think my experience teaching introductory Japanese and stated interest in online teaching was the tipping point. I definitely made it clear in the interview though that I had a plan to have a book out in two years if they hired me, and attempted to clearly articulate exactly why I had waited to publish the monograph, focusing on how institutional support was necessary for the research that would make up the second half of the book. It ultimately took me two and a half to get the book out into the world, but I did start right away. I worked all year revising the first three chapters of my thesis into book chapters, and developing my proposal. Part of this involved contacting publishers of journals as well, and making sure they didn’t mind if I revisited data and ideas they’d published. Thankfully, all of them were kind enough to say yes. To ensure no self-plagiarism, I rewrote everything from scratch, using the data I had discussed but copying nothing else from the prior articles. There’s probably an easier way, but I was paranoid of breaking a rule. After a year of work, which included time on a smaller somewhat silly project that was of great interest to me (a type of project I always recommend as a breather), I had begun collecting and coding my new data and finished the proposal and initial three chapters. Once again, around Christmastime, Routledge contacted me. This time though, I had a positive reply, attaching my completed proposal. A somewhat censored version is available below.
The proposal was accepted, and the draft chapters were sent off to reviewers. While waiting for their replies, I started in on the final chapters, going back to revise the first three regularly as the book took shape. The reviewers all liked my first three chapters, giving some very useful suggestions but no major complaints, and so I spent 2019 just typing away. The first two chapters ended up morphing quite a lot as the latter chapters took shape, and I was fortunate enough to obtain an internal grant which covered 2 of my 8 hours of weekly teaching for one semester so I could better concentrate. I finished my first draft about mid 2019, and then just edited nonstop until just before the end of the year. Part of this involved sharing chapters with a trusted colleague, who was kind enough to provide feedback as things developed (a favor which of course I am slated to repay, not as an act of charity). Between the start of 2020 and mid-2020, I then liaised with copy editors, indexing, etc., with the book coming out in July of that year.
In looking at everything I did, I think I could have made the whole process and academic job search easier on myself by doing a few things differently (beyond going straight for a book as my first post-PhD publication). First, I should have researched publishers and reached out to them quite early, if even just with an email to test the waters. I was lucky that I had a chance to pitch directly, and that I’d practiced 5-minute lay pitches of my research extensively, but I could have been much more proactive. Secondly, while I am happy I held off on the book so that I could get the final chapters I want researched and written, I should have probably started writing it when I was looking for work. This is tricky. After repeated rejections or even non-responses, writing new job applications took up most of my remaining motivation. It was much easier to play video games or watch Netflix than write more after writing yet another cover letter. But as the first half of my book was based on my research, I definitely could have made a skeletal structure. I didn’t need to have my last chapters written to get the first ones framed. During interviews, I could then say my book was halfway drafted rather than just designed in my mind. Finally, while I absolutely needed official ethics clearance to begin working on data collection, the survey design could have been set up on paper. I did all this work while teaching my first year, which was sort of insane. The number of late nights during year one was extreme, and could have been reduced by preparing some documents while I was working casually. The existence of these documents then would have given my job applications a bit more weight, turning “I have a plan for a book” into “I have the book half written and the next steps ready to go”.
I know this isn’t ultimately as detailed as full books on getting it published, but I do hope that some details of this process are useful to you in looking to begin your own publications. Where to publish is of course a key question I didn’t touch on much here, as I sort of fell into a good place which publishes extensively in my area. But my general recommendation is to seek out publishers that have released work which influences you (and mention that in your applications!). The process of producing your book will be long, and you’ll definitely get lost in the weeds here or there, but if you just make sure to write a bit each day – week – month – whatever your schedule is, you’ll find that you’ll get there sooner than you think. And if there is one thing that is absolutely true about publishing, it’s that there is a distinct thrill to holding the finished product in your hands. Even though I’ve already found that I made a typo in mine. Oh well. I hope that, too, is a bit of encouragement in its own way.
Scripting Japan 
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