Contemporary Spoken Chinese in Eighteenth-Century Japan

In the early modern period, literary Sinitic (also known as classical Chinese) was a shared writing system and cultural asset in East Asia. The Sinitic text, while being voiced in various local languages, remained largely the same across the region. The shared Sinitic writing enabled educated people in East Asia who spoke different languages to engage in conversation through writing. It was the silence of literary Sinitic that enabled it to be a trans-local communicating system. However, where is the place for the Chinese sound in the neat picture of the Sinitic writing system versus its various local vocalizations in different countries? Focusing on the effort of Japanese scholars in restoring Chinese sound to the Sinitic text, this dissertation brings the conceptualization and practice of spoken Chinese in the eighteenth century Japan into the supposedly silent Sinitic culture. The early modern Japanese learners of contemporary spoken Chinese intended to vocalize the written Sinitic. When they realized that contemporary spoken Chinese and literary Sinitic writing were actually not compatible, they solved the problem by resorting again to writing. One solution was to propose a new