When was 歴史的仮名遣い standardized?


[Enno Shioji's answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/17489/3437) to my
question about 直音表記 says (emphasis added) that:

> Historically there were multiple way to write a word, and this wasn't
> standardized. For example, some very old documents contain both 直音表記 and
> ヤ行表記.
>
> **This was subsequently standardized as 歴史的仮名遣い** and then 現代仮名遣い.

When did this happen, and how? I imagine that at the time (whenever that was),
there was no body analogous to the various ones that have been involved in the
standardization of the modern language (e.g. the switch from 旧字体 to 新字体; the
promulgation of the 常用漢字 list; standardization of 現代仮名遣い, etc.), so this must
have been a more organic process.




The first phonetic spelling of Japanese was using kanji. This system was
called [_man'yōgana_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana), named
after the [_Man'yōshū_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dsh%C5%AB),
an anthology of poems from the Nara period written in this manner. Hiragana
and katakana developed as abbreviated forms of these kanji.

Although spelling wasn't entirely consistent, and multiple characters were
used for individual sounds, Japanese spelling reflected the phonology of the
time fairly well, and by looking at changes in spelling over time, we can
observe sound changes such as the merger of kō-otsu.

At this point, I'd like to quote some passages from Frellesvig's _A History of
the Japanese Language_ (2010). Although I've tried to pare the quotes down to
a minimum, they're still quite long, so I've bolded the key sections in case
you'd like to skim.

The Japanese alphabet was, in part, standardized by the _Iroha-uta_. From page
165:

> [T]he establishment and awareness of distinct orthographic categories is
> evident from three mnemonic word lists or poems from the first half of the
> Heian period in which each distinct letter category occurs only once: the
> _Ame-tsuchi no kotoba_ (or _Ame-tsuchi no uta_ ), _Taini-uta_ , **and
> _Iroha-uta_ … These lists/poems functioned as a kind of ABC to remember the
> distinct letter categories** …
>
> The three lists concur in not having distinct letters or representation for
> _sei'on_ and _daku'on_. Chronologically, they all reflect a stage of the
> language _after_ the merger of the _kō-otsu_ distinctions (as there is no
> representation of these distinctions), but _before_ the merger of non-
> initial /-p-/ with /-w-/ (950-1000, …

And from page 168:

> **It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the establishment and
> dissemination of the _Iroha-uta_.** It is a defining event in the history of
> Japanese script and writing, and more generally in Japanese culture,
> linguistic and otherwise, … The _Iroha-uta_ finally defined the forty-seven
> _kana_ letter categories which, with the sole addition of ん/ン for the moraic
> nasal, still are in use today, enshrined the principle of not having
> separate letters for _sei'on_ and _daku'on_ , and fixed the sequence of
> letters in a list. …
>
> The _Iroha_ continued to function as the Japanese alphabet, as a linguistic
> and meta-linguistic organizing principle until it eventually was replaced by
> the _gojūonzu_ in the middle of the Meiji period…

However, Japanese sounds continued to change after the kana became well-
established, and spelling didn't always change with it. From page 173:

> [F]or the _kana_ categories おをほ, いゐひ, えゑへ, うふ, わは, the mapping between sound
> and writing became much less straightforward than it had been …, and as may
> be expected, **this led to efforts to regularize the use of these _kana_
> letters.** Rather than reforming the inventory and use of _kana_ letters
> along simple phonographic lines, … **an etymological spelling principle
> gained ground from around the beginning of the thirteenth century,
> eventually resulting in the so-called _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ (歴史的仮名遣い)
> ‘historical _kana_ -usage, historical spelling’** … The simple principle is
> that any word is to be spelled the way it was, or would have been, spelled
> within the _kana_ categories of the _Iroha_ , before the sound changes
> outlined [earlier in this chapter] took place. Thus _kai_ ‘shellfish’ (< OJ
> _kapi_ ) is spelled かひ, _ai_ ‘indigo’ (< _awi_ ) is あゐ, and _kai_ ‘rudder’
> (< _ka.i_ ) is かい. …

On pages 174-175, Frellesvig goes into more detail about who established the
spelling principles and when. This section, I think, answers the core of your
question:

> **The etymological spelling principle was first explicitly proposed by the
> poet and scholar Fujiwara no Teika** (1162-1241) as part of his
> recommendations of the spelling of individual words … His primary concern
> was the production of faithful editions of earlier texts, preserving their
> original shape, and he based his spelling proposals on inspection of earlier
> manuscripts and text versions in order to establish original, ‘correct’
> spellings. It seems there was some consensus about the spelling of
> individual words before Teika, at least to some extent on an etymological
> basis, … but **it was Teika who explicitly established the etymological
> spelling principle** which, together with his specific spellings of
> individual words, came to be known as _Teika kana-zukai_ … and soon acquired
> the status of a spelling norm, … Thus, from Kamakura to early Edo **most
> literary writing was spelling according to the _Teika kana-zukai_.** …
>
> There are inevitably not a few mistakes in Teika's etymological spellings …
> first of all because the copies of texts he had access to and worked from
> already contained errors … Therefore later scholars elaborated on and
> amplified Teika's work. **The _Kanamoji-zukai_ (completed after 1363) by the
> monk Gyōa … is the first large-scale application of Teika's principles. It
> lists spellings for more than a thousand words and for a long time served as
> the major normative spelling reference.** … Mention must also be made of the
> _kokugaku_ scholar Keichū (1640-1701) who provided the basis for the
> _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ in use today. **In his _Waji shōranshō_ (1695) he
> set the etymological spelling principle on a firm philological footing with
> systematic citation for specific spellings of sources which even by today's
> standards are mostly reliable.**

And this system lasted for quite a long time, with some small changes. Modern
sound changes were largely ignored, and so over time the system became further
and further divorced from modern pronunciation. From page 173:

> At the beginning of the NJ [Modern Japanese] period further sound changes
> took place which resulted in phonographic equivalence before the high vowels
> /i, u/ … **rendering the _kana_ pairs じ/ぢ and ず/づ phonographically
> equivalent.** By then the etymological principle had long been established
> and so the principle for which _kana_ to use was fairly clear, although
> usages which can be thought of as ‘spelling mistakes’ (for example writing
> _mizu_ ‘water’ < _midu_ as みず rather than the etymologically correct みづ) are
> frequent in Edo period NJ texts.

Although historical kana spelling started out largely ignoring the voiced-
voiceless distinction, the voicing marks were occasionally used when it was
necessary to indicate pronunciation more precisely, and eventually, the
voicing marks became common. From pages 163-164:

> The earliest attested use of diacritics to mark _sei_ or _daku_ on
> _man'yōgana_ is from the late ninth century, and on _kana_ from the eleventh
> century … _[S]ei-daku_ … remained un-noted in general writing in the [Early
> Middle Japanese] period. … **[I]t was not until … the beginning of the Edo
> period … that the _dakuten_ we know today became established and widespread
> in general writing.**

The _dakuten_ was originally a voicing mark, distinguishing the voiced /g z d
b/ from the voiceless /k s t p/ respectively. However, due to the sound
changes in the /p/ row, the phrase "voicing mark" is no longer entirely
accurate—the /p/ row is now the /h/ row, and /b/ is of course not a voiced
version of /h/!

Since /p/ was retained in some contexts, this row now represented three
phonemes, and the _handakuten_ developed as a way to distinguish /p/ from the
other two. From page 165:

> However, towards the end of the [Late Middle Japanese] period Portuguese
> Jesuit missionaries instituted the use of **a circle on the top right corner
> of a _kana_ … in order to write unambiguously _pV_ , e.g. は ( _fa/ha_ ), ぱ (
> _pa_ ). This was first used in _Rakuyōshū_ , a _kanji_ dictionary published
> … in 1598.** Since then this practice gradually spread and is, of course,
> today a fully integrated feature of Japanese writing.

And less than a hundred years ago, the system was finally replaced. From page
173:

> **The _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ was only abolished as the norm with the
> orthographic reforms in 1946 when the _gendai kana-zukai_ … was adopted**,
> in which the etymological principle largely has been abandoned, with a few
> well-known exceptions.

So as you can see, the development of Japanese spelling over more than a
millennium was rather complicated. It started out as a relatively faithful
rendition of speech, but pronunciation changed over time, and historical or
etymological spellings took hold relatively early on. There was some variation
in convention and there were some errors made, and there were several
revisions of the system, and finally the addition of the _dakuten_ and
_handakuten_ diacritics; but ultimately it was replaced in 1946 with modern
spelling conventions, which were then [revised again in
1986](http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/nc/k19860701001/k19860701001.html).




The first phonetic spelling of Japanese was using kanji. This system was
called [_man'yōgana_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana), named
after the [_Man'yōshū_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dsh%C5%AB),
an anthology of poems from the Nara period written in this manner. Hiragana
and katakana developed as abbreviated forms of these kanji.

Although spelling wasn't entirely consistent, and multiple characters were
used for individual sounds, Japanese spelling reflected the phonology of the
time fairly well, and by looking at changes in spelling over time, we can
observe sound changes such as the merger of kō-otsu.

At this point, I'd like to quote some passages from Frellesvig's _A History of
the Japanese Language_ (2010). Although I've tried to pare the quotes down to
a minimum, they're still quite long, so I've bolded the key sections in case
you'd like to skim.

The Japanese alphabet was, in part, standardized by the _Iroha-uta_. From page
165:

> [T]he establishment and awareness of distinct orthographic categories is
> evident from three mnemonic word lists or poems from the first half of the
> Heian period in which each distinct letter category occurs only once: the
> _Ame-tsuchi no kotoba_ (or _Ame-tsuchi no uta_ ), _Taini-uta_ , **and
> _Iroha-uta_ … These lists/poems functioned as a kind of ABC to remember the
> distinct letter categories** …
>
> The three lists concur in not having distinct letters or representation for
> _sei'on_ and _daku'on_. Chronologically, they all reflect a stage of the
> language _after_ the merger of the _kō-otsu_ distinctions (as there is no
> representation of these distinctions), but _before_ the merger of non-
> initial /-p-/ with /-w-/ (950-1000, …

And from page 168:

> **It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the establishment and
> dissemination of the _Iroha-uta_.** It is a defining event in the history of
> Japanese script and writing, and more generally in Japanese culture,
> linguistic and otherwise, … The _Iroha-uta_ finally defined the forty-seven
> _kana_ letter categories which, with the sole addition of ん/ン for the moraic
> nasal, still are in use today, enshrined the principle of not having
> separate letters for _sei'on_ and _daku'on_ , and fixed the sequence of
> letters in a list. …
>
> The _Iroha_ continued to function as the Japanese alphabet, as a linguistic
> and meta-linguistic organizing principle until it eventually was replaced by
> the _gojūonzu_ in the middle of the Meiji period…

However, Japanese sounds continued to change after the kana became well-
established, and spelling didn't always change with it. From page 173:

> [F]or the _kana_ categories おをほ, いゐひ, えゑへ, うふ, わは, the mapping between sound
> and writing became much less straightforward than it had been …, and as may
> be expected, **this led to efforts to regularize the use of these _kana_
> letters.** Rather than reforming the inventory and use of _kana_ letters
> along simple phonographic lines, … **an etymological spelling principle
> gained ground from around the beginning of the thirteenth century,
> eventually resulting in the so-called _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ (歴史的仮名遣い)
> ‘historical _kana_ -usage, historical spelling’** … The simple principle is
> that any word is to be spelled the way it was, or would have been, spelled
> within the _kana_ categories of the _Iroha_ , before the sound changes
> outlined [earlier in this chapter] took place. Thus _kai_ ‘shellfish’ (< OJ
> _kapi_ ) is spelled かひ, _ai_ ‘indigo’ (< _awi_ ) is あゐ, and _kai_ ‘rudder’
> (< _ka.i_ ) is かい. …

On pages 174-175, Frellesvig goes into more detail about who established the
spelling principles and when. This section, I think, answers the core of your
question:

> **The etymological spelling principle was first explicitly proposed by the
> poet and scholar Fujiwara no Teika** (1162-1241) as part of his
> recommendations of the spelling of individual words … His primary concern
> was the production of faithful editions of earlier texts, preserving their
> original shape, and he based his spelling proposals on inspection of earlier
> manuscripts and text versions in order to establish original, ‘correct’
> spellings. It seems there was some consensus about the spelling of
> individual words before Teika, at least to some extent on an etymological
> basis, … but **it was Teika who explicitly established the etymological
> spelling principle** which, together with his specific spellings of
> individual words, came to be known as _Teika kana-zukai_ … and soon acquired
> the status of a spelling norm, … Thus, from Kamakura to early Edo **most
> literary writing was spelling according to the _Teika kana-zukai_.** …
>
> There are inevitably not a few mistakes in Teika's etymological spellings …
> first of all because the copies of texts he had access to and worked from
> already contained errors … Therefore later scholars elaborated on and
> amplified Teika's work. **The _Kanamoji-zukai_ (completed after 1363) by the
> monk Gyōa … is the first large-scale application of Teika's principles. It
> lists spellings for more than a thousand words and for a long time served as
> the major normative spelling reference.** … Mention must also be made of the
> _kokugaku_ scholar Keichū (1640-1701) who provided the basis for the
> _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ in use today. **In his _Waji shōranshō_ (1695) he
> set the etymological spelling principle on a firm philological footing with
> systematic citation for specific spellings of sources which even by today's
> standards are mostly reliable.**

And this system lasted for quite a long time, with some small changes. Modern
sound changes were largely ignored, and so over time the system became further
and further divorced from modern pronunciation. From page 173:

> At the beginning of the NJ [Modern Japanese] period further sound changes
> took place which resulted in phonographic equivalence before the high vowels
> /i, u/ … **rendering the _kana_ pairs じ/ぢ and ず/づ phonographically
> equivalent.** By then the etymological principle had long been established
> and so the principle for which _kana_ to use was fairly clear, although
> usages which can be thought of as ‘spelling mistakes’ (for example writing
> _mizu_ ‘water’ < _midu_ as みず rather than the etymologically correct みづ) are
> frequent in Edo period NJ texts.

Although historical kana spelling started out largely ignoring the voiced-
voiceless distinction, the voicing marks were occasionally used when it was
necessary to indicate pronunciation more precisely, and eventually, the
voicing marks became common. From pages 163-164:

> The earliest attested use of diacritics to mark _sei_ or _daku_ on
> _man'yōgana_ is from the late ninth century, and on _kana_ from the eleventh
> century … _[S]ei-daku_ … remained un-noted in general writing in the [Early
> Middle Japanese] period. … **[I]t was not until … the beginning of the Edo
> period … that the _dakuten_ we know today became established and widespread
> in general writing.**

The _dakuten_ was originally a voicing mark, distinguishing the voiced /g z d
b/ from the voiceless /k s t p/ respectively. However, due to the sound
changes in the /p/ row, the phrase "voicing mark" is no longer entirely
accurate—the /p/ row is now the /h/ row, and /b/ is of course not a voiced
version of /h/!

Since /p/ was retained in some contexts, this row now represented three
phonemes, and the _handakuten_ developed as a way to distinguish /p/ from the
other two. From page 165:

> However, towards the end of the [Late Middle Japanese] period Portuguese
> Jesuit missionaries instituted the use of **a circle on the top right corner
> of a _kana_ … in order to write unambiguously _pV_ , e.g. は ( _fa/ha_ ), ぱ (
> _pa_ ). This was first used in _Rakuyōshū_ , a _kanji_ dictionary published
> … in 1598.** Since then this practice gradually spread and is, of course,
> today a fully integrated feature of Japanese writing.

And less than a hundred years ago, the system was finally replaced. From page
173:

> **The _rekishi-teki kana-zukai_ was only abolished as the norm with the
> orthographic reforms in 1946 when the _gendai kana-zukai_ … was adopted**,
> in which the etymological principle largely has been abandoned, with a few
> well-known exceptions.

So as you can see, the development of Japanese spelling over more than a
millennium was rather complicated. It started out as a relatively faithful
rendition of speech, but pronunciation changed over time, and historical or
etymological spellings took hold relatively early on. There was some variation
in convention and there were some errors made, and there were several
revisions of the system, and finally the addition of the _dakuten_ and
_handakuten_ diacritics; but ultimately it was replaced in 1946 with modern
spelling conventions, which were then [revised again in
1986](http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/nc/k19860701001/k19860701001.html).

