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Saturday, 7 March 2026

ONO Shinobu and Bernhard Karlgren 2015

 

ONO Shinobu and Bernhard Karlgren




TANAKA Akio

In December 1979, I submitted the post-graduate thesis on Japanese Buddhist priest Kukai (774-835)'s maiden work Sangoshiiki that comparatively considered the three regions, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Probably in January 1980, I met with Prof. ONO Shinobuat the corridor of university. He said to me that he read my thesis and my thinking method using at the thesis was resembled in the method of Bernhard Karlgren at his paper "The Authenticity and nature of the Tso Chuan" 1926. He succesively talkedto me, "TANAKA, did you read the paper?" I promptly answered " Professor, No."

My thesis was presented the other prof. who specialist of  the old Buddhism in Japan and probably he sent my thesis to his dear fried ONO. My approach was the study on the appearance frequency distribution of all the expletives appeared in the text.

I knew this famous Sweden sinologist's name earlier and already bought one of his important work Grammata Setica Recensa, 1957 in the early 1970s at Kaifu Shoten Book shop in Kanda, Tokyo. But the paper shown by ONO was perfectly unknown at that time. ONO invite me to his study room and handed me the book Saden Shingi Ko" that was the translation of Karlgren's paper  by ONO and published in 1939 from Bunkyudo Shoten Book shop at Hongo, Tokyo, which was one of the leading publisher in the field of Chinese classics in 1930s.

ONO was one of the scholar on Chinese literature from Yuan dynasty to the modern China and the member of Chugoku Bungaku Dokokai, Chinese Literature Society in Japan that led the study of modern Chinese literature in Japan from 1940s. with his colleagues TAKEUCHI Yoshimi, TAKEDA Taijun and the like. In 1980s he had engaged in the translation of long novel, The Journey to the West in the Ming dynasty all the time of his non-university's work.

Going back to the past, I received ONO's lecture " Chinese literature and Modern Japan" at his study room or dean room, who was the dean of the faculty for humanities department. In my memory he lectured precisely to Japanese novelist ODA Takeo, now not famous recently.

Karlgren's book was difficult for my talent at that time but somehow  read over and gave back to ONO deeply appreciating his kindness. And some years later in Kanda, Tokyo, I found this Karlgren's book and bought. The book shop's name is Yamamoto Shoten, one of the long established Chinese classic book shop in Kanda.  The date is 2 November 1982 by the receipt put in the book.

One day probably in spring 1980, on the train on the way home, I met ONO and told him on his the new lecture on Yuanqu, Yuan dynasty's poems that was frequently said very difficult for modern readers.
I said to him, "Wonderful lecture for excellent undergraduates." He returned definitely," Very important to study such a hard work for me still now."

ONO Shino died suddenly by disease in 18 December 1980, age 74. The conversation at the train was the last hearing of this profound scholar.


Tokyo
3 March 2015
Sekinan Library

40 years passed from I read WANG Guowei 2013

 

​40 years passed from I read WANG Guowei 




TANAKA Akio


Guantangjilin is the selection of works by WANG Guowei, which contents contains vast area of history, literature and linguistics. Some people say that his works is a thousand-year peak from Song era’s philosopher SHU Xi. I bought his book at Haifeng shudian, Kanda, Tokyo in my mid 20s. The date  of colophon is February 1973, publisher is Zhonghua shuju Xianggang fenju.
Probably I bought it in 1973 or 1974. In those days I frequently went Haifeng shudian bookshop for buying Chinese classics,  mainly Qing Dynasty’s linguistic works that is called ” Xiaoxue”, Small study at China. Guantangjilin is a very difficult book to understand  by my poor study result.

His study era is from Yin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty some 2,500 years of Chinese literary history. At his vast works I was especially charmed in Qing Dynasty’s ancient Chinese hieroglyphic characters, Jiaguwenzi by Chinese. After 40 years, in 2003 I wrote a small paper on language universals through this  ancient Chinese hieroglyphic characters at the view point of written language.

The title is On Time Property inherent in Characters. From at that time 10 years passed by. Now I am still learning on language universals but its style is far apart from the days 2003 or 1973. Ambiguity of approach by traditional linguistics is not for my part. I dare challenge to a new frontier of description for language study using mathematics or algebraic geometry.


Refer to the next.

Tokyo
16 November 2013
Sekinan Research Field of Language

The Complete Works of WANG Guowei, Revised 2016

 

The Complete Works of WANG Guowei, Revised




TANAKA Akio
                                    
I sometimes read The Complete Works of WANG Guowei, Letters, Shangwu Yinshuguan 1984. Astonishingly he read all the texts of vast Jiyun Dictinaryin one day, that is Song dynasty's comprehensive some 50,000 Chinese characters dictionary. Moreover he inspected all the characters description's correctness and commented their situations to his life time teacher LUO Zhenyu.

Tokyo
24 May 2012
Sekinan Research Field of Language

Tokyo
2 February 2016 Revised
SRFL Essay

Tuesday, 3 March 2026

New site of SRFL / ITL Immanental-Time Language / 2026

 

 



January 2026
40 years Anniversary of Sekinan Library 
Tachikawa Tokyo
1986


​​Winding road to physics, Revised version 2015

 

Winding road to physics, Revised version ​




TANAKA Akio


When I was a student of high school, I hoped to learn physics at university. But from various reasons in fact I learnt language at university, on the other still longing for physics. After graduation I once worked as a high school teacher and eight years passing I returned to university for investigating language study further more. On the way I again met CHINO Eiichi in 1979, from whom I ever learnt Russian in 1969. By his teaching I could have the distinct aim for my study, that was to make clear description to others, not using philosophical terms, but taking mathematical method being also assisted with physical thinking or approach. Mathematics was always set in my mind long before but my talent was not overtaken to its hardness. But aiming clear description I began to learn again or thrice to make a new stage where I had decided to come back someday. It was the very starting point of youth being strongly attracted by physics. 
Fore more details refer to the next.


1. Remembrance
2. Physics3. Model4. Language5. Mathematics

Tokyo
16 January 2015
SIL

Tokyo
8 February 2016
SRFL Collection

Sunday, 1 March 2026

​How is the time alive in language? 2014

 

How is the time alive in language?



TANAKA Akio

1.
When one first hear the existence of time in language, he may doubt its certainty. But I have intuitively believe it since I learned the ancient Chinese inscription on bone ad tortoise shell (in Chinese called Jiaguwen). In my early 20s, I met with the book of Chinese modern linguists, WANG Guowei, this belief changed the conviction. His lifework book Guantangjilin is hard to read till now.  But some papers in it are always inspires me by his deep and vast insight to character, language and history of ancient China. He also wrote fine criticism on Chinese pre-modern poem Ci.The title is RenjianCihua. The book is one of my favourite books of Chinese literature. People sometimes say that he was the highest genius after Song Dynasty, 1,000 years.In 2003 I wrote a tiny paper hinted by WANG's paper. It was the first paper for me that I directly faced the time inherent in inscription using Jiaguwen's update linguistic results. The title is " On Time Property Inherent in Characters".
2.
In summer 2003, I stayed at Hakuba, Nagano for a while for writing over the paper that was intended to present a symposium  at Nara in winter. The paper was taking up the structure of written language that was dealt with the relation between time and grammar. But I did not solve the question on with what shape language exists in the language world. What shape has language and at where space does language exist or float? The theme on space was hard to deal at that time. I only concentrated to the shape in space. At 28 August I was fatigued to think and went  for a stroll outside  the inn putting up. The place was at the mountain side of the Hakuba Range and there was only one convenience store, where I walked in the shop and saw one advertisement of electric pocket dictionary. I returned having this advert to the inn and read its sentences. At the very time I found the shape of language I sought was sphere that was inherited time in it, also having grammatical functions. The paper's title was named to " Quantum Theory for Language" by the shape of language. This was a really pro
duct of clear and fine atmosphere of Hakuba with a distant view of the North Alps of Japan.3.
From 2004 to 2008 I wrote some papers on inscription and language. But I was not satisfied inwardly for the style of intuitive approach to language. I wanted to write more simple and clear expression. For being realised of my wish, I definitely needed to use mathematical tools. I returned to my 20s days' reading of Bourbaki that was desperately difficult for may ability. I again gradually read mathematical books and journals for seeking useful source of my hope to converting to language study. A certain results that came to my papers with satisfaction was appeared in 2008 by the papers titled Complex Manifold Deformation Theory. 
Above all, the first paper in this group, I first defined the concept, distance by complex manifold.The concept of distance was one of the most important themes on language, so I at early times wrote the intuitive paper, "Distance Theory".At the fifth paper of Complex Manifold Deformation Theory, I again challenged the hard theme of the time in language, titled to " Time of Word".4.
The definition of space in which language exists is one hard target for me to write satisfactory. A fixed results came to me at the papers group titles Symplectic Language Theory in 2009.
    In the group, a paper focused on mirror phase on language became one peak for my writing.5.
Related with the shape of language, quantization and discreteness on language was the urgent    themes for the further step of studying the total image of language I was pursuing. Floer Homology  Language was the one milestone for me to overcome to the next stage.
In this group, the eighth paper was dealt with the quantization and discreteness of language.      6.
What situation does the time in language have? This question exists in my mind at the early days when I wrote the paper "On Time Property Inherent in Characters". The first step to solution was described at the paper " Prague Theory". The group of Prague Theory was written due to dedicate to Prague, The Linguistic Circle of Prague and Sergej Karcevskij with the memory of my teacher CHINO Eiichi.
 In this paper, Chinese Character /kun/, that meaning is difficult in English, was used for the eternity of loop time. This loop time was also appeared in the paper " On Time Property Inherent in Characters". But Prague Theory shows more direct and compact by growing tree and its obstructive enclosing fence. This intuitive image was more clearly described at the paper " Word as Infinite Loop Time " at Infinite Loop Space Language in 2012.

In this paper, time in language is clearly connected with dimension of algebraic group saying as the next. Word has dimension that belongs to algebraic K group.


7.
The relation between time and dimension was entered on a new phase at the learning of algebraic geometry, especially of arithmetic geometry. Arithmetic Geometry Language, abbreviated to AGL, was the starting papers for me to arithmetic method.
From these four papers, I concisely extracted the next three conjectures.At these conjectures, time inherent in language is in the basis of describing dimension, synthesis and reversion. The process of leading to the conjectures is over viewing the next.     

8.
Acknowledgement
Time inherent in language is a fantastic but as hard to pursue for me still now. I would examine this theme further more and more, probably till the end of my research life. Now all the thanks are going to The Linguistic Circle of Prague and especially its member Sergej Karcevskij, with my teacher CHINO Eiichi who taught me their precise information from his long study at Prague in 1960s.

9.
For CHINO Eiichi

9.1 Golden Prague                                    
C also died early, who had taught me Russian and linguistics. He loved
the old city that had the beautiful towers and bridges.
In C's many works there was the essay "The Moon of Carpathians". He wrote 
that the conference was over, departed at Kiev, saw the moon and 
churches over the Carpathian Mountains, impetuously went to the west, 
passed Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia, and at last reached "Golden Prague". 
Prague, it was his youth itself.
Now I cannot hear his voice telling the various anecdotes on languages, 
of which he freely had commanded. By the short heading, a newspaper 
reported his death, naming as  "the genius of linguistics".

- 9 October 2014 -

9.2 Coffee shop named California
If C live, he also may ask me, "What  are you researching now?"
And I also will answer him as same as ever.
"I have pursued universals, never done facts, without repenting."
Oh C, if you live, will we also talk on language?
At the table facing each other under the low ceiling of the shop going up the steep stairs.
The name of the shop is California.
For the memory of our daily forgetful life,
its never miserable though poor all over,
I will write down our delight.

- 27 October 2014 -

10.
Ode to Kanda

"I need not more wander the book shop streets." / From Tale, Print, 2012

This tale was written by TANAKA Akio, pen-named LI Koh in autumn 2012 for remembering the poor but brilliant youth time of myself. This is one of my favourite phrases in this tale.
The book shop streets described in the tale is Kanda, Tokyo, which is located in the central Tokyo, where I frequently walked seeking the old Chinese classic books for the study from Oriental way of linguistics. In late 1960s, the streetcars were surely running in the old fashioned streets of Kanda, now perfectly changed to the subway streets. 

From Print 2012, Chapter 10


もはや本屋街をさまようことはない。I need not more wander the book shop streets. 対象は私のうちにある。The object exists in my mind. 私はただこの運河をながめていればいい。I would better watch the canal. 遍歴は終わった。Wandering is over now.  たぶん永遠にマイスターにはなれないだろうが、みずからの小さな仕事場で、日が落ちるまで作業をすればいい。Perhaps I would not become meister  forever. In my narrow working place, I 'd better do my work till sunset. すると仕事場の窓辺を聖者が通って行く。 So out of the window by the working place,  the saint passes by. かつてそんなロシアの民話を読んだ。I ever read the Russian folk tale like that. 

秋の日ぐれは早い。The Autumn evening is fast. 路面電車のヘッドランプがまぶしいくらいだ。The headlight of streetcar  is dazzling. 黄褐色の窓に少ない乗客が照らし出され、古本屋街の方へ消えて行った。In the yellow-lighten window the passengers are picked out by the light. The car disappeared  to the book streets. 駅の売店がにぎやかな橙の光に包まれている。The station shop is also lighted up by the yard's busy orange light. 
Tokyo
26 November 2014
SIL

Thursday, 26 February 2026

To Winter RI Ko. John Peabody Harrington, Roman Jakobson, FUKAYA Kenji, Maxim Kontsevich, ZHANG Binglin and Roger Penrose. Translated by Google

 


To Winter
RI Ko
2015


14  
John Peabody Harrington, Roman Jakobson, FUKAYA Kenji, Maxim Kontsevich, ZHANG BInglin and Roger Penrose

From author:
This text’s translation by Google translate is a little hard to be accurate at the present, especially on mathematical explanation 


You can see the whole city from the library on the hill. The east side of the third floor is a computer room. The internet was always connected there, and I could use any table freely. I often spend my holidays near the window. A group of tall blue-green buildings rises to the northeast of the left side of the window. Seen from here on the hill, it is much higher. Only there is towering above the sky. Immediately south, there should be A’s home. Did the bulbul hit a tall building like that? The glass walls were distant and dull, reflecting the light of the autumn afternoon. 

When I was cleaning the room where the birds were gone for the first time in a while, I found some furrowed flock in the corner. The soft wings floated in the air for a while when released. Have you lived in the city because of your childhood? I wished that I was now resting slowly in the grove of the hills. A created Web pages and Dreamweaver, but since the amount has gradually increased, I switched to Expression Web from the middle. I used Office for documents at first, but soon I switched to Zoho.

In this way, I was able to quickly write small mathematical expressions using LaTex. When Backup was run automatically using SugarSync, all traces of A were on Cloud. The document was written in English. Regular sentences other than mathematical expressions are relatively easy to write with a limited vocabulary. This could lead to someone seeing somewhere. I had little hope, but there was little response. 

Of course, I thought it would be nice if there could be one or two people in this wide world who could sympathize with me, but that didn’t bother me that much. I just keep writing. There is no guarantee that there will be someone like John Pepody Harrington, who continued to record the American Indian languages. 1920 The photographs in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection, which are doing field research around the year, look somewhat like the pioneers of the West. It’s okay to wait quietly for the future of Harrington in the corner of the city. 

It was a fun task to think of a language containing time as a possibility using a model. However, in reality, it is rarely something that can be created, such as an original one. I couldn’t exceed the conventional idea. He arranged the work procedure little by little. First create a simple model. Select the shape suitable for the model. How much is the figure written? 

According to Kenji Fukaya, the geometry was “a group of groups and the space in which it acts”. It was Fukaya’s charm that he was able to briefly confirm and look at the fundamental things. By referring to Jacobson’s “semantic minimum”, a new geometric “minimum of meaning” is set, and the time t is included as a meaning by moving the time t in the closed interval. Defined the geometric word.

I repeated this direction many times with different levels of geometry. The universality of language was thought to be closely related to the invariant of mathematics. In Fukaya’s book, I learned that the quantum cohomology ring can be obtained from the Gromov-Witten invariant and the Gromov-Witten potential can be obtained. Language approached mathematics and physics. It has become possible to logically check the symmetry that has long been a concern. Under certain assumptions, the character of various languages can be inspected as a model from, for example, one figure or manifold. One of the centers was homological mirror symmetry, which was proposed by Kontsevich.

When I got tired of working in the library, I went out to the rooftop. The city, which spreads under the dark maroon autumn sky, conveyed the grandeur of human activities. The sounds of distant cities echo like a chord. Are people flying in this city as birds are flying in the sky? Just as birds sometimes crash into the ground by colliding with the turquoise glass of tall buildings, will people crash into the ground and crash somewhere?

 I once read a story about birds in the book Shorin no Fubun. “According to the poem of the 3rd year of the Emperor Hansho, a bird of five colors, it passes over the prefectures in which it belongs.” It seems that 10,000 birds of five colors flew in the sky. As for the beginning, I continue to cite Chinese books. According to the poem’s third year of honor, he gathered New Year’s lords, Otori, Emperor and Kanro to the Kyoto teacher, and according to the flock of birds, the findings of the Han book were true.

The contents of this Chinese book, in which 10,000 birds gathered in search of it, are true. It is unknown whether Shorin believed in these statements. However, according to Shorin’s habit, he might have believed it as a natural thing. 

Autumn flowers were dancing in the strolling garden on the roof of the library. White autumn Ming chrysanthemum, yellow Maru chrysanthemum, Nozoku chrysanthemum Soothing Hottogigisu and the white and white Arissum flowers crawling on the ground. Sky blue salvia, red cherry sage, purple rosemary and light blue basil. Dark blue Saintpaulia, white sapphinia, crimson geranium bowls and hanging. Huquera, Drachina consenna, Sansevieria houseplant. Spatti is also rich in green, and the red sea urchin is already red. Various sasanqua that began to inflate the buds, the last cosmos flowers that sway in the wind Winter clematis that has been quite tall, large leaves on the grape rack with few remaining, and a large red or white large ball swaying occasionally in the strong wind . 

If you look closely, you can also see the pink bokeh flowers that change the season. Shala beautifully turns red, and dogwood turns the leaves brown. On the other hand, rhododendrons had already inflated the buds considerably. Autumn was getting deeper. 

You can hear the sound of the city line riding on the wind. How is K doing? Well, let’s make a dedication to the document. For familiar days with K. I continued to write documents when I got home. The linguistic space including time gradually expanded from a straight line to a plane and from there to a sphere. Attracted by the work of Roger Penrose, I made a projective model. 

As I was thinking about it at midnight, I thought it would be beautiful if the language danced in the sky like an aurora. A complex plane is created by mapping all complex numbers to planes, as if all real numbers were mapped to straight lines. A complex number defined by two real numbers is placed on the plane as a language unit, and it is called a language point. Establish a vertical third coordinate axis from the origin of the plane and make a sphere with a unit radius centered on the origin. The spheres intersect at a radius of 1 on the new coordinate axes. If that point and a linguistic point on the complex plane are connected by a straight line, when the linguistic point has a distance of 1 or more, it intersects with the sphere at one point. When the distance is less than 1, the linguistic point is inside the sphere and does not intersect the sphere. 

This shows the limits of the language. Ordinary language points are projected on the spherical sky when the distance exceeds 1. The projection is called aurora. Language points at infinity converge on a sphere on the Z axis. You can capture an infinite number of languages in a finite way. A straight line connecting two points on the complex plane draws an arc in the spherical sky. The two straight lines form two arcs in the sky, and connecting four points creates a distorted quadrilateral in the sky. 

If we model the points in the sky as words, arcs as sentences, and quadrilaterals as sentences, the language will emerge there. The language becomes Aurora and dances in the sky. Language is aurora dancing above us.