May
19
Japan at the Millennium
Joining Past and Future
David Edgington, 2003, Chapter 11, p. 258-60
By the time this chapter was finished, the jury was still out as to whether the government could implement its bold reform program. By the end of 2001, it appeared that Prime Minister Koizumi was locked in stalemate. His administration was still popular and continued to obtain 80 percent support among the voters, but in reality he had accomplished little. Some commentators branded the prime minister “Mr. Nato” – No Action, Talk Only – indicating that his enormous degree of personal popularity was no substitute for effective implementation of reform (Japan Today 2001f; Oriental Economist 2001c).
Although his progeny, in the form of typography, printing presses, and printing machines, appeared in Shanghai in the nineteenth century, Johann Gutenberg (1400?-68) himself did not figure as a recognizable name or noteworthy personality in the Shanghai consciousness before the mid-1920s. His appearance then reflected growing public awareness of the importance of technology in national development as well as the widespread dissemination of the industrially manufactured book and journal. Gutenberg was absent from China’s first modern dictionary, Xin zidian (New Dictionary)issued by the Commercial Press in 1912.Likewise,he did not appear in the Commercial Press’s 1915 phrase dictionary, Ciyuan, or in Zhonghua da zidian (Zhonghua Big Dictionary), issued the same year by Zhonghua Books. Nonetheless, all three modern dictionaries, the most important to appear in Chinese since Kangxi zidian (Kangxi Dictionary) of 1716, were printed using technology that could be traced to Gutenberg.
