An Exploration of the Japanese-Chinese Textbook Manzhou Tuyu Annei

Abstract

The original version of the Manzhou Tuyu Annei was a manuscript, a purely military Chinese textbook in the northeastern dialect compiled by the Japanese First Army Command for soldiers going to war during the Russo-Japanese War to facilitate the army's marching and combat operations. The textbook is characterized by its distinctive military and northeastern dialect features. This article focuses on the nature and linguistic characteristics of the textbook by analysing the context in which it was published, which in turn reveals the military attributes of the textbook. The study found that the military features of the textbook are reflected in a large number of military words and military conversations, and the general linguistic features are reflected in the shortness of the utterances, the colloquialisms, the high use of suffixation words, the distinctive features of the northeastern dialect, the emphasis on the repetition of word-sentence patterns, the large number of overlapping words, and the emphasis on the principle of word categorisation.