# What the Classic Japanese Writing Guides Teach: Nine Books Turned into Procedures and Checklists

- Author: Shuichiro Ogawa (Design Researcher / Design Consultant), https://jamjet-iqbal.com/
- Published: 2026-11-10; updated: 2026-11-10
- Canonical (HTML): https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/japanese-writing-classics/
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- Language: en
- Keywords: japanese-writing, writing-instruction, bunsho-tokuhon, technical-writing, academic-writing, checklist

> This note summarizes what nine books regarded as classics of Japanese writing instruction teach, and turns their advice into procedures and checklists ordered by the stages of writing. The nine books are three writers' guides titled Bunshō tokuhon (Tanizaki Jun'ichirō 1934, Mishima Yukio 1959, Inoue Hisashi 1987), five books on composition technique (Shimizu Ikutarō 1959, Iwabuchi Etsutarō ed. 1960, Honda Katsuichi 1976, Kinoshita Korekazu 1981, Todayama Kazuhisa 2022), and one critique of the bunshō tokuhon genre (Saitō Minako 2002). Only Tanizaki's book, whose copyright term has ended, was read in full text; the other books were described from their tables of contents, publishers' descriptions, and university lecture materials that quote them. The writers' guides train sensibility and close reading, whereas the composition books set checkable rules with the reader's understanding as the goal. The two groups agree on economy of words but divide on whether to state things plainly. Tanizaki lists 'not trying to make things too clear' as a condition of dignity, while Kinoshita devotes a chapter to 'the attitude of stating things clearly.' However, Tanizaki explicitly excludes specialized academic writing, so the two instructions collide only in general practical writing such as letters.

Japanese writing instruction has several books that readers call classics.
Honda Katsuichi's *Nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (The Technique of Japanese Composition, 1976) and Kinoshita Korekazu's *Rikakei no sakubun gijutsu* (The Technique of Writing for Scientists and Engineers, 1981) have served as teaching materials for decades after their publication.
They have been used in university courses and library workshops (Osaka University Library, Science and Engineering Library 2020; Kindai University Faculty of Science and Engineering 2013).
On the side of literary writers, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's *Bunshō tokuhon* (A Reader on Writing, 1934) was followed by books of the same title by Mishima Yukio (1959) and Inoue Hisashi (1987).

These books do not necessarily aim at the same kind of good writing.
Tanizaki lists "not trying to make things too clear" (*amari hakkiri saseyō to senu koto*) as a condition of dignity in writing (Tanizaki 1934, "On dignity").
Kinoshita, by contrast, devotes a chapter to "the attitude of stating things clearly" and asks writers to remove vague expressions (Suzuki n.d., Chapter 6).
These two instructions cannot both be followed in the same text as they stand.

This note summarizes what each of the nine books teaches and turns that teaching into procedures and checklists for the stages of writing.
It then examines where the instructions of the books agree and where they divide.

## How the nine books were selected and how far they were checked

The nine books are Japanese books whose main subject is how to write, which repeatedly appear as standard works in book reviews, university courses, and library workshops, and whose content could be checked from available sources.
They fall into two lineages and one critique.

| Lineage | Book | Main type of text | Range checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writers' guides (*bunshō tokuhon*) | Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, *Bunshō tokuhon* (1934) | General practical writing (specialized academic writing excluded) | Full text (NDL Lab full-text data) |
| Writers' guides | Mishima Yukio, *Bunshō tokuhon* (1959) | Novels, plays, criticism, translation | Table of contents, summary of the paperback edition |
| Writers' guides | Inoue Hisashi, *Jikasei bunshō tokuhon* (1987) | From literary classics to advertising copy | Table of contents, publisher's description |
| Composition technique | Shimizu Ikutarō, *Ronbun no kakikata* (1959) | Papers and reports in the humanities and social sciences | Table of contents, publisher's description, book review |
| Composition technique | Iwabuchi Etsutarō (ed.), *Akubun* (1960) | Essays, news, editorials, advertising, translated prose | Table of contents of the first edition, description of the paperback edition |
| Composition technique | Honda Katsuichi, *Nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (1976) | Any writing that aims to be easy for the reader to understand | Table of contents, publisher's description, workshop material based on the book |
| Composition technique | Kinoshita Korekazu, *Rikakei no sakubun gijutsu* (1981) | Work documents in science and engineering | Lecture material and a course report that quote the book |
| Composition technique | Todayama Kazuhisa, *Saishinban ronbun no kyōshitsu* (2022) | University reports and papers | Table of contents, publisher's description |
| Critique of the genre | Saitō Minako, *Bunshō tokuhon-san e* (2002) | The *bunshō tokuhon* genre itself | Table of contents, publisher's description |

The only book read in full text is the 1934 first edition of Tanizaki's book, whose copyright term has ended.
It was read through the OCR full-text data published by NDL Lab of the National Diet Library, and every phrase quoted from it was checked against the body text.
The other eight books were not read in full text.
Therefore, the claims about those books are limited to their tables of contents, the publishers' descriptions, and university lecture and workshop materials that quote them.

The checklist items come from two different sources.
Some items are rewritten from the wording of a book or of a material that quotes the book.
Other items are questions that this note derived from the headings in a table of contents.
The latter are marked [heading].
For a [heading] item, what the book actually recommends under that heading has not been checked.

Quotations from Tanizaki are translated into English, with key phrases romanized from the original.
Maruya Saiichi's *Bunshō tokuhon* (1977) is also often counted among the classics; its bibliographic data could be confirmed, but no source for checking its content was obtained, so it was excluded.

## The writers' guides train sensibility and close reading

### Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, *Bunshō tokuhon* (1934)

Tanizaki starts by refusing to separate practical writing from artistic writing.
His table of contents states that "there is no distinction between practical and artistic writing," and he notes that the book deals with "general practical writing, not specialized academic writing" (Tanizaki 1934, "I. What is writing").
He then sets two conditions for writing.
The first is to write so as to "make the reader understand" (*wakaraseru*), and the second is to write so as to "make the reader remember for a long time" (*nagaku kioku saseru*); to meet them, the writer should use every element that appeals to the reader's eyes and ears (Tanizaki 1934, "Modern and classical writing").

Tanizaki's method of improvement is not to memorize rules.
He writes that beginners may arrange Japanese sentences in a Western manner as a temporary expedient, but that once they can write reasonably well, they had better stop thinking about grammar (Tanizaki 1934, "Not being bound by grammar").
Whether writing is good or bad is a matter of sensibility, and that sensibility is sharpened by reading as many things as possible repeatedly and by actually writing (Tanizaki 1934, "Sharpening the sensibility").

When writing, the writer attends to six elements: vocabulary, tone, style, appearance, dignity, and implication (*ganchiku*) (Tanizaki 1934, "III. The elements of writing").
On vocabulary, Tanizaki warns against trying to be original, and he lists in order the choice of easy words and familiar old words, the avoidance of coined words, and the preference for familiar loanwords or colloquial words over difficult set phrases (Tanizaki 1934, "On vocabulary").
On dignity, he lists refraining from talkativeness, not treating wording carelessly, and not neglecting honorifics, and he further asks writers to avoid "trying to make things too clear" and to "leave gaps in the connections of meaning" (Tanizaki 1934, "On dignity").
On implication, the last element, he writes that "this reader preaches the single matter of implication from beginning to end," and he concludes by advising restraint in the use of adjectives and adverbs and economy of words (Tanizaki 1934, "On implication").

Tanizaki's book can be turned into the following procedure.

1. Recite the intended phrases aloud and test whether they can be said smoothly (Tanizaki 1934, "Modern and classical writing").
2. Choose the words, looking first for easy and familiar words and leaving new and coined words for later.
3. Reread the text with the six elements.
4. Cut talkativeness, stacked adjectives and adverbs, and explanations that the reader does not need.

Checklist:

- [ ] Does the text make the reader understand?
- [ ] Is it phrased so that it stays with the reader after reading?
- [ ] Can it be read aloud without stumbling?
- [ ] Does it try to stand out through unusual or coined words?
- [ ] Is its appearance (kanji, kana, ruby glosses, punctuation) in order?
- [ ] Is it too talkative? Is the wording careless anywhere?
- [ ] Are adjectives and adverbs overused?
- [ ] Does it leave room for the reader to fill in, rather than saying everything?

### Mishima Yukio, *Bunshō tokuhon* (1959)

Judging from its summary and table of contents, Mishima's book places its weight on reading rather than on procedures for writing.
The summary of the 2020 Chūkō Bunko new edition says that the book explains writing and technique through examples from Mori Ōgai, Kawabata Yasunari, Goethe, Balzac, and others, and that it "guides readers to become close readers who savor novels deeply" (Mishima 1959/2020).
The table of contents is also organized by genre and technique.
The genres are the novel (short and long), drama, criticism, and translation, and the techniques are the depiction of characters (appearance, clothing), of nature, of psychology, and of action, together with grammar and technique.
The opening chapter, "The varieties of writing," contains sections on masculine and feminine scripts, prose and verse, the historical change of the aesthetics of writing, and the habit of savoring writing, and a question-and-answer section is appended at the end (Mishima 1959, table of contents).

This structure can be turned into a checklist for the reading side, used before writing.
What Mishima recommends under each heading has not been checked, so all items are questions derived from the headings.

- [ ] [heading] Which genre (novel, drama, criticism, translation) does the text belong to?
- [ ] [heading] Which of character appearance, clothing, nature, psychology, and action does the depiction render, and with which words?
- [ ] [heading] Is the text prose or verse? Which period's aesthetics of writing does it continue?
- [ ] [heading] How does the choice of grammar work as a technique of the text?

### Inoue Hisashi, *Jikasei bunshō tokuhon* (1987)

Inoue's book objects to advice that writing guides have repeated.
The publisher's description says that people advise us to "write as you speak," and asks whether that produces good writing, and whether brevity alone makes good writing; it presents the book as overturning the common sense of earlier writing guides by drawing on examples from literary classics to modern advertising copy (Inoue 1987).
One chapter is titled "Do not write as you speak."
The other chapters cover the line of words, the mystery of transparent prose, the problem of the space between sentences, onomatopoeia, dancing prose, openings and endings, Japanese and Chinese flavors in vocabulary, the fuel of writing, form and manner, and reading and writing.

The only instruction confirmed from Inoue's book is "Do not write as you speak."
The remaining items are questions derived from the headings.

- [ ] Does the text transfer spoken language directly into writing?
- [ ] [heading] Does it use brevity as the only criterion and cut what should not be cut?
- [ ] [heading] Can the reader follow the connection between sentences (the space between sentences)?
- [ ] [heading] How does the text open and how does it close?
- [ ] [heading] Does the mix of native Japanese words and Sino-Japanese words fit the tone of the text?
- [ ] [heading] Where, and for what purpose, does it use onomatopoeia?

## The composition books set rules from the reader's understanding

### Shimizu Ikutarō, *Ronbun no kakikata* (1959)

Shimizu does not separate thinking from writing.
The publisher's description states that "how to write" cannot exist apart from "how to think" (Shimizu 1959).
The target is "intellectual prose" in the humanities and social sciences, and a book review introduces the book's view that composing writing is composing thought (Obata 2021).

The eight chapter titles are all phrased as instructions.
They are: start with short sentences; imitate someone; be wary of *ga*; treat Japanese as a foreign language; stop writing things "as they are"; attack with nothing but yourself; move back and forth between experience and abstraction; and bring writing to life in a new age.
Turning the chapter titles directly into checking questions gives the following list.
The questions follow the wording of the titles, but what Shimizu recommends in each chapter has not been checked.

- [ ] [heading] Before writing a long sentence, did the writer test whether the point can be stated in short sentences?
- [ ] [heading] Did the writer choose a model writer and try imitating that writer's prose?
- [ ] [heading] Does the text join sentences whose relation is unclear with the conjunctive particle *ga* ("and/but")?
- [ ] [heading] Does the text merely line up what was seen and felt?
- [ ] [heading] Does it move back and forth between concrete experience and abstract argument?

### Iwabuchi Etsutarō (ed.), *Akubun* (1960)

*Akubun* (Bad Writing) is a book in which Japanese linguists sort examples of bad writing into types and show how to fix them.
The description of the 2016 Kadokawa Sophia Bunko edition says that the book takes ineffective texts such as essays, news, editorials, advertising, and translated prose as examples, presents ways to defeat bad writing as "50 iron rules," and reveals methods of correction (Iwabuchi 1960/2016).
The wording of the 50 rules has not been checked.
What was checked is the table of contents of the 1960 first edition, in which many headings name a type of bad writing directly (Iwabuchi 1960, table of contents).

This table of contents can be used directly as a revision checklist.
All of the following items are questions derived from the headings of the first edition.

Planning and paragraphs:

- [ ] [heading] Does the text lack paragraphs? Or, conversely, does it break lines so often that it is the same as having no paragraphs?
- [ ] [heading] Did the writer make a plan before writing?

Sentence length and linking:

- [ ] [heading] Were overly long sentences divided?
- [ ] [heading] Does the text keep chaining sentences with the continuative form of verbs or with *sōshite* ("and then")?
- [ ] [heading] Does it create sentences with unclear links through the conjunctive particle *ga*?

Sentence coherence:

- [ ] [heading] Do the beginning and end of each sentence match?
- [ ] [heading] Is too much omitted?
- [ ] [heading] Do adverbs and particles agree with their predicates?
- [ ] [heading] Was one side of a parallel construction forgotten?

Modification:

- [ ] [heading] Are there modifiers whose target is unclear?
- [ ] [heading] Are modifiers too far from what they modify? Are modifiers too long?
- [ ] [heading] Is another topic inserted in the middle of a sentence?

Words, honorifics, and style:

- [ ] [heading] Does the text use expressions that only the writer understands?
- [ ] [heading] Does it use overly sensory words or mismatched images?
- [ ] [heading] Are honorifics overused, misused, or missing?
- [ ] [heading] Does the style (plain *de aru* style, polite *desu* style, and so on) switch partway through?

### Honda Katsuichi, *Nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (1976)

Honda narrows the purpose of composition to one thing.
The Kōdansha new edition quotes the preface, which says that composition is a technique rather than a matter of memory, and that the only goal to reach is to write simple, clear text that is easy for the reader to understand (Honda 1976/2005).
The table of contents has nine chapters: why composition is a "technique," the modifying side and the modified side, the order of modifiers, how to place punctuation, the psychology of kanji and kana, how to use particles, paragraphs, insensitive writing, and rhythm and style (Honda 1976/2015).

The content of the rules is summarized with example sentences in a workshop material of Osaka University Library (2020), which is based on the new edition of the book.
The following procedure and checklist depend on that summary.
The wording is the material's, not Honda's original wording.

The arrangement of modifiers follows five principles with priorities.

1. Place modifying and modified words close together.
2. Put clauses first and phrases after.
3. Put long modifiers first and short modifiers after.
4. Order from the larger situation to the smaller, and from the important to the less important.
5. Separate words with strong affinity for each other.

According to the material, principle 4 has lower priority than principles 2 and 3, and principle 5 has the same priority as principle 4.
The rules for the comma (*tōten*) are as follows.

- Place a comma at the boundary when there are two or more long modifiers.
- Place a comma when the word order is reversed (a short modifier comes first). Reordering the modifiers from long to short removes the need for the comma.
- Remove commas at a lower structural level so that commas at a higher level stand out.
- When listing phrases that carry modifiers, separate them with commas rather than with the middle dot (・).

Checklist:

- [ ] Are modifiers too far from what they modify?
- [ ] Does a phrase come before a clause so that it can be read as also modifying the clause?
- [ ] Does a short modifier come before a long one and create an unintended modification?
- [ ] Are words of time and place ordered from larger units to smaller ones?
- [ ] Do strongly associated words stand next to each other and form an unintended unit?
- [ ] Were commas placed at the boundaries of long modifiers and at points of reversed order?
- [ ] Are there so many commas that the major breaks of the sentence are no longer visible?

### Kinoshita Korekazu, *Rikakei no sakubun gijutsu* (1981)

Kinoshita limits his target to "work documents in science and engineering."
Such documents convey only facts and opinions and contain no emotional elements (Suzuki n.d., Chapter 1; Kindai University Faculty of Science and Engineering 2013).
As the first principle of work documents, Kinoshita states: "Describe everything that is necessary without omission, and write nothing that is unnecessary" (Suzuki n.d., Chapter 1).
The table of contents has 11 chapters (Suzuki n.d., table of contents).
The first half covers the overall approach to a text: preparation, organization, paragraphs, sentence structure and the flow of a text, and the attitude of stating things clearly.
The second half covers sentences and expression: facts and opinions, clear and concise expression, and notes on writing.
The final chapters treat letters, manuals, original papers, and conference presentations.

Within the range checked, Kinoshita's account comes closest to the form of a procedure.
The following is based on the passages of the book quoted in the lecture material.

1. Confirm the role of the document and choose a single subject. Narrow the subject to fit the length (Chapter 2).
2. Write a goal statement (*mokuhyō kitei-bun*) that fixes in one sentence what the document will state (Chapter 2).
3. Collect material, with the emphasis on information that the writer obtained directly and on the writer's own thinking (Chapter 2).
4. Reach a conclusion before starting to write (Chapter 3).
5. Decide the order of description. Write first what the reader most wants to know (the important-points-first principle), and give an overview before entering the details (Chapter 3).
6. Once the structure is decided, do not break its principle midway. If it can no longer be kept, revise the plan and rewrite from the beginning. When the goal changes, rewrite the goal statement (Chapter 3).
7. Write a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph (Chapter 4).
8. After finishing, reread the text many times and ask others to read it and point out what they cannot understand (Chapter 9).

Checklist:

- [ ] Does the text describe everything necessary without omission and contain nothing unnecessary?
- [ ] Can the flow of the text be understood by reading only the opening topic sentences?
- [ ] Does any sentence start with side issues so that its point is unclear until the end (a *sakamogi*, or abatis-type, sentence)? Does the whole text take the same shape (Chapter 5)?
- [ ] Are words such as "almost," "about," "around," "roughly," "probably," "-like," and "apparently" kept only where they are really needed (Chapter 6)?
- [ ] Are opinions mixed into the description of facts? When an opinion is stated, is it marked as an opinion (Chapter 7)?
- [ ] Are facts described specifically rather than generally, clearly rather than vaguely, and concretely rather than abstractly (Chapter 7)?
- [ ] Does the text derive a conclusion by passing an opinion off as a fact (Chapter 1)?
- [ ] Are the sentences short? Do subjects and predicates correspond correctly? Can any sentence be read in two ways (Chapter 8)?

For reviewing a finished paper, Kinoshita gives six questions (Chapter 10).

- [ ] Are there leaps in the argument? Does it wander off into side issues?
- [ ] Has anything that should be written been left out (the range of approximations, the experimental conditions, the premises of the conclusion)?
- [ ] Is there anything that can still be cut?
- [ ] Are the title, the division into sections, and the section titles appropriate?
- [ ] Can the figures and tables be understood from their captions alone?
- [ ] Are any explanations of symbols or units of numerical values missing?

### Todayama Kazuhisa, *Saishinban ronbun no kyōshitsu* (2022)

Todayama teaches the paper as a text with a fixed form, made of "a question, a claim, and an argument."
The publisher's description says that the book follows a first-year university student who writes poorly as he improves a weak paper, and that it explains how to make an outline, how to assemble a draft, and how to finish, together with techniques of "argumentation" that make a claim more persuasive (Todayama 2022).
The chapters proceed in this order.
The first three chapters state that a paper needs a question, a claim, and an argument, that it also needs planning, and that it is a text that "fits a mold."
The later chapters treat the outline as the seed of a paper, what argumentation is in the first place, the idea of paragraph writing, writing clear prose, and the final finishing.
The appendices include a checklist for just before submitting a paper, a flowchart up to completing a paper, the evaluation criteria for papers, and a list of expressions that poor writers tend to use.

The order of the chapters follows the order of the work.
The content of the appendix checklist has not been checked, so the following procedure is derived from the order of the chapters.

1. [heading] Pose a question and decide the claim that answers it.
2. [heading] Plan the steps of the work back from the deadline.
3. [heading] Fit the paper to its form (the order of its components).
4. [heading] Make an outline and develop it into a draft.
5. [heading] Build an argument for each claim.
6. [heading] Write paragraph by paragraph.
7. [heading] Make the prose clear and finish the paper.

## How the bunshō tokuhon genre reads from the outside

Saitō Minako's *Bunshō tokuhon-san e* (2002) reads the preceding books from the outside.
The publisher's description says that the book asks why writing guides, in which famous stylists scold and admonish their readers, kept being written for a hundred years.
According to the same description, the book examines the intentions of the leading authors, the rivalries in the "world of writing guides," and the changes in the teaching of Japanese and composition (Saitō 2002/2007).
The table of contents begins with the genre of writing guides and a comparison of the standard guides, treats their content, form, and readers in turn, follows composition education from the Meiji period to the postwar period, and ends with the history and future of the genre.
The book received the first Kobayashi Hideo Prize.

Saitō's book gives no procedure.
As far as its description and table of contents show, it recasts the advice of writing guides as a question of who wrote it for whom.

## Stating things plainly or leaving them unsaid

The instructions of the nine books agree on economy of words.
Tanizaki advises restraint in talkativeness and in the waste of adjectives and adverbs.
Kinoshita makes writing nothing unnecessary his first principle and asks writers to remove vague expressions.
The table of contents of *Akubun* lists overly long sentences and overly long modifiers, and Shimizu puts "start with short sentences" in a chapter title.

The books divide on whether to state things plainly.
Tanizaki made "not trying to make things too clear" and "leaving gaps in the connections of meaning" conditions of dignity.
Kinoshita asked writers to state plainly what they can state, and to ask whether a hedge is necessary every time they feel like inserting one.
Inoue also asks whether brevity alone makes good writing, and questions advice that had been treated as the common sense of writing guides (Inoue 1987).

This conflict is genuine only when the two writers address the same kind of text.
Tanizaki explicitly states that his book deals not with specialized academic writing but with general practical writing.
Kinoshita deals with work documents in science and engineering, which convey only facts and opinions and contain no emotional elements.
Therefore, applying Tanizaki's advice to academic papers lies outside Tanizaki's own scope.
The two scopes overlap in practical writing such as the letters and manuals that Kinoshita treats in Chapter 10, and there the writer has to choose between leaving room for the reader to fill in and the clarity of plain statement.
As Saitō's question implies, the meaning of writing advice changes with the reader it was written for.
When using the instructions of the nine books, the first step is to decide which book's scope the text being written falls into.

## A checklist ordered by the stages of writing

The instructions of the nine books are rearranged here in the order of the stages of writing.
The parentheses after each item name the book that gives the instruction.
Items rewritten from the wording of a book and items derived from headings are mixed, so for a book marked [heading], the content under that heading has not been checked.

Before writing:

- [ ] Which book's scope does the text fall into (paper, report, practical writing, creative writing) (Tanizaki, Kinoshita, Saitō)?
- [ ] Was a single subject chosen and a goal statement written in one sentence (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Were a question and a claim that answers it decided (Todayama [heading])?
- [ ] Was a conclusion reached before starting to write (Kinoshita)?

Organization:

- [ ] Was what the reader most wants to know placed first (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Was a plan made before writing (*Akubun* [heading], Todayama [heading])?
- [ ] Does the text move between experience and abstraction (Shimizu [heading])?

Paragraphs:

- [ ] Was a topic sentence written at the beginning of each paragraph (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Does the text lack paragraphs, or break lines so often that it is the same as having none (*Akubun* [heading])?

Sentences:

- [ ] Are the sentences short? Were overly long sentences divided (Kinoshita, *Akubun* [heading], Shimizu [heading])?
- [ ] Are there abatis-type sentences (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Are sentences chained too much with *ga* or the continuative form (Shimizu [heading], *Akubun* [heading])?
- [ ] Are modifiers ordered with clauses first, long ones first, and from the larger situation to the smaller (Honda)?
- [ ] Do the beginnings and ends of sentences match, and do adverbs agree with predicates (*Akubun* [heading], Kinoshita)?

Words and punctuation:

- [ ] Were easy and familiar words chosen? Does the text try to stand out through coined words (Tanizaki)?
- [ ] Are adjectives, adverbs, and hedges overused (Tanizaki, Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Were commas placed at the boundaries of long modifiers and at points of reversed order, and were lower-level commas removed (Honda)?
- [ ] Are honorifics and style consistent (Tanizaki, *Akubun* [heading])?

Review:

- [ ] Can the text be read aloud without stumbling (Tanizaki)?
- [ ] Are facts and opinions written separately (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Did someone else read the text and point out what they could not understand (Kinoshita)?
- [ ] Does the text contain nothing unnecessary (Kinoshita)? Even so, was room for the reader to fill in cut away entirely (Tanizaki, Inoue [heading])?

## Limitations

Only one book, Tanizaki's, was read in full text.
The other eight books were described within the range of their tables of contents, the publishers' descriptions, and materials that quote them, so the course of each book's argument, its example sentences, and the finer rules in its body text are missing.
Honda's and Kinoshita's rules were described through secondary materials that quote the books (the Osaka University workshop material, the Gunma University lecture material, and the Kindai University course report), and errors in the summaries of those materials have not been checked.
*Akubun* was described from the table of contents of the 1960 first edition, so the chapter structure may differ from the 2016 paperback edition (a reissue of the third edition of 1979).
The nine books are biased toward books whose content could be checked.
Maruya Saiichi's *Bunshō tokuhon* was excluded because no source for checking its content was obtained, not because of its importance.
Umesao Tadao's *Chiteki seisan no gijutsu* and Noguchi Yukio's *"Chō" bunshōhō*, among others, were not searched for this time.
None of the books has been confirmed to test with readers whether the checklist items actually make texts easier to read (at least, the tables of contents and descriptions checked do not mention such experiments).

## References

- Honda, Katsuichi. 1976. *Nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (日本語の作文技術) [The technique of Japanese composition]. Asahi Shimbunsha. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN03658021 (bibliographic record, accessed 2026-11-10; in Japanese)
- Honda, Katsuichi. 2005. *Shinsōban nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (新装版 日本語の作文技術) [The technique of Japanese composition, new edition]. Kōdansha. https://www.kodansha.co.jp/book/products/0000182894 (accessed 2026-11-10; in Japanese)
- Honda, Katsuichi. 2015. *Shinpan nihongo no sakubun gijutsu* (〈新版〉日本語の作文技術) [The technique of Japanese composition, new edition]. Asahi Bunko. Asahi Shimbun Shuppan. https://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/f/dsg-01-9784022618450 (table of contents, accessed 2026-11-10; in Japanese)
- Inoue, Hisashi. 1987. *Jikasei bunshō tokuhon* (自家製 文章読本) [A homemade reader on writing]. Shinchō Bunko. Shinchōsha. https://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/116819/ (accessed 2026-11-10; in Japanese)
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## Related notes

- [Taking the LLM Smell Out of LLM Prose, and How to Bring humanizer Into This Project](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/llm-writing-deslop/): covers the norms and tools that this project uses to check prose. The nine books in this note are Japanese writing guides that predate those norms.