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Rating: 
Summary: Necessary Reading to Correct False Views on Language
Review: Linguists (especially English-speaking ones) would do well to look to the Japanese language and test their theories against it *first* before making o'erhasty generalizations about language. I turned to this book after reading Anna Wierzbicka's work on 'semantic universals' and found that it validated my ideas that there is no exact equivalent in the Japanese language for the English word 'you' (or 'Du' in German, 'tu' in French, etc.). However, Shibatani's work is enjoyable and very informative. Non-linguists can (I think) understand it without much difficulty, and students of Japanese (as well as native speakers!) may enjoy his overview of the history and development of the language. He also goes out of his way to disprove certain 'myths' about Japanese. Plus it has a bibliography of works in both Japanese and English.I sincerely hope more books of this kind will emerge.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Reference Book
Review: Shibatani's book "the Languages of Japan" is now 10 years old, but it still proves to be an excellent resource not only for the weathered linguist, but for anyone with any interest in Japanese, Ainu, and their various dialects. This edition gives a concise overview of Ainu and Japanese from phoentics to semantics and more. I found the chapter on Japanese dialects especially fascinating, and the first half of the book that is dedicated to Ainu is one of the most comprehensive modern works on the language of Japan's indigineous peoples. This volume is small and thus limited in its content, but overall it still remains a valuable and excellent resource for linguists and language buffs.
Rating: 
Summary: Two thirds of the pie
Review: The section on Ainu was very good, although not as thorough as the Japanese section. One glaring omission was a section on Ryukyuan. According to the author, it's "been proven" recently that Ryukyuan is actually just a "dialect of Japanese". This couldn't be farther from the truth. The Ryukyus were once a separate nation from Japan. If the language native to the Ryukyus is indeed a dialect of Japanese, it is far more divergent from the standard language than any other Japanese "dialect", including the Hachijou dialect area, the Tohoku dialect area (a few people believe the language of the Tohoku district to be a separate language, called in English "Tsugarish"; there's a bit of truth in this), or the southern Kyuushuu dialect area, all three of which are considered to be linguistic extremes. A story told in Ryukyuan could not be understood by most Tokyoites. A story told in Amami (the northernmost of the Ryukyuan languages) would even be difficult for a speaker of the Kagoshima dialect of Japanese (the southernmost) to understand. The Okinawan language is as different from Tokyo Japanese as is Spanish from Italian, probably more like Swedish from German. The same can be said of all of the other Ryukyuan languages. According to the author, the reason Ryukyuan is just a dialect is because of its historical relationship to Japanese. The same can be said of Swedish and German or Spanish and French with similar circumstances. In addition, they're all spoken in the nation of Japan... but was it always this way? The Ryukyus used to be an independent nation until Japan annexed the kingdom in the late 1800s, actually *after* it took the Korean penninsula (which was returned to independence, although the Ryukyus never were). The way equal treatment is not given to Ainu and Japanese is not a good thing and would take between half a star and a star off. The treatment of Ryukyuan is *extremely* disappointing and would take one or two stars off. Also disappointing is the extent to which dialectal variation is discussed with each feature discussed in both Ainu and Japanese. What *is* written is written well, however, and this book is a very wonderful reference for Ainu and a good one for Japanese, too. As a reference for the languages of Japan, it's 2/3rds the book it claims to be.
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