Osamu Koma	  Institute of Humanistic Sciences
Rissho University

Name of Pioneer: Ukaji, Masatomo (宇賀治正朋)	  (1931-2011)*
Masatomo Ukaji was born in Sanjo City, Niigata Prefecture on July 10, 1931. After
graduating from Niigata Prefectural Sanjo High School, he matriculated at Tokyo
University of Education in 1950. After earning a B.A. degree in English Language andLiterature in 1954, he went on to the Master’s and Doctor’s Program of the same
university. In those days, he was fascinated with the lectures on English Linguistics byKotaro Ishibashi, Akira Ota and Minoru Yasui.
After completing the Doctor’s program in 1958, he began his academic career as aninstructor at Otaru University of Commerce, where he taught English from 1958 to1963. During that period, he won Ford Foundation and Fulbright scholarships, andattended the University of Michigan (1961-1962), where he was inspired by thestimulating lectures of Albert H. Marckwardt, Sherman M. Kuhn, Kenneth L. Pike andothers. He then developed his own ideas about the history and the structure of the
English language. In 1965, he moved to the Liberal Arts Department of Tohoku
University. After teaching English there for three years, he assumed a new post of
Associate Professor at his alma mater, Tokyo University of Education, in 1968. There,
he conducted seminars on Early Modern English and on English historical linguistics
up to 1977, the year before Tokyo University of Education ceased to exist. Amidst thewidespread disturbances on university campuses in the 1970s, he continued todiligently pursue his own agenda of research and publication, and completed his
dissertation entitled Imperative Sentences in Early Modern English under thesupervision of Professor Akira Ota, receiving the degree of Ph. D. in November 1976
from Tokyo University of Education.
In April 1975, he was invited to join the English Department of Tokyo Gakugei
University (one of the core universities for teacher-training in Japan) as Associate
Professor, and was promoted to full professorship in 1977. While working there, he also
showed his remarkable administrative capacity: he held, among others, the position ofChair of the Department of Humanities and Social Science during the years 1988--1992.
In addition, he undertook the painstaking task of negotiating with the Ministry ofEducation, Science and Culture, to create a Joint Graduate School of Teacher-TrainingProgram. This program, in cooperation with Chiba University, Saitama University, andYokohama National University, successfully started one year after his retirement.
Needless to mention, none of these hard administrative works stopped him from being aresearch scholar, publishing many papers and supervising several Ph. D. dissertations.
After his retirement from Tokyo Gakugei University, he was invited to join
Tsurumi University, where he taught English Linguistics, and continued his research
to the age of 70 (1995-2002), while serving as a university administrator, Dean of theSchool of Literature and Director of the University Library.
One of his outstanding academic achievements is his aforementioned Ph. D.
dissertation, which was later published as Imperative Sentences in Early Modern

English (1978, Tokyo: Kaitakusha). For this book, he was awarded the Ichikawa Prizein 1979. This research was the first attempt in Japan to explore the problem ofdiachronic English syntax within the framework of generative transformational theory.
Based on his careful observation and analyses, he succeeded in offering valuable new
information concerning imperative constructions in Early Modern English as well as
providing new insights into grammatical change between the earlier stage of Early
Modern English and that of Contemporary English. This publication was reviewed
favorably in English Studies (vol. 62, 1) by Liliane Haegeman in 1981.
Another one of his monumental books is Eigoshi IIIA [History of English IIIA],(co-authored with Kazuo Araki, 1984, Tokyo: Taishukan), where he provided a detailed
and comprehensive description of syntactic properties of Early Modern English. The
real strength of this book lies in its clarity and preciseness, lending weight to its
authority. Therefore, this book has helped many students and scholars of historicallinguistics in Japan deepen their understanding of Early Modern English. It is also
noteworthy that besides overviewing the familiar previous studies in this field, he also
incorporated the fruits of long years of philological studies in Japan.
His contributions to academic societies, particularly to the English LinguisticSociety of Japan (ELSJ), were remarkable: a member of the Editorial Board(1983-1989); Vice President (1990-1992) and President (1992-1996); a member of theBoard of Directors (three terms during 1988-2001); and Advisor (2002-2011). In addition,
he served as the Chair (1978-1979) of the Editorial Board of Studies in English

Literature, the journal of the English Literary Society of Japan, and as a member of theBoard of Directors of the Modern English Association (1983-2001) and as Advisor

(2004-2011) of the same association. Furthermore, he was also appointed as a memberof the Editorial Committee of Japanese Scientific Terms (LINGUISTICS) of the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (1986-1990;1992-1996), contributing to thecompilation of Technical Terms of Linguistics.
In addition to his energetic service in Japan, his activity also extended overseas. In1990, he read a paper “ ‘I not say’ : Bridge Phenomenon in Linguistic Evolution” at theSixth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) held at
Helsinki University, Finland. (The extended version of the paper read there was later
published in History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical

Linguistics, edited by Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen, and Irma
Taavistsainen (1992) 453-462. Mouton de Gruyter.)

In 2000, he read a paper “AnAspect of the Development of Negative Sentences in Modern English” at the Eleventh
ICEHL held at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. (Part of the materialsfor discussion he presented there was later published as Ukaji (2003a). See PARTIAL
BIBLIOGRAPHY below. )A partial list of his remaining publications is given below:
PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MASATOMO UKAJI(almost exclusively containing articles or review articles written in English1)
1958. “Inverted Condition from Shakespeare to G. Greene”, Studies in English

Grammar and Linguistics: A Miscellany in Honour of Takanobu Otsuka,
159-170. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.
1960a. “Studies in the Language of the Works of Sir Thomas Malory I. Word Order (1)”,

Humanities and Science 20. 73-125. (Bulletin of Otaru University ofCommerce)
1960b. “Studies in the Language of the Works of Sir Thomas Malory I. Word Order (2)”,

Humanities and Science 21. 127-1163. (Bulletin of Otaru University ofCommerce)
1973. “Imperative Constructions in Shakespeare”, Studies in English Linguistics(SEL) 2. 71-107. Tokyo: Asahi Press.
1976. “Deletion of the Complementizer to in Early Modern English”, SEL. 4. 67-77.
Tokyo: Asahi Press.
1977. “Tag Questions in Shakespeare”, SEL 5. 265-280. Tokyo: Asahi Press.
1979. “Multiple Negation in Shakespeare”, SEL 7. 100-117. Tokyo: Asahi Press.
1991. [Review Article]. “Mieko Ogura: Dynamic Dialectology: A Study of Language inTime and Space”, English Linguistics 8. 244-257. (The Journal of ELSJ)

1993. “Whether in Early Modern English”, Kindai Eigo no Shoso [Aspects of Modern

English: The Tenth Anniversary Publication of the Modern English
Association], 170-188. Tokyo: Eichosha.
1997.	  “A History of Whether”, Studies in English Linguistics: Festschrift for Akira

Ota on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, ed. by Ukaji, Masatomo, Toshio
Nakao, Masaru Kajita and Shuji Chiba. 1236-1261. Tokyo: Taishukan.
1998. “On the Scope of Negative Concord”, Negation in the History of English, ed. byIngrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie and Wim van der Wurff, 269-294.
New York/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
2002. “Some Aspects of Negation in the History of English”, Proceedings of the Sophia

Symposium on Negation, ed. by Yasuhiko Kato, 169-92. Tokyo: Sophia
University.
2003a. “New Developments of Negative Sentences in Modern English”, Empirical andTheoretical Investigations into Language: A Festschrift for Masaru Kajita, ed. byShuji Chiba et al., 1-18．Tokyo: Kaitakusha.
2003b. “Subject Zero Relatives in Early Modern English”, Current Issues in English

Linguistics, ed. by Masatomo Ukaji, Masayuki Ike-uchi, and Yoshiki Nishimura,248-77. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.
2004. “Jespersen on Double Restriction in Relation to Contact-Clause”, English

Language and Linguistics 18. 319-336. (Journal of the English Linguistics
Society of Korea)
2005a. <Review> “Arne Juul, Hans F. Nielsen, Jorgen Erik Nielsen (eds.): A Linguist’s

Life: An English Translation of Otto Jespersen’s Autobiography with Notes,
Photos and a Bibliography, Odense: Odense University Press, 1995, xx+380pp.”,
Studies in English Literature 46, 334-341.
2005b. “The Making of the Semi-auxiliaries have to”, Recent Trends in Medieval

English Language and Literature in Honor of Young-Bae Park, ed. by Jacek
Fisiak and Hye-Kyung Kang, vol. 1. 57-73. Seoul: Thaehaksa.
After his full retirement in March, 2002, he devoted himself to two tasks until hisdeath (October 22, 2011). One of them was the compilation of Eigogaku Bunken-kaidai

Bunpou I [The Kenkyusha Bibliographical Guide to English Linguistics and Philology,
Volume 4 (Grammar I)] under the general supervision of Professor Yoshio Terasawa,which was published by Kenkyusha in 2010. His ultimate aim in this bibliographicalbook was to trace the detailed history of English grammars (including Traditional
School Grammar and American Structuralist Grammar) back to the 16th century

(Bullokar 1586). The main part of this book offers brief overviews of about eighty
monumental grammar books published during the years 1586-2005, which willcertainly be invaluable for younger language teachers and researchers.
After the publication of the above bibliography, his continuing interest in thehistory of grammar research led him to reach further back to the ancient Greek or Latin
Grammars. It was astonishing to find that he had been preparing a preliminary draft ofa new book during the half year before his death. This unpublished manuscript starts
with an examination of Greek philosophers’ views on language or grammar such as
Plato’s Cratylos [his dialogue about language], Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias [OnInterpretation], and Stoic philosophers. It then proceeds to Greek and Roman (Latin)
grammarians such as Dionysius Thrax (a Hellenistic grammarian), Apollonius Dyscolus,Marcus Terentius Varro, Donatus, and Priscianus. His keen interest in suchbibliographical works might be attributed to his firm belief that the edifice of modern
linguistics is nothing other than the product of long years of academic pursuits
originating with Greek philosophers. Though it is absolutely regrettable thatcompletion of such a significant manuscript was halted by his untimely death, hisunbending spirit of inquiry will surely encourage and stimulate the next generation towork in the field. （Incidentally, his widow arranged after his death for a part of his
posthumous manuscripts to be printed as a private version, entitled Eibunpougakushi[A History of (English) Grammar Research](printed in 2012 by Kenkyusha PrintingCo.). About six months after his death, a memorial gathering was held on 18 March2012 at Meikei Hall, Tokyo. On that occasion, all the participants, presented with acopy of that booklet by his widow, were deeply impressed by his tremendous eagerness
to pursue his research.）
At first glance, he had a somewhat serious persona, but he was actually a verywarm-hearted and genial person. He was always quite modest, unassuming, and a good
listener, always engaged in what others were saying. He would often be seen speaking
amicably to faculty, staff, and students on and off campus. The topics of his conversation
ranged from his research topics to education, literature, sports (especially, Japanese professionalbaseball), and the state of societal affairs. Whenever he was asked to do somebody a favor, henever failed to accept it no matter how difficult the task. True to his character, hisactions were in accordance with his beliefs. For example, in 1991, the Japan Sumo
Association was planning a three-day exhibition in London. One of the highlights of theevent was to show Yokozuna-dohyoiri (ceremonial entrance of the Grand Champion) in
the presence of Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. This entailed a presentation

of the historical background and meaning of Dohyoiri in English. At the sudden requestof the Sumo Association, he drew up an English version of its explanatory notes of
Yokozuna-dohyoiri, and moreover, translated the entire Japanese script of theexhibition proceedings in a very short time. He would often say with a look ofsatisfaction that the Director of the Association came in person to his house to pick up
the manuscript the day before their departure for London.
He passed away on October 22, 2011 at the age of eighty after a seven-year struggle
with both radio- and chemotherapy for cancer. At the time of his death, he wasProfessor Emeritus at Tokyo Gakugei University. For his long-term efforts andinvaluable contributions to education, research and management at universities andacademic societies, he posthumously won two prestigious Prizes: one is the Special Prizeof the 2013 English Linguistic Society of Japan Award; the other is a cultural award
from the Japanese government (the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with NeckRibbon).

Notes:*This article is written on the basis of “Obituary: Masatomo Ukaji” by Osamu Koma
(2012), originally published in English Linguistics 29.1. 205-208.