Passage of the Ordinance to Regulate Dialects

In 1907, the Japanese government passed the Ordinance to Regulate Dialects, which prohibited children from speaking their native Ryūkyūan languages in school. Many Japanese government officials believed education was crucial to the success of their campaign to make Japan a mono-lingual society. An original architect of the movement to standardize the Japanese language, Okaura Yoshiaburo (1868-1936), believed the government must use instruction in the classrooms to eliminate the use of the Ryūkyūan languages [Heinrich, 2005].