技术与成本之困:1935年汉字改革运动中的上海出版界

Technology and Cost Bottlenecks: Shanghai Publishers in the 1935 Reform of Chinese Characters

学界习惯从思想史的角度审视近代媒介的变迁,然而媒介发展虽体现了思想的演进,亦受制于商业的诉求。本文利用上海档案馆所藏上海书业同业公会档,审视上海出版界如何出于"成本"的考量而应对国民政府教育部汉字改革运动。二十世纪三十年代中叶,国民政府教育部通令全国施行注音符号以及简化字,然而简体字改革遭到政界、文化界以及上海书业同业公会的诸多反对。虽有方案未尽完美的原因,但上海书业主要考虑简体字需要重新雕刻字模,浇铸铅字,成本高昂,库存压力极大,所以选择支持注音符号,而反对简体字。由于上海出版界执全国之牛耳,此次简化字推广无疾而终。

Scholars get used to reviewing the changes of modern media from the perspective of the history of thoughts.Albeit reflecting the evolution of thoughts in a way,the advancement of media is also subject to commercial appeals.This paper examines how the publishers in Shanghai in the period of the Republic of China reacted to the reform of Chinese characters launched by the Government’s ministry of education on the basis of the documents of the Shanghai Publishers Association collected at the Shanghai Archives.In the mid-1930 s,the ministry of education of the Republic of China ordered to use phonetic alphabet and simplified characters across the country.However,this simplification scheme met with strong resistances from the political and cultural communities and the Shanghai Publishers Association,which was owing to the imperfection of the scheme itself in part and more importantly to a main consideration of the Shanghai Publishers Association.In the opinion of the Association,if the simplified characters were put into use,the publishing houses had to cut new matrixes and cast new types which would be very costly and create awesomely big inventory pressure.For this reason,the Association became the supporter of phonetic alphabet but an opponent of simplified characters.Because of the dominant position of Shanghai publishers in China,the Chinese character simplification campaign failed.