The Phonology of Japanese is a revised, English-language version of Laurence Labrune's La phonologie du japonais, published in 2006. The introduction sets out two goals: (i) to ‘present the actual ‘state of the art’ Japanese phonology based on a compilation of recent and older Western and Japanese materials, reflecting current debates in Japanese phonology’ (p. 1), and (ii) to ‘offer new analyses and data concerning some of the central issues of Japanese phonology in a theoretically oriented approach’ (p. 2). The general analytical framework employed in the book is generative ‘in the broad sense’ (p. 3). That is, underlying and surface levels of phonological representation are postulated, but the relationship between the two is formulated within the framework of non-derivational Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 2004). The remainder of the introduction is mostly dedicated to the description of the Japanese writing system and the stratification of the Japanese lexicon, which are frequently called upon in the rest of the book. The topics covered by the remaining chapters are: ‘Vowels’ (Chapter 2, pp. 25–58), ‘Consonants’ (Chapter 3, pp. 59–101), ‘The phonology of consonant voicing’ (Chapter 4, pp. 102–131), ‘Special segments’ (Chapter 5, pp. 132–141), ‘Prosodic units’ (Chapter 6, pp. 142–177) and ‘Accent’ (Chapter 7, pp. 178–266). Of these, Chapter 4 was newly added for the English edition. Chapters 3, 6 and 7 were substantially revised from the French edition, incorporating new data and analyses. The book also has an index, with some headwords in both English and Japanese.

True to the goal of bringing together Western and Japanese scholarship, references are made to a good mix of Western literature and the works of Japanese phonologists published in Japan. This is one of the clear merits of the book. Much of the Japanese literature is not easily accessible to researchers outside of Japan, and has been ‘largely ignored outside Japan in spite of its excellence’ (p. 1). Labrune makes a point of drawing our attention particularly to the works of Japanese structural phonologists from the 1940s and the1950s, characterised by their data-oriented approach and philological insights. Notably, she describes in detail Kindaichi's (1942) survey of the syllable-initial [ɡ]–[ŋ] alternation in Tokyo Japanese, in conjunction with her critique of Itô & Mester's (1997) Optimality Theoretic analysis of the phenomenon (pp. 81–87). While praising the ingenuity of Itô & Mester's (1997) analysis, Labrune questions the empirical basis of their data. The data in Itô & Mester (1997) do not capture various language-internal factors contributing to the [ɡ]–[ŋ] alternation observed by Kindaichi (1942), who investigated the phenomenon in the very variety of Japanese supposedly dealt with in Itô & Mester (1997).

Another merit of the book lies in Labrune's skilful use of findings from both synchronic and diachronic studies of Japanese in discussing the phonology of standard Japanese today (Tokyo Japanese), the main focus of the book. Synchronic variation in the prosodic system of Japanese is extensively described in the final chapter, in relation to the place of Tokyo Japanese in prosodic typology (pp. 251–266). In light of the observed synchronic variation, Labrune endorses the view that Tokyo Japanese possesses the characteristics of both tone and stress languages, rather than forming a distinct prosodic type (Yip 2002, Hyman 2009). Labrune argues that this view allows the various prosodic systems found among Japanese dialects to be seen as forming a linguistic continuum, rather than belonging to disparate prosodic types. Labrune also seeks insight into various aspects of Japanese phonology from historical documents, including Kojiki, Nihonshoki and Man'yôshû (the oldest available Japanese documents from around the 8th century) and missionary accounts from the 17th century, as well as the history of the development of the Japanese writing system.

This is not to say that the book is free of shortcomings. Although the criticism is not unique to this book, some of the descriptions of Japanese vowels and consonants in Chapters 2 and 3 appear to be the author's impressionistic observations (which await empirical verification), but no explicit qualification is made to this effect. To give a few examples, Labrune states that ヴ (a katakana letter often used to represent /v/ in loanwords) is pronounced as [β] by some Japanese speakers (pp. 97–98), presumably contrasting it with /b/. I am yet to come across a study demonstrating that some Japanese speakers systematically produce /v/ in loanwords as [β]. Similarly, the author states that ‘long e is written as ei in hiragana . . . under the hyper-corrective influence of the writing, the pronunciation of long e as [ei] is now spreading among some speakers of the standard language’ (p. 40). However, according to Amanuma, Otsubo & Mizutani (1989), /eː/ is written as ee in hiragana in the modern Japanese writing system. If so, would it not be more reasonable to conjecture that [eː] for ei in hiragana is resulting from hypoarticulation of /ei/, than that [ei] for ei is resulting from hypercorrection of /eː/? The book would also benefit from a little more rigorous proof-reading. For example, the accent pattern of hana-ga (‘nose’ followed by the nominative particle ga) in the Kyoto dialect is presented correctly (HH-H) on page 253 but incorrectly (LH-H) on page 256. Additionally, the index suggests that Hayes and Sibata are mentioned on pages 2 and 185, respectively, neither of which is true. Oversights of this type are found in several places.

For many, however, the real value of the book will be in Labrune's discussion of the status of the syllable (or the lack of it) in Japanese phonology (pp. 161–170). Doing away with syllables, Labrune proposes two kinds of moras: full moras with a regular CV structure vs. deficient moras, which lack either C or V. Deficient moras of a first type (representationally) have an empty vowel nucleus. They include the so-called moraic consonants (/N/ and /Q/) and moras with an epenthetic vowel, among others. Deficient moras of a second type, with an empty onset consonant, include the second mora of the long vowel. Unlike full moras, deficient moras cannot be in foot-initial position or bear an accent. Using the distinction of full vs. deficient moras, Labrune demonstrates that accent placement on foreign place names in Tokyo Japanese can be analysed with exclusive reference to moras and feet, i.e. without reference to syllables (pp. 202–213). Included in the analysis are place names such as senegaru ‘Senegal’ with pre-antepenultimate accent, whose analysis has been thought to require the notion of the syllable (Kubozono 1996). A syllable-less account of accent placement is also proposed for compound nouns (pp. 222–235).

Readers should make up their own minds about Labrune's above proposal. I merely note here that Labrune's notion of the mora very closely parallels Lowenstamm's (1996) notion of the syllable. Within the framework of Government Phonology, Lowenstamm (1996) reanalyses traditional coda consonants as syllables with an empty nucleus, and long vowels a sequence of two light syllables straddling an intervening empty onset of the second syllable. However, Lowenstamm (1996) is mentioned only briefly, almost as an afterthought, without a clear explanation of why his notion of the syllable is unsuitable for the analysis of Japanese phonology (pp. 167–168).

In sum, The Phonology of Japanese is an informative, stimulating book worth reading. In order to truly appreciate the book, however, some knowledge of Japanese phonology is required, although the book was ‘intended for a general audience of students and linguists with no specialized knowledge of the Japanese language’ (p. 2).