Paper short abstract:

Kōnoshi Takamitsu's influential sakuhin-ron approach reveals the underlying ideologies of Kojiki and Nihon shoki. The paper provides a survey of the approaches to Kojiki from Kojiki-den to the present in order to determine the historical position and to reveal the particular aims of sakuhin-ron.

Paper long abstract:

Kōnoshi Takamitsu's influential sakuhin-ron approach - i.e. his close reading of the mythological works as unique and coherent narratives - tries to reveal the underlying ideologies of the chronicles Kojiki and Nihon shoki, i.e. the political and religious intentions to consolidate and legitimize the supremacy of Tenmu Tennō and his successors. In addition, he draws distinctions between the Kojiki myths and the myths collected in other texts, in order to uncover the plurality of the original myths and the process of their subsequent unification (ichigenka 一元化).

While from the perspectives of historical and comparative mythological studies Kojiki myths appear as an incoherent bricolage of distinct mythical episodes, Konoshi regards them as a consistent narrative based on a certain concept. In fact, this kind of sakuhin-ron approach can be traced back to Saigō Nobutsuna who rejected the exclusively analytical "dissecting" approaches of modern research. Instead, he demanded to read the Kojiki as a coherent work (sakuhin) of mythical language.

This presentation provides a survey of the approaches to Kojiki from Motoori's Kojiki-den to the present in order to determine the historical position and to reveal the particular aims of sakuhin-ron. Two models will help to achieve these goals: One will explain the turns within the history of Kojiki research, the other one will present three areas - from the preliterate and semi-literate levels to the level of literacy - in order to show where the different approaches are aiming at. This will reveal the eras which are getting out of view by the sakuhin-ron as well.

The sakuhin-ron has already reached its limitations and many studies of the new millennium try to overcome or expand it, for example by making the close reading accessible again to other disciplines such as religious studies, folklore, or the philological reconstruction of textual genesis. This does not imply a relapse into post-war theorems because today, and thanks to sakuhin-ron, plurality and difference, or the understanding of the text as a coherent whole, are belonging to the basic knowledge of Japanese research.