Paper short abstract:

While marketed as a distinct brand of scholarship, Edo-period Rangaku was suffused with Sinological erudition. On a case study of an 1805 translation text with an important mid-century political afterlife the paper seeks to document the synergy of the 'Dutch' and classical 'Chinese' expertise.

Paper long abstract:

In many accounts, Rangaku still poses as the supposed harbinger of the western scientific modernity. However, the men of 'Dutch' learning still acquired their literacy and erudition from the authoritative body of universal (i.e., 'Chinese') learning. Although in the competitive intellectual marketplace they might brand themselves 'Rangakusha'—distinct from other 'schools'—they continued to use the texts, genres and tools of textual criticism established in the classical studies.

An 1805 translation entitled Nikoku kaimeiroku (Record of the Congress between Two Countries) is a case in point. The text that started its complicated career a century earlier as a Jesuit report on the 1689 Russo-Qing border negotiations ended up re-translated (via Dutch and by Rangaku experts including Shizuki Tadao) in Nagasaki in the aftermath of Rezanov's visit. It offered a historical precedent for dealing with northern barbarians who demand trading and diplomatic relations. Circulated in manuscript copies and perused among others by Mitsukuri Genpo or Kawaji Toshiakira, the negotiators of the US and Russia treaties in 1850s, it had a role to play in the mid-century transition.

The translation in the strict sense was supplemented by extensive commentaries that drew on both Dutch and Chinese sources in a critical synthesis that would be difficult to reproduce anywhere else at the time. The text represents a track record of the world of philological and historical scholarship that merged the 'Dutch' and the classical ('Chinese') expertise.

Apart from the canonic classics, numerous Sinitic texts were consulted by the Nagasaki translators, including the Ming and Qing imperial and provincial gazetteers, Longsha jilüe (Survey of the Amur), or the famous Zhifang waiji (Record [of places] outside the [jurisdiction of the] Office of Geography) by the Beijing Jesuit Giulio Aleni, but also historical and contemporary documentaries on the functioning of the Qing imperial government like Qing sanchao shilu or Yanpu zaji and diplomatic and military annals like Pingding Zhunge'er fanglüe (Strategy for pacifying the Dzunghars).

Rather than focus on the import and circulation of any particular Chinese book, however, the paper documents this synergy between the two strands of philological scholarship straddling the supposed 'premodern'-'modern' divide.