Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Roman Pașca
(Akita University)
Jan Gerrit Strala (Kinjogakuin University)
Send message to Convenors
- Section:
- Intellectual History and Philosophy
- Sessions:
- Thursday 26 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 26 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Utamaro Kitagawa (1753-1806) Book of Insects of 1788 contains fifteen beautifully engraved plants, insects and reptiles, and poems written by Edo poets. The book was given by the Rangakusha Udagawa Youan as a gift to the German doctor of the Dutch delegation Philipp Franz von Siebold in 1824.
Paper long abstract:
Utamaro Kitagawa (1753-1806) is famous for his wood block engraving of women. Recently in a visit to Leiden, Holland, I was introduced to Utamaro's Book of Insects, 画本虫撰 Ehon mushi erabi. The book contains fifteen beautifully engraved plants, each on two facing pages; two insects or reptiles accurately engraved near those plants and two poems. Those were written by a group of Japanese poets who gathered near the Sumida River in Edo, todays Tokyo. They wrote poems that describe the insects in a humoristic way yet also with the connotation of love songs. Each page carries two poems. "Those comic poems were accepted not only as an entertainment but also as a way to express feelings in the rigid society like the one that existed in Japan in the 18th century". Those Japanese poems were written in cursive fonts and rewritten using 20th century fonts are studied, including their French Livre des Insectes and English Songs of the Garden translations, both published in 1984. Hebrew translation is currently underway.
The original book in two volumes in Leiden includes a dedication written in Dutch by the Japanese Dutch Studies scholar Udagawa Youan (1798-1846) to Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), the German physician, doctor of the Dutch trade delegation in Deshima Island. Why did Udagawa Youan chose Utamaro's 1788 book as a gift to Von Siebold in 1824? It might be that Youan's study and drawing of plants, including in his [Album of Plant Drawings by Youan, The Yoan Shokubutsu Shazei Zufu] have attracted him to Utamaro's plants drawings. Von Siebold's inscriptions on some of Youan's drawings are also studied: On what circumstances, where and when were it included in Youan's drawings. The artistic works, poetry, and the connection between those three scholars will be presented.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Dr. Daan Kok, curator of Japan and Korea at the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden for fruitful discussion
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the discourse on urban planning by the military expert and Confucian scholar, Yamaga Sokō (1622-85). It contributes to the wider question of the normative ideas and their conceptual foundation which shaped discourses about urban government in early modern Japan.
Paper long abstract:
The Tokugawa period (1600-1868) is considered to be the most urbanized period in premodern Japanese history. For the ruling warriors, the urban space of the castle towns constituted a field of political activity that challenged traditional notions of government and at the same time initiated new governing practices. My paper discusses the response of contemporary political philosophy to the challenges of urban government.
The name closely associated with the subject of urban government is that of the eighteenth century Confucian scholar, Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728). In his treatise, "Talks about Government" (Seidan, 1726-7), the author criticized the negative impact of urban life on the moral behavior of Edo's inhabitants. Because Sorai thought of the city as endangering the political and economic foundation of the Tokugawa state, his reform proposal showed a strong anti-urban tendency. In contrast to Sorai's famous treatise, the subject of urban government in the political thought of the seventeenth century has received almost no attention, namely in the writings of the Confucian scholar and military expert Yamaga Sokō (1622-85). The latter is considered to be a main exponent of the neoclassical movement in the Tokugawa period Confucianism because of his criticism of Neo-Confucianism and his adaption of Confucian doctrines to Tokugawa period society. However, despite the general recognition of Sokō's position in the intellectual history of the Tokugawa period, Sokō's discourse on urban government has received almost no attention.
In this paper I argue that instead of constituting a naturally given or value-free entity, urban space in Sokō's discourse is conceptualized through central motifs occuring in the literature associated with the classical tradition of Chinese Confucianism. In order to define Sokō's notion of the city, it analyzes the topics and concepts in regard to each element of the city layout, he proposes in his major work, "The Analects of Yamaga Grouped [by Subject]" (Yamaga gorui, 1665). Where possible, concepts are traced back to their original source in order to define the normative framework of Sokō's discourse. The paper contributes to the wider question of the normative ideas and their conceptual foundation which shaped discourses about urban government from Sokō to Sorai and beyond.
Paper short abstract:
A newly discovered manuscript of the Jesuits' Compendia in Japanese (ca. 1595) is introduced, the first to comprise besides the parts on philosophy and theology also that on Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology. To be discussed are the transmission and adaptation of the text as well as its authorship.
Paper long abstract:
The so-called Compendia (1593) attributed to Pedro Gómez (1533/35-1600) - i.e. the texts laying the foundation of Jesuit education in the colleges in Japan and Macao for more than two decades - are valued as "the first substantial work that directly introduced Western science, philosophy and theology into Japan" (Hiraoka 2015: 126). The original Latin version has been preserved almost in full in a single manuscript. Its translation into Japanese (ca. 1595), however, has hitherto only been known in an incomplete copy. Crucially for this key text in the intellectual history of 16c to 17c Japan as well as the study of the circulation of knowledge, the Magdalen College manuscript covers the parts on philosophy (following Aristotle's De Anima) and theology, but it lacks the entire cosmological part. "De Sphaera", as the latter in its Latin version is commonly referred to, introduces the geocentric model and the theory of four elements in the tradition of Aristotle and Ptolemy, but also discusses meterological phenomena for instance.
The aim of the present paper is first to introduce a newly discovered manuscript of the Compendia's Japanese translation, comprising all three parts. Whereas scholarship up to now had to rely on the later Nigi ryakusetsu (A Brief Discussion on the Celestial and Terrestrial Worlds) and related writings to catch a glimpse of "De Sphaera" in its Japanese version, even if heavily revised and as it were de-christianized, it is possible for the first time now to study and contrast the original Latin version, Nigi ryakusetsu and the Jesuits' Japanese translation "Sufera-no nukigaki" (Selections on the Sphere) as the hitherto missing link in between the other two. Doing so will shed light on the process of how "De Sphaera", whose cosmology is inextricably interwoven with Christian thought, was first translated in a Jesuit context, and eventually de-christianized in its later transmission via Nigi ryakusetsu.
Finally we will address the question of authorship. While "De Sphaera" has been almost universally been treated as the work of Gómez without substantial evidence to that effect, the newly discovered manuscript calls for a revision of that view.