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- Convenors:
-
Yoshitaka Yamamoto
(National Institute of Japanese Literature)
Jennifer Guest (University of Oxford)
Kimiko Kōno (Waseda University)
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- Discussant:
-
Matthew Fraleigh
(Brandeis University)
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 25 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel will examine how classical Chinese texts produced and/or compiled in Heian-period Japan were remembered, studied, and disseminated in later periods, and consider the ways in which those texts helped shape new cultural, literary, and intellectual trends in medieval and early modern Japan.
Long Abstract:
Existing scholarship on premodern Japan has tended to focus on the reception of imported classical Chinese texts originating in China, Korea, and Ryukyu more frequently than on the domestic transmission of "homegrown" classical Chinese texts produced in Japan. This panel will examine how classical Chinese texts produced and/or compiled in Heian-period Japan (794-1185) were remembered, studied, and disseminated by Japanese scholars in later periods, and consider the ways in which those texts helped shape new cultural, literary, and intellectual trends that emerged in medieval and early modern Japan (1185-1868). The ultimate goal of the panel will be to reevaluate the importance of domestically produced classical Chinese texts in the literary and cultural history of premodern Japan, and to investigate the impact that such texts had on the ways in which other texts were read or new texts were created.
Three presenters, all of whom specialize in premodern Japanese literature written in classical Chinese albeit with different areas of focus, will explore specific groups of texts and their afterlives: classical Chinese poetry by Heian-period poets such as Kūkai (774-835) and Sugawara no Michizane (845-903); the eleventh-century anthology Wakan rōeishū (Japanese and Chinese-style Chanting Collection); and records of classical Chinese poetry gatherings sponsored by the emperor at the Heian court. Each presenter will trace how these texts were preserved and handed down to later generations, and elucidate what the acts of copying, printing, or emulating such texts meant to literary and scholarly communities at certain moments in history, particularly as catalysts of cultural renewal and reinvigoration. The discussant, a specialist on Sinitic literature of modern Japan, will comment on the overall panel by drawing comparisons to how classical Chinese texts were read, studied, and created in Japan after the Meiji Restoration.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 25 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will focus on Honchō ichinin isshu (One Poem Each by Poets of Our Court, prefaced 1660), an anthology of Japanese kanshi compiled and annotated by Hayashi Gahō, a leading Confucian scholar of the early Edo period, and examine Gahō's attitude toward Heian-period kanshi.
Paper long abstract:
In the Edo period, several anthologies were compiled and published with the aim of providing comprehensive collections of kanshibun (Chinese prose and poetry) that had been written in Japan. This paper will focus on Honchō ichinin isshu (One Poem Each by Poets of Our Court, prefaced 1660), a pioneering anthology compiled and annotated by Hayashi Gahō, a Confucian scholar in service of the bakufu and a leading intellectual of early Edo, and examine Gahō's attitude toward Heian-period kanshi.
In Honchō ichinin isshu, Gahō writes that after the Hōgen and Heiji Rebellions of 1156 and 1159, governance by benevolent rulers went into decline and people with literary talent disappeared. It is no coincidence that of the approximately 480 kanshi in the anthology, covering a millennium from the seventh to seventeenth centuries, the majority date from the Heian period. Gahō selected the poems based on various criteria, including the subject matter and poetic form. What is noteworthy is that the kanshi he picked out from the works of representative Heian poets such as Kūkai and Sugawara no Michizane all concern exchanges with Tang and Balhae, and he also repeatedly gives praise to Michizane's family of scholars, who helped uphold their family tradition as experts on kidendō (history and literature). This was likely a reflection of how deeply committed Gahō and other scholars of the Hayashi family were to literary exchanges with Joseon diplomatic missions and to the transmission and advancement of their family's scholarly expertise.
The content of Honchō ichinin isshu is also closely tied to Honchō tsugan (A Comprehensive Mirror of Our Court), Gahō's main work that he compiled concurrently, as well as his own kanshibun. This paper will examine Gahō's intentions in compiling this Heian-centred anthology in relation to his other works, the position of the Hayashi family, and the scholarly and cultural milieu of the early Edo period. Finally, the paper will touch on how Honchō ichinin isshu and its new attention to Heian kanshibun influenced other Edo-period authors and scholars of classical Chinese poetry and prose.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine the poetic vocabulary and imagery Hayashi Gahō and his colleagues employed to imitate and glorify the Heian period in their kanshi composed in 1666, and attempt to explain how Edo-period antiquarianism developed in its early stages.
Paper long abstract:
The Edo period may be understood as a golden age of antiquarianism. Whether in Confucianism, medicine, or National Learning, a number of scholars sought to look beyond the biases of later generations to gain a more accurate view of antiquity. Emperors attempted to reenact ancient rituals and architecture, while literati became obsessed with ancient texts and objects. This paper will attempt to shed light on how this wave of interest in things of the past arose.
In 1666, Hayashi Gahō and fellow compilers of Honchō tsugan (A Comprehensive Mirror of Our Court), a bakufu-sponsored history of Japan, imitated a Heian-period court kanshi (classical Chinese poetry) gathering called "naien" (private banquet). The resulting 28 kanshi were supposedly first collected in a manuscript titled "Gi naien shikan" (A Volume of Classical Chinese Poems in Imitation of a Private Banquet). As Shūta Miyazaki has pointed out, these imitative poems reflected Gahō and his colleagues' adoration for the Heian period, which they saw as an unprecedented era of cultural sophistication and stable governance. Their poetic gathering can be considered as one early example of Edo-period antiquarianism.
This paper will examine the poetic vocabulary and imagery Gahō and his colleagues employed in their kanshi to glorify antiquity, i.e. the Heian period. Gahō's group used expressions and tropes found in the writings of the Heian-period nobility, as well as those commonly used by non-aristocratic poets of the Muromachi and early Edo periods. Their poems were thus in fact a mishmash of ancient and contemporary styles, since the kind of antiquarianism they practiced seemed to place an emphasis on melding together antiquity and the present, rather than excavating a "pure" form of antiquity. In turn, later generations of eighteenth-century scholars adopted a more draconian approach in their antiquarian projects, and rejected Heian-period kanshi, kanbun (classical Chinese prose), and Confucianism as lacking in rigor. Gahō and his contemporaries' pioneering antiquarianism may have served as both an inspiration and a negative example, driving the later generations to discover new, different ways of studying and perceiving antiquity.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how the eleventh-century anthology Wakan rōeishū (Japanese and Chinese-style Chanting Collection) and its medieval commentary tradition were reworked into calligraphic and literary models for early modern readers.
Paper long abstract:
The eleventh-century anthology Wakan rōeishū (和漢朗詠集, Japanese and Chinese-style Chanting Collection) was a key resource for premodern literary education; its single encyclopaedic arrangement of both Chinese-style couplets and Japanese waka made it a sourcebook for poetic and calligraphic training across varied styles of literary language. This paper considers how the flourishing medieval culture of lectures, written commentaries, and manuscript copying surrounding this anthology was inherited and adapted by early modern scholars as audiences grew and changed in the age of print.
The multifaceted nature of the Wakan rōeishū let scholars adapt it readily to a variety of aims: from Kitamura Kigin's 1671 commentary, which offered contemporary poets full annotations for the waka alongside a condensed and updated version of a medieval kanshi commentary, to an eighteenth-century visual commentary with illustrations in the top margin representing key poetic words and phrases, to nineteenth-century editions that reframed the anthology in a scholarly format customarily used for 'Chinese classics'. Changes in publishing format and commentarial approach had the power to promote different aspects of this multipurpose anthology. Was the Wakan rōeishū to be read as a traditional work of Chinese studies scholarship, as a glimpse into an idealized Heian golden age of court literature, or as a sourcebook for contemporary waka or haikai composition? Or was its primary value as a calligraphic copybook, to be retraced by hand and appreciated for its varied visual styles? To what extent did these functions conflict with or reinforce each other? By surveying several different incarnations of the Wakan rōeishū and considering specific circulating copies with patterns of wear and practice strokes in the margins, this paper takes a first exploratory look at how early modern audiences used this anthology within their everyday lives as readers and writers.