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- Convenor:
-
Margarita Winkel
(Humanities-Leiden University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Bettina Gramlich-Oka
(Sophia University)
- Section:
- History
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 25 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Evidence-based scholarship flourished in late Tokugawa Japan and brought together researchers from various social backgrounds. This panel looks at how people collected, investigated, and shared objects and knowledge, and how they came to identify 'Japan' as a locus of culture and tradition.
Long Abstract:
Evidence-based forms of scholarship in which artifacts became the central focus of research flourished in late Tokugawa Japan. The topics of interest include antiquarian and historical studies, as well as natural history and geography. Our contention is that such evidential studies about natural objects and artifacts materially expanded in scope and subject in the early nineteenth century. Well-known examples are nationwide projects to record local and historical traditions carried out at the order of the shogunal councilor Matsudaira Sadanobu (1759-1829). This development in fact drew from diverse scholarly lineages, including Confucian evidential scholarship, studies of court practices (kojitsu), and Dutch studies. It also extended to the examination of popular everyday objects and rural life. Fact-finding was not tied to established schools or academies and therefore functioned as a force that brought together interested researchers from various social backgrounds. Through case studies of such diverse scholarly activities, this panel looks at the actual process of how people collected, investigated, and shared objects and knowledge, and how through this process they increasingly, came to identify 'Japan' as a locus of culture and tradition.
The first paper focuses on two generations of scholars of samurai background, Matsuoka Tokikata (1764-1840) and Yukiyoshi (1794-1848), to explore how the rise of transdisciplinary and evidential scholarship transformed the study of "authentic" practices (kojitsu) and encouraged the integration of warrior and aristocratic traditions.
The second paper centres on a scholar of lower samurai rank, Ōta Nanpo (1749-1823), who established a scholarly society which included members from diverse social backgrounds to study items of material culture from the last two-hundred years. The records of this society show that inspiration for his scholarship was his contacts with both buke kojitsu scholars and commoners.
The third paper looks into a collection of "raw" data brought together by Ōta Nanpo. The document reveals a growing interest in the contemporary world besides historical court traditions. Inspired by various collectors, including local merchants and doctors, the topics include descriptions and detailed illustrations of exotic objects, botanical and animal specimen alongside court antiquarian artifacts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 25 August, 2021, -Maki Nakai (Meiji University)
Paper short abstract:
Antiquarianism and evidential scholarship in the Edo period encouraged outsiders to invest in border-crossing research of customs. Matsuoka Tokikata and his son Yukiyoshi mastered the practices of both royal and shogunal courts and sought to propagate an "authentic" integrated tradition.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how the rise of antiquarianism and evidential scholarship at the turn of the nineteenth century brought a new orientation to the study of manners and customs (kojitsu) that blurred the borders of different societal groups and arguably promoted the redefinition and integration of "Japanese" traditions. It addresses these issues through an exploration of the activities of Matsuoka Tokikata (1764-1840) and his son Yukiyoshi (1794-1848).
The manners and customs of courts, both royal and shogunal, were a natural subject of study for those who were born into them. Yet, outsiders like Tokikata, the son of a ronin living in Edo, contributed significantly to the development of a new level of comprehensive and systematic research into court traditions. Tokikata studied under the famous blind scholar Hanawa Hokiichi (1746-1821) and assisted with the publication of Gunsho ruijū, Hokiichi's far-ranging collection of texts. Interested in antiquity and court customs, Tokikata also became a disciple of the Ise school of warrior manners as well as the Takakura school of royal court apparel. Influenced by the rapid spread of antiquarianism and evidential investigation, he cherished firsthand experience, production, and practice.
Tokikata's son Yukiyoshi took part in this enterprise from a young age. In 1812, five years after entering the Takakura school at age 14, Yukiyoshi spent a year in Kyoto, energetically visiting palaces and temples, joining various circles, and learning firsthand the customs of the royal court. Encouraged by Emperor Kōkaku (r. 1780-1817), the capital had become the venue for a classical revival, including the use of evidential research to reconstruct the imperial palace in the Heian style during the 1790s. Yukiyoshi, who would later criticize earlier kojitsu scholarship as being based only on paper knowledge, frequently reported to his father what he had learned. Their detailed exchanges illustrate how father and son developed human and knowledge networks, acquired objects and books, and absorbed the court tradition as their own. Through these activities they developed a new sense of "authentic" practices that integrated court and warrior customs and which they went on to propagate to others.
Fumiko Kobayashi (Hosei University)
Paper short abstract:
Ōta Nanpo shared an interest in old everyday items at meetings with others, probably inspired by senior scholars of samurai practices. In line with contemporary projects seeking 'traditions' defining Japan, his interest in popular history expanded the intellectual scope of the time.
Paper long abstract:
Ōta Nanpo (1749-1823), an outstanding literatus in Edo who also served the Shogunate as a lower ranking samurai, is known for his wide-ranging intellectual activities. Apart from his comic verse and prose, which made him famous, he was one of the figures who led the trend for intellectual inquiry into 'old things', namely various trivial artefacts, as a source of information about recent popular history. Such antiquarian interests among literati, scholars and writers in early nineteenth-century Edo has been interpreted as influenced by Confucian evidential research of the day introduced from Qing China. However, this paper argues that they also drew from other forms of earlier scholarship, in particular that on court practices.
At monthly meetings named Unchakai in the 1810s, Nanpo and his colleagues, including townsmen such as the popular writer Santō Kyōden (1761-1816), discussed and studied artefacts such as toys and props for stages, theatre bills and other trivial publications made in the preceding 200 years. His records of the meetings, included in his voluminous miscellany titled Ichiwa ichigen, suggest that the participants were attracted to objects related to the daily lives and amusements of commoners in earlier times. This interest was apparently inspired by senior scholars including the hatamoto Sena Sadao (1719-1796), whom Nanpo respected and had worked with in research on the historical geography of the city of Edo. Sena was among the earlier scholars of buke manners and customs (kojitsu), mostly relatively higher-ranking samurai (hatamoto), who not only engaged in traditional scholarship but also developed an interest in previously overlooked items from the daily lives of commoners in older times.
These kinds of contacts show that Nanpo's study of popular history was not a coincidence but rather a part of a trend of the day shared by intellectuals of diverse background. It also reveals the multifaceted character of the pursuit of 'Japanese tradition'.
Margarita Winkel (Humanities-Leiden University)
Paper short abstract:
Antiquarian and other data as building blocks in evidential scholarship were exchanged, appeared in books and changed meaning in the course of their scholarly existence. A ms. collection of 'raw' data from late 18th/early 19th century shows the breadth and scope of topics and practitioners.
Paper long abstract:
Ryūkan Hyakuzu, a manuscript with 'raw' data on various items of material culture basically from the late 18th and early 19th centuries collected by Ōta Nanpo (1749-1823), is the point of departure here to look into the way data collection and exchange actually worked and what topics were considered worthy of collecting. Nanpo's ten scrolls contain a wide array of items, from historical to contemporary, and from Japanese to exotic. It includes elaborate pictures and comments on historic specimen of samurai armour and horse-gear, as well as a detailed description of 'Dutch' (European) horse saddles and bridles for example. Besides this interest in horsemanship that relates to traditional court interests, the collection shows Nanpo's apparent interest in animals, and includes detailed descriptions and graphic representations of imported exotic animals, donkeys for example, as well as of more familiar but still remote animals such as seals from Hokkaido. Then it also contains a detailed and graphic description of deer and wild boar as found in explications of (samurai) hunting records in pre-Tokugawa manuscripts. The sources for his exotic topics include his own stay in Nagasaki and his contacts with members of the Chinese delegation, but also his exchange with Japanese rangaku (Dutch studies) scholars. Antiquarian and historical objects owned by temples and private owners represent another important topic in this collection. A major source of inspiration in this respect was high-ranking Matsudaira Sadanobu's antiquarian collection Shūko jisshu (1800), part of a larger project on collecting and preserving court information and traditions. This wider interest in local traditions also reveals an increasing awareness of rural traditions and history and the discovery of rural Japan. Through object history of case studies, this presentation reviews how 'raw' data were exchanged, appeared in books and changed meaning in the course of their scholarly existence and how topics of interests were informed by new developments in travel, infrastructure, and new forms of foreign scholarship, Chinese as well as European, but also kept a strong tie with earlier practices developed in court scholarship.