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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'.