Paper short abstract:

Among the works of Nagasaki scholar Nishikawa Joken popular in mid-Edo Japan, two books on celestial, terrestrial and human anomalies exemplify prevailing trends to classify and rationalize strange phenomena. In these, he promotes the theory of yunqi against divinatory practices.

Paper long abstract:

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, there was a burgeoning market in Japan for a wide range of publications, from popular novels to technical guidebooks and general compendia. Nagasaki was a major port for obtaining knowledge from abroad, and books by local scholar Nishikawa Joken 西川如見 (1648-1724) on geography and cosmology enjoyed considerable success. Joken wrote two compilations on aberrations and anomalies, Kaii bendan 怪異辨斷 and Kaii ruisan 怪異類纂. While there is a considerable number of extant printed copies of the former, the latter survives in a single manuscript copy. Kaii bendan concerns celestial and terrestrial anomalies such as eclipses and earthquakes, and Kaii ruisan is a compendium of human anomalies that range from mysterious diseases to sorcery and resurrection. They together encompass the Sinitic epistemological categorization of cosmological phenomena into the "three powers" (sansai 三才) of heaven, earth and human.

In both books, Joken compiles knowledge of mostly official historical records and compares them in order to distinguish right from wrong. He establishes authority in the same way as other compilers, upholding a knowledge hierarchy that starts with ancient Chinese sources. The central idea of Joken's discourse is to "dispel the confusion of the ignorant," a recurrent theme in such compendia during the mid-Edo period. One feature that sets him apart is the emphasis on observation and testing, and his reliance on the theory of yunqi 運氣 derived from Song dynasty medical thought. His works can be interpreted as a self-styled antidote to the prevalent mantic practices of the "yin and yang masters" (on'yōka 陰陽家). Joken inverts the dynamics of prognostication by claiming that it is not aberrations and anomalies that cause disasters, but rather the spirit of the people being agitated by such prophecies. His solution is a textual one, collating various sources about similar strange phenomena to verify or falsify the predicted results. From Joken's works, one can catch a glimpse of different modes of rationality in mid-Edo Japan, which are also manifested in the encyclopedic Wakan sansai zue 和漢三才圖會 and Kaibara Ekiken's Yamato honzō 大和本草.