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Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the issue of the conflict between the restriction on proselytism contained in the Sōniryō and the necessity of propagating Buddhism for all creatures as exposed in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, and the attempts to reconcile this conflict as emerging in literary and historical sources.

Paper long abstract:

In Ancient Japan, Buddhism was regulated by the Sōniryō (Law on Monks and Nuns, 718), a law modeled on the Tang-period Daosengge (Regulations for the Taoist and Buddhist Clergy, 637), and aimed at managing state events and protecting the state through rituals. Monks were official priests who had received official ordination and could not merge with common people. We find this thought also in the famous preface to a poem by monk Dōji (?–744) collected in the Kaifūsō (Collection of Fond Remembrance of the Past, 751), who declines Prince Nagaya’s invitation to a banquet, because Buddhist monks should not meddle in secular affairs: in fact, the values of the Buddhist clergy, who had renounced the world, and those of worldly people differ completely. However, the ordained Buddhist monks faced the contradiction between the state Buddhism regulated by the Sōniryō and the Buddhist doctrine aiming to bring salvation to all creatures.

The politics of ancient Japan tried to overcome this contradiction: in the Shoku Nihongi (Annals of Japan. Continued, 797), a communication for the monks issued in 718 by the Council of State encouraged the study and practice of Buddhism inside the monastic institutions and in conformity with the Sōniryō; however, as for the groups that “beg and propagate” Buddhism privately, such as the Gyōki (668–749)’s one, the practice of begging could be accepted because “one’s heart follows the softening of the light.” The phrase “softening of the light” refers to the wakōdōjin (lit. “softening the light and becoming one with the dust”), a doctrine, incorporated from the Laozi into early Chinese Buddhism, and widely known also in Japan through the Yuimagyō gisho (Commentaries to the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, 613) and other Tendai-related texts, all leading to honji-suijaku medieval theory.

In this paper, taking into account rules, precepts, and monks’ biographies, such as the Enryaku sōroku (Records of Monks until the Enryaku Era, ca. 788), I will show how ancient Japan tried to balance the restrictions on proselytism contained in the Sōniryō and the necessity of propagating Buddhism outside the state system.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to compare the attitudes towards ritsuryô ideals displayed in two poetry collections, the Man’yōshū and the Kaifūsō, that echo the vision of power and learning promoted by the Codes, notably by the Shiki'inryō and the Gakuryō, while maintaining a critical distance.

Paper long abstract:

The epochal synthesis by Takikawa Masajirō (1970s) has demonstrated how the knowledge of ritsuryō could help researchers interpret the Man’yōshū, to the lives and duties of civil servants. This has opened up new avenues for research within a field that had previously shown very little interest in legal concerns, deemed extraneous to literature. It is now widely accepted that knowledge of ritsuryō is an indispensable tool of Man’yōshū scholarship and, to a lesser extent, of Kaifūsō (Collection of Fond Remembrance of the Past) scholarship.

The ritsuryō seems in some cases to have been more than a reference: as Kuranaka Shinobu has pointed out for officials’ biographies and poems by Yamanoue no Okura, the ritsuryō ideals had sometimes a foundational function for the identities of authors and could act as the driving force propelling their literary creations. The maximal degree of overlap between scholars, civil servants, and poets was in this sense attained later, in the court of Saga (809–823).

On the whole, however, neither the Man’yōshū nor the Kaifūsō can be said to represent a posture of complete identification with the ritsuryō. The latter one, whose preface otherwise celebrates the promulgation of a code of law by Prince Shōtoku, contains a very limited number of allusions to ritsuryō specialists (such as Yamato no Nagaoka, the addressee of a letter by Umakai) and the references to codes are shockingly lacking in passages emphasizing the political achievements of Monmu and Fujiwara no Fuhito. Regarding the Man’yōshū, it seems that the attitude of close adherence to ritsuryō ideals represents only a single streak within the wider context of an anthology that displays a vision of power that revolves around clans and pre-ritsuryō conceptions of rulership. In my paper, I shall explore the negotiations with the ideals of the ritsuryō system at play in both anthologies, more specifically with those expressed in the Shiki’inryō (for the Man’yōshū) and the Gakuryō (for the Kaifūsō) and seek to determine from what point of view the various stances are formulated.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the Chinese preface to four poems in Man’yōshū, Book 18, where Ōtomo no Yakamochi, embodying the Confucian bureaucrat respectful of laws, discusses the laws on divorce as an admonishment against one subordinate who had decided to repudiate his wife to marry a local courtesan.

Paper long abstract:

Book 18 of the Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Leaves, post 759) contains four poems (one chōka and three tanka) dating back to the first year of the Tenpyō Kanpō era (749), composed by Ōtomo no Yakamochi (718?–785), who in that year was Governor of Etchū province (now Toyama prefecture). The four poems, numbered 4106 to 4110 in the Shōgakukan edition (1996), are introduced by a preface which, explaining the reason for the composition, actually constitutes an admonishment by Yakamochi against one of his subordinates, Owari no Okui (?–?), secretary at the Governorate. Entered into a relationship with a local courtesan, Okui had decided to marry her after repudiating his wife. The essentially “technical” content of the preface, in which Yakamochi mentions the legislation of the time in matters of divorce in both its penal and administrative aspects, represents the only example of my knowledge that brings a subject of legal matter into a literary source of the ancient period. In his preface, Yakamochi combines jurisprudence with poetry, expressing his personal and official point of view on the subject, and suggesting that literary anthologies can also furnish matters of political, philosophical, and ethical relevance. As a matter of fact, Yakamochi quotes the Koryō (Law on the Households), articles 27 and 28, and, moreover, he refers to penal laws and sovereign’s edicts in order to dissuade Okui from taking illegal action. Through this preface, we see that in matters of divorce Yakamochi is completely respectful of the spirit of Chinese laws, which he does not question: on the contrary, he tries to make them more severe. From this point of view, he perfectly embodies the figure of the Confucian bureaucrat, remaining consistent, even when expressed in poetry, with the principle according to which virtues must be public but vices private, or in any case clearly separated from the official dimension.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the erudition of the scholar-official Minamoto no Shitagō, in which legal knowledge, lexicography, and literary production merge together, as exemplified by the Minamoto no Shitagō no uma no ke no na utaawase.

Paper long abstract:

The Minamoto no Shitagō no uma no ke no na utaawase (Poetry Contest on Horse Coat Names, 966) is a fictitious ten-round poetry contest putting imaginary poets of the left and of the right against each other on the theme of horse coat colors. The work follows the canonical rules of poetic competitions (utaawase), but it also recalls the tradition of horse races (kurabeuma), where riders are divided into two matched teams and compete one-on-one. Actually, the text is nothing more than an example of linguistic fun by Minamoto no Shitagō (911-984), a state official, distinguished scholar, and poet of the mid-Heian period.

In the Uma no ke no na no utaawase, Shitagō uses as kakekotoba many coat-color terms which can be found as vernacular equivalents to Sinitic terms in the section on "Bovine and Equine Coats" of the Wamyōruijushō (Classified Notes on Japanese Nouns, 933 ca.), the Sino-Japanese encyclopedic dictionary compiled by the same Shitagō when he was young. Conversely, Shitagō excerpts these vernacular terms from other previous Nara-period dictionaries used by low-rank officials, such as the Yōshi kangoshō (Notes on Chinese Words by Master Yako, 918 ca.) or the Benshiki rissei (Compendium of Classifications, 720 ca.). These vernacular terms are rarely attested in poetry but can be extensively found in several types of official documents (on wooden tablet or on paper) written down in Sinitic. Registering coat colors of horses in official documents is required by some articles in the Kūjikiryō (Law on Official Documents) and in the Kyūmokuryō (Law on Pastures and Stables), respectively sections 21 and 23 of the Yōrōryō (Administrative Code of the Yōrō Era, 718).

In this paper, after some notes on the textual transmission of the work, I will show how Shitagō's vast erudition, ranging from law to lexicography, was merged and conveyed into poetry, and how this can be regarded as an example of an intersection between legal background, technical knowledge, and literary production that go back to the Nara-period erudition.