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Paper short abstract:

The paper introduces family records of the late Tokugawa period in which food and rituals play a significant role. By means of digital tools, the ample material is sorted and visualized to enhance the interpretation of the records’ original creation and purpose for the family.

Paper long abstract:

The paper introduces both the process and the results of collecting records kept by a household in the late Tokugawa period. Rai Shunsui (1746–1816) was able to establish a new household when he came into the employ of the Hiroshima domain as Confucian scholar. This also implied the rise from commoner to warrior status, and it is at this point when record keeping began in earnest.

For this presentation, I limit my focus on the large set of documents that describe the performances of Confucian Family Rites (karei) in the household. These Confucian rites are not commonly practiced in Japan, yet a small group of determined Confucian scholars put them into practice as part of their annual festivities, indicating with the performance their acceptance of Neo-Confucianism. Considering, in particular, the form and content of the more than 400 recorded menus, a manual, hundreds of diary entries, and letters gives us ample opportunity to understand the central function these rituals took in the Rai household. The specific timing—the formation of the domain scholar’s household—indicates the intentions by the household head to present the family in a concrete Confucian setting.

In the presentation I will further address how to document and preserve large data sets by means of digital tools and how they can be used, for instance, for the visualization of historical networks. I explain the feeding of the records that describe who participated in the rites, as well as who got to enjoy the results of the food offering, into the Japan Biographical Database (jbdb.jp), a relational database that manages large amounts of data on social interaction.

With these two approaches of investigating and analyzing the original context of the data of the family records, the presentation aims to offer a better understanding of associateship and consumption in a scholar’s household during the late Tokugawa period. Moreover, we learn through foodstuff, food preparation, procurement, and consumption about the household economy.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the networks established by a filmmaking collective in the early Shōwa period. Data collected in the project improves our understanding of filmmaking in Japan, while the data compiled by the collective itself demonstrates the group's focus on change within their profession.

Paper long abstract:

The “Narutaki group” (Narutaki-gumi) was a group of eight young directors and scriptwriters affiliated with different studios, thus creating an unusual creative network with the Kyoto filmmaking environment. Between 1934 and 1937, they wrote several scripts for jidaigeki (period films) that aimed at redefining the genre and making it relevant to contemporary concerns and aesthetic sensibilities. Straddling not only a threshold between two political systems but also the ground-breaking transition from silents to talkies, the group is part of a crucial piece of Japanese (film) history. Most members continued making films after 1937, influencing the development of Japanese cinema.

The Narutaki-gumi thus provided a nodal point in which the talents and idiosyncrasies of its members converged across industrial lines, interacted, and influenced each other. Furthermore, this network extended beyond the group to include directors and writers working in other genres, but also beyond the film world. In the experimentations with cinema’s potential, the group also interacted with musicians, intellectuals, theorists, and other performing artists.

Many Narutaki scripts were based on popular novels, with the authors collaborating in the scriptwriting, or written for the Zenshin-za progressive kabuki troupe. Archival material reveals their careful recording of worklogs to ensure fair pay based on the hours worked rather than seniority, as well as daily production and postproduction logs with notes for revision as they established new standards within their profession. Digital humanities tools, such as the Japanese Biographical Database, enable us to catalogue, visualize, and trace these networks and, through mutual collaboration and data sharing, also potentially discover new connections and influences. These networks, then and now, I argue, are crucial not only in order to understand the Narutaki-gumi and their films, but also the filmmaking environment of Japan in general.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the compilation process of a Kamakura-period court manual to explore the purposes and mechanism of data collection in the medieval court society. The practice was essential to the survival of the courtiers and served to create networks of knowledge over generations.

Paper long abstract:

In the mid 1230s, the aristocrat Minamoto no Michikata (1189–1239) embarked on a project of compiling a manual of court dress, carts, and saddlery. He collected excerpts from old diaries, including those of his father, Michichika (1149–1202), and Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120–1156), the learned minister who had fallen in battle. He gathered information from earlier manuals, such as one by the renowned poet Fujiwara no Sadaie (1162–1241). He recorded his own observations and inquired of other couriers. Although the project remained incomplete due to his death, the manual, Kazarishō, survived the turbulent medieval period and came to be cherished as a major text for understanding classical court customs. This presentation examines the compilation process of this book to explore the purposes and mechanism of collecting and organizing information related to material, and also immaterial, customs in the medieval court society.

Although efforts to record and maintain or revive court customs were already prevalent in previous centuries, the significance of such projects changed with the bakufu’s defeat of the imperial army in the Jōkyū War (1221). Court titles and offices took on an increasingly hereditary nature, and inherited specialized knowledge came to be indispensable assets of aristocratic households. Compiled in this context, Kazarishō illustrates the efforts of a courtier to gather examples and synthesize knowledge for the next generation. Reflecting his attitude as a curious scholar, Michikata listed the data he gathered from different sources by category with brief notes rather than describing norms as an authority.

From the sixteenth century on Kazarishō was put to new uses as a source cited and copied by scholars seeking to investigate forgotten classical customs. Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) referred to Michikata’s work in his book on court robes, and many daimyo and scholars of the Tokugawa period owned a copy of Kazarishō. Michikata was hardly unique in compiling manuals of customs, but Kazarishō’s rich examples and extensive coverage of topics evidently made it a popular resource. Arguably, one reason it became an essential reference for classical court customs was Michikata’s stance as an energetic investigator rather than an established master.