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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I survey the field of monogatari research (beyond Genji) that first bloomed in the late Edo period. Focusing on the reception of studies by Japanologist Kurokawa Harumura, I explore the mix of continuity and development that marked work on the genre during the crucial Edo-Meiji shift.

Paper long abstract:

A notable development of late Edo-period literary studies is the proliferation of catalogues (mokuroku) dedicated to particular genres of text, each surveyed work within which bore a brief content summary. For the genre of monogatari (tale literature), after Yamaoka Matsuake’s (1726-1780) pioneering Furumonogatari mokuroku (Catalogue of Old monogatari texts), at least seven further such catalogues were produced by Japanologists throughout the Edo period. The chief subject of these catalogues were works known as tsukuri-monogatari, or “fictional tales.” Treatment at this scale announced a break with the prevailing literary tradition, throughout most of which such tsukuri-monogatari had been, if anything, a deprecated genre (excepting, of course, the Tale of Genji). This series of catalogues marked the emergence of tsukuri-monogatari as a worthy subject of research recognition. Nor were these catalogues of a merely memorial function: through their production and circulation, contemporary Japanologists effected a sustained sharing of information that led, not only to the sheer quantitative expansion of the tsukuri-monogatari corpus then available to research, but also to the qualitative deepening and development of tsukuri-monogatari studies as a research field. The activities of such Edo-period scholars reached their peak with the Furumonogatari ruijishō (A Phonetic Glossary of Old monogatari Texts) of Kurokawa Harumura (1799-1867), which summarized and integrated the achievements of his predecessors. This Furumonogatari ruijishō, moreover, was valued and relied upon not only by Harumura’s contemporaries, but also by post-Meiji professional scholars of Japanese literature in the modern mold. Put differently, Furumonogatari ruijishō was not only the summary achievement of Edo-period research on monogatari literature, but served also as the starting-point for subsequent monogatari research in the Meiji period. Harumura’s work stands thus as an important point of juncture, one linking modern to premodern across the Meiji hinge.

In this paper, focusing in particular on the scholastic fate of Furumonogatari ruijishō from Edo into Meiji, I explore the mix of continuity and development that characterized monogatari research in this crucial period. As this reception history mirrors, moreover, the contemporary reception of tsukuri-monogatari texts more generally, through this investigation I also seek to consider the shifting place of that genre itself.