Short Abstract

This panel discusses how knowledge from kanbun sources was used in the development of vernacular language in Heian and medieval Japan, with papers examining educational texts in three distinct areas: collections of sayings, guides to waka poetry, and primers based on the life of the Buddha.

Long Abstract

Recent scholarship on the textual world of Heian and medieval Japan has increasingly acknowledged the close and complex links between kanbun (literary Sinitic) and vernacular fields of literary culture, including the role of language and content from kanbun sources in the creation of vernacular modes of writing. Key questions remain about the precise mechanisms of these connections and how they were formed and reinforced: what kinds of kanbun knowledge were used in the development of vernacular language, and in what ways? How did texts and practices of education shape this process, and how did texts created for literary education transmit and reframe knowledge?

This panel focuses directly on the connections between kanbun scholarship, education, and vernacularization within Heian and medieval literary culture. The three papers examine different contexts for this relationship, spanning academy learning, vernacular poetics, and Buddhist scholarship. The first paper traces how Heian to early medieval collections of kanbun-based sayings and idioms, beginning with Sezoku genbun 世俗諺文, worked to incorporate kanbun knowledge into vernacular language through their selection, adaptation, and glossing of material. The second paper then turns to treatises on waka poetry, comparing how the early twelfth-century works Toshiyori zuinō 俊頼髄脳 and Waka dōmōshō 和歌童蒙抄, both framed as poetic primers, adapt different elements of kanbun sources and scholarship to explain unusual poetic vocabulary. Finally, the third paper considers late Heian to early medieval biographies of the Buddha like Kyōniden 教児伝, which drew on the language of scripture and topical encyclopedias as they taught young students ideas and expressions relevant to Buddhist kanbun. These three topics are linked by a shared focus on the ways that educational texts worked to connect multiple styles of language and promote innovation between them, illustrating the literary and intellectual consequences of a widespread interest in bringing elements of kanbun knowledge to life in the evolving Japanese vernacular.