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Paper short abstract

This paper considers why Edo-period Confucian scholars of humble birth composed Sinitic prose that imitated Japanese and Chinese imperial examination questions and answers. Emulating ancient aristocratic cultures enabled these scholars to imagine themselves as qualified for government service.

Paper long abstract

Unlike other polities in Sinographic Asia, Japan never implemented a civil service examination system. The examinations sponsored by the Heian court and the Tokugawa shogunate were open only to men from aristocratic and samurai families, respectively. For Edo-period Confucian scholars, there was no officially recognized channel for pursuing active roles in government. Against this backdrop, Confucian scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Hayashi Razan, Hayashi Gahō, Hitomi Chikudō, Itō Jinsai, Itō Tōgai, and Ogyū Sorai, composed Sinitic prose pieces titled “imitations of examination responses” (gi taisaku) or “unofficial imitations of examination questions” (shigi sakumon). This paper examines a selection of these works to consider how aristocratic cultures of the ancient Japanese and Chinese imperial courts served as sources of inspiration for Edo-period scholars.

These imitations of examination questions and answers emulated the imperial examinations administered to select men from aristocratic families for positions in government at the Heian and Han courts in ancient Japan and China. Like many other imitative works of Sinitic literature, imitations of imperial examinations gave imitators the opportunity to express their own thoughts while also allowing them to see themselves in the likeness of the authors whose works they imitated. While Edo-period imitations of imperial examinations show varying degrees of exactitude in how they reproduced Heian or Han styles of Sinitic writing, they enabled Edo-period Confucian scholars of humble origins to imagine themselves as being candidates for government positions at an imperial court and to practice writing Sinitic prose that discussed the Confucian classics or matters related to governance with a strong sense, albeit simulated, of urgency and purpose. Emulating remnants of ancient aristocratic cultures allowed these scholars to model themselves after, and to see themselves as, intellectuals capable of serving a sovereign if given the chance. In Tokugawa Japan, in the absence of an official examination system, imitating ancient court cultures offered non-aristocratic and non-samurai individuals a means of viewing and styling themselves as scholars qualified for government service.