Peter F. Kornicki

The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century

This study deals with all aspects of the history of the book in Japan, from the production of manuscripts and printed books to book-collecting, libraries, censorship and readership. It also sets books in the context of Japans cultural ties with China, Korea and Parhae. The focus is on the history of both texts and physical books. This encompasses not only books in Japanese but also books in Chinese by Chinese and Korean authors, and some Western books as well. It is an essential reference tool and bibliographic guide for all those interested in book studies, and particularly of importance for historians of Japanese culture. It is illustrated with examples taken from various collections of early Japanese books in Europe.

Manuscript, not Print: Scribal Culture in the Edo Period

In the early seventeenth century, printing underwent a rapid transformation in Japan in the hands of commercial publishers. However, print did not spell the end of scribal traditions and manuscripts continued to be produced in quantity, in order to preserve knowledge, to circulate news or local history, and to disseminate forms of writing that could not be printed for reasons of censorship. Among these were fictional works, known as jitsuroku, which were based on political scandals and vendettas. Using Keian taiheiki as an example, this article demonstrates that such manuscripts circulated widely even among rural cultivators.

Religion in Japan : arrows to heaven and earth

1. Notes on the kuji David Waterhouse 2. The worship of Confucius in ancient Japan James McMullen 3. An early anthropologist? Oe no Masafusas A record of fox spirits Ivo Smits 4. Religion in the life of Minamoto Yoritomo and the early Kamakura bakufu Martin Collcutt 5. Rethinking Japanese folk religion: a study of Kumano Shugen Miyake Hitoshi 6. Keeping the faith: bakuhan policy towards religions in seventeenth-century Japan Peter Nosco 7. Heavenly affinities and discrepancies: Fr Leturdus early ethnographic account of Okinawa (1846-8) Patrick Beillevaire 8. Accommodating the alien: Okuni Takamasa and the religion of the Lord of Heaven John Breen 9. Shinmeiaishinkai and the study of shamanism in contemporary Japanese religious life Helen Hardacre 10. The Ainu iyomande and its evolution Fosco Maraini 11. Mizuko kuyo: the re-production of the dead in contemporary Japan Elizabeth G. Harrison 12. Pilgrimage as cult: the Shikoku pilgrimage as a window on Japanese religion Ian Reader 13. The sacred power of wrapping Joy Hendry.

Unsuitable Books for Women?: Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan

He would like to express his thanks to Professor Hayakawa Monta 早川門多 for palaeographic assistance; to Dr. T. J. Harper for making available his unpublished translation of an excerpt from Seji hyakudan 世事百談; to Professor Toshio Yokoyama 横山俊夫 for making available photocopies of material in Kyoto University Library; and to Richard Bowring, Tom Harper, James McMullen, Joshua Mostow, Francesca Orsini, Gaye Rowley, and the anonymous readers for incisive and invaluable comments on earlier versions. 1 Pliny 1969, pp. 36, 40, 62 (letters 1.2, 1.8, 2.5); on Zhu Xi, see Gardner 1990, pp. 21–22, 139–40; on Wilkie Collins and his contemporaries, see Brantlinger 1998, esp. pp. 17–21. 2 On the pros and cons of using this term, and doubts about its suitability for use in the context of Japan, see the introduction to Ko et al. 2003. Unsuitable Books for Women?

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan

Preface Notes to the reader Glossary and abbreviations 1. Periods in Japanese and Chinese history 2. Geography 3. History 4. Language and literature 5. Thought and religion 6. Arts and crafts 7. Society 8. Politics 9. The economy Acknowledgements List of maps Index.

The Enmeiin affair of 1803 : the spread of information in the Tokugawa Period

IT IS a commonplace in the cultural history of Japan that the commercial publisher came into his own in the Tokugawa period and made as if to replace the manuscript with the printed book. But notwithstanding the spread of the printed word, manuscript traditions survived and throughout the Tokugawa period a large number of works circulated only in the form of shahon X, (manuscript books). Some were simply manuscript copies of printed works, and others recorded the minutiae of tea ceremony practices and similar esoteric traditions. There was also a considerable body of works dealing with matters too indiscreet to be published and these are variously referred to as jitsuroku(mono) _t or jitsuroku-tai shosetsu A JJ<N. Their basis was generally in the facts of contemporary scandal and other notable events, as the terms imply, and to this element their usually anonymous authors were commonly disposed to add a good measure of fiction. In view of the censorship legislation in force for much of the Tokugawa period, it was futile to think of

Narrative of a catastrophe: Musashi abumi and the Meireki fire

Abstract Asai Ryōis Musashi abumi (1661) deals with the catastrophic fire that devastated Edo in 1657. Interest has hitherto centred on the degree to which it is a factual record, but this has been at the expense of its literary features, particularly the anecdotal elements and the humour. In this article I focus on these peculiar narrative features, which it shares with other seventeenth-century disaster narratives, and seek to explain their origins and their meaning in a work which also contains harrowing accounts and illustrations of human suffering on a prodigious scale.

Early Japanese books in Cambridge University Library : a catalogue of the Aston, Satow, and von Siebold collections

Foreword Introduction Guide to the contents of the catalogue Table of era names The catalogue Appendix Plates Title index Concordance.

The History of the Book in East Asia

Contents: Introduction Part I China: The making of an imprint in China, 1000-1800, Joseph McDermott Tu and Shu: illustrated manuscripts in the great age of song printing, Maggie Bickford Byways in the Imperial Chinese information order: the dissemination and commercial publication of state documents, Hilde de Weerdt Mashaben: commercial publishing in Jianyang from the Song to the Ming, Lucille Chia Ming audiences and vernacular hermeneutics: the uses of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Anne E. McLaren Writing for success: printing, examinations, and intellectual change in late Ming China, Kai-wing Chow The Huanduzhai of Hangzhou and Suzhou: a study in 17th-century publishing, Ellen Widmer Visual hermeneutics and the act of turning the leaf: a genealogy of Liu Yuans Lingyan ge, Anne Burkus-Chasson Commercial publishing in late Imperial China: the Zou and Ma family businesses of Sibao, Fujian, Cynthia J. Brokaw. Part II Korea: Propagating female virtues in Choson Korea, Martina Deuchler Literary production, circulating libraries, and private publishing: the popular reception of vernacular fiction texts in the late Choson dynasty, Michael Kim. Part III Japan: Centres of printing in medieval Japan: late Heian to early Edo period, K.B. Gardner Provincial publishing in the Tokugawa period, P.F. Kornicki Manuscript, not print: scribal culture in the Edo Period, P.F. Kornicki The transfer of learning: the import of Chinese and Dutch books in Tokugawa Japan, W.J. Boot The Daiso lending library of Nagoya, 1767-1899, Andrew Markus Books and book illustrations in early modern Japan, Ekkehard May The history of the book in Edo and Paris, Henry D. Smith II Entrepreneurship and culture: the Hakubunkan publishing empire in Meiji Japan, Giles Richter Name index.

THE HYAKUMANTŌ DARANI AND THE ORIGINS OF PRINTING IN EIGHTH-CENTURY JAPAN

The origins of printing in East Asia have been the subject of lively debate over the last twenty years, and a constant point of reference has been the first recorded act of printing in Japan, which took place in the 760s. The term Hyakumantō Darani 百万塔陀羅尼 (hereafter HD) is commonly used in Japan to refer to this episode, and it denotes the Buddhist dhāraṇī or spells which are thought to have been printed in Nara and then inserted into wooden miniature pagodas, and which have for a century been regarded as the oldest printed texts in the world. 1 They were printed, so the evidence suggests, in the closing years of the reign of Shōtoku 稱德 (718–770, r. 764–770), who was the last woman on the Japanese throne for nearly one thousand years and who had had an earlier reign under the name Kōken 孝謙 (r. 749–758). 2 In this article I shall first examine the evidence relating to the HD and the origins of printing, since the whole question has long been clouded by hypotheses masquerading as fact. Second, I shall explore the origins of the practice of producing miniature pagodas and its transmission to Japan. Third, I shall argue that the established views on the motivation for the HD are inadequate, and shall identify the factors that demand a new explanation, particularly the pagodas themselves. Finally, I turn to the ideological and political factors underlying these events and suggest a new explanation. This new explanation focuses on the politics of Shōtokus situation and the connection with empress Wu (Wu Zetian 武則天; 624–705, r. 690–705), and it goes some way towards explaining why printing was not resorted to again in Japan for several centuries.