Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature

262 Pages·2020·7.608 MB·

by  Mareshi Saitō

Kanbunmyaku
Language, Writing and
Literary Culture in
the Sinographic Cosmopolis
Edited by
Ross King (University of British Columbia)
David Lurie (Columbia University)
Marion Eggert (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
VOLUME 2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sinc
Kanbunmyaku
The Literary Sinitic Context and the
Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature
By
Mareshi Saitō
Edited by
Ross King
Christina Laffin
Translated by
Sean Bussell
Matthieu Felt
Alexey Lushchenko
Caleb Park
Si Nae Park
Scott Wells
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Cover image from Keikoku bidan 経國美談 presented courtesy of Shizuoka
University and the National Institute of Japanese Literature’s Bibliographic and Image Database of
Japanese Modern Times (http://base1.nijl.ac.jp/~kindai/); cover images from Nihon gaishi 日本外史
and Kajin no kigū 佳人之奇遇 presented courtesy of Kōkyū Bunko 光丘文庫 in Sakata City and the
National Institute of Japanese Literature’s Bibliographic and Image Database of Japanese Modern Times
(http://base1.nijl.ac.jp/~kindai/).
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 2589-8787
ISBN 978-90-04-43346-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43694-7 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
Editors’ Preface: Saitō Mareshi, the “Literary Sinitic Context,”
and Literary Modernity in the Former Sinographic Cosmopolis ix
Author’s Preface to the English Edition xxviii
List of Illustrations xxx
Introduction 1
1 What Is the Literary Sinitic Context?: Two Poles of Style and Thought 5
1 Japan’s Literary Sinitic Context 5
2 Two Poles of Style and Thought 8
3 Outline of the Literary Sinitic Context in Its Regional and Temporal
Dimensions 10
4 Literary Sinitic Cultivation 12
5 The Kansei Reforms 14
6 The Formation of Literati Consciousness 16
7 Common Ground for Warriors and Literati 18
8 How Literary Sinitic Was Studied 21
9 The Style for Discussion of State Affairs 24
10 The Patriotic Lamentations of Men of High Purpose in the
Late Edo Period 26
11 The Death Poem of Kondō Isami 28
2 Why Did the Reading and Writing of Kanbun Spread?—The Unofficial
History of Japan and the Voice of Kundoku 31
1 Kanbun as a Written Language 31
2 Rai San’yō and His Scholarly Lineage 35
3 The System of Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi Studies 38
4 The “Prohibition of Heterodoxy” and the Institutionalization
of Learning 40
5 Learning and the Orientation toward Governance 42
6 The Grand Ambition of Historical Narrative 45
7 The Completion of the Unofficial History of Japan 48
8 Reasons for Bestsellerhood 49
9 Reading-Conscious Kanbun 53
10 Criticism of Washū 54
11 Kundoku Rhythm as Different from Ordinary Speech 58
vi Contents
12 Vernacular Reading (Kundoku) and Sinoxenic Vocalization
(Ondoku) 59
13 Famous, Captivating Melodies 61
14 The Shigin Trend 62
15 The Charm of Grandiose Kanshi 64
16 The Literary Sinitic Context Popularized 68
3 The Formation of a National Literary Style: The Civilization
and Enlightenment Movement and Kundokubun 71
1 The Separation of Literary Sinitic and Kundokubun 71
2 Meiji-Period Evaluations of San’yō 72
3 Differences in the Three Appraisals 76
4 What Is “Futsūbun”? 78
5 Two Points of Focus: A Text’s Functionality versus Its Moral Spirit 81
6 Universal and Common 83
7 Kundoku as Inscriptional Style 84
8 The Gradual Dilution of Kanbun’s Mental World 86
9 A Style Fit for Translation 88
10 A Time for Utility and Practicality 91
11 Contemporary Style as Modern Style 92
12 The Rise of “a Compositional Style for the Populace” 93
13 A Massive Lexicon of Sinographic Coinages 98
14 The Writing Style of Enlightenment 101
15 Rhetorical Kundoku Style: A True Account of America and Europe 105
16 Sophisticated Contemporary Style 109
4 When Did the “Modern” Begin in Japanese Literature?: Romantic Love
as the Antithesis of Politics 112
1 Calling into Question “Modern Literary History” 112
2 Coteries of Kanshi Poets during Meiji 113
3 Mori Shuntō, Leading Contributor to the Thriving of Kanshi 117
4 The Public and the Private as Constituents of the Mental World 120
5 Devotion to the Private World 122
6 The Literati Mentality: Cherishing Literary Sinitic Poetry
and Prose 124
7 Ōnuma Chinzan in the World of the Literatus 127
8 The Polarity of “Politics = Public” vs. “Literature = Private” 130
9 The Separation of Literature from Learning 132
10 Mori Ōgai’s Diary of a Westbound Voyage (Kōsei nikki) 135
Contents vii
11 Mori Ōgai’s Self-Consciousness 139
12 The Framework of Official Career vs. Reclusion 141
13 Exaggerated Rhetoric 144
14 The Motif of “The Dancing Girl” (Maihime) 146
15 The Origins of Renown and Diligent Study 149
16 Romantic Love as the Antithesis of Politics 150
17 The Reorganization of “Literature” 153
5 Japanese Novelists, Nostalgia, and the Exotic: China as the Land
of Romantic Love and Revolution 154
1 The Position of Novels in the Early Modern Period 154
2 The Relative Status of Poetry and Fiction 156
3 The Theme of “Emotion” 157
4 Romantic Love and the Political Novel 161
5 A Great Compendium of Romantic Fiction 163
6 A New Focus for Fiction: The Replication of “Human Emotion” 166
7 Nagai Kafū, Child of a Scholar-Official 167
8 Diametrically Opposed Father and Son 169
9 From Prodigal Son to Spitting Image of His Father 170
10 Consciousness of Foreign Lands Nurtured by Interactions with
Qing China 172
11 Intoxication with Shanghai 174
12 Reality Seeps into Kanshibun 176
13 Kafū within the Literary Sinitic Context 177
14 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Child of a Merchant Household 179
15 Drowning Single-Mindedly in Beauty 181
16 Shina as the Setting for Eros 183
17 Akutagawa’s Realistic Conception of China 185
18 Contrasting Tanizaki and Akutagawa 187
19 What Was the Taishō Ideology of Education? 188
6 The Horizon of Literary Sinitic: From the Literary Sinitic Context
to a New Kind of Japanese Language 190
1 Characteristics of the Genbun itchi (Congruence of Speech
and Writing) Style 190
2 Stepping Outside the Literary Sinitic Context 191
3 The Focus of Écriture 193
4 The Struggle of Natsume Sōseki with the New Literary Context 195
5 The Literary Sinitic Context as Counterpoint to the West 196
viii Contents
6 A Predilection for Zen 199
7 The Aspect of Intellectual Play 201
8 Literary Sinitic Poetry and Prose Today 205
9 A Different Kind of Japanese 207
10 Of Pastimes and Personal Refinement 209
Bibliography 213
Index of Chinese and Japanese Terms 218
General Index 224
Editors’ Preface: Saitō Mareshi, the “Literary Sinitic
Context,” and Literary Modernity in the Former
Sinographic Cosmopolis
Ross King and Christina Laffin
1 The Origins of Our Translation
This book is a translation of Saitō Mareshi’s Kanbunmyaku to kindai Nihon:
mō hitotsu no kotoba no sekai,1 a more literal translation of which would be
“The Literary Sinitic Context and Modern Japan: Another Language World.” We
have chosen to give the title a slightly different twist in English: Kanbunmyaku:
The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and
Literature. This modified English title calls attention to both Professor Saitō’s
novel term, kanbunmyaku 漢文脈, and to our equally novel rendition of this
term as “Literary Sinitic Context,”2 while also highlighting the central impor-
tance of his book to understanding the origins of literary modernity not just in
Japan, but in East Asia more broadly.
A key motivating factor in producing this English-language version of the
book has been the editors’ conviction of the significance of Professor Saitō’s
volume beyond Japanese literary studies alone. Indeed, this translation began
as a final project for a small group of graduate students in the Department
of Asian Studies at UBC enrolled in Ross King’s spring 2011 graduate seminar,
“Questions of Language, Writing, and Linguistic Thought in the History of the
‘Kanji Bunkaken’: Japan and Korea in the Sinographic Cosmopolis.” Inspired
by the work of Sheldon Pollock on the “Sanskrit Cosmopolis”3 and his rich
conceptual apparatus for the comparative study of vernacularization pro-
cesses across different cosmopolitan literary cultures, that seminar (populated
1  Kanbunmyaku to kindai Nihon: mō hitotsu no kotoba no sekai [The Literary Sinitic Context and
Modern Japan: Another Language World] (Tokyo: Nihon hōsō shuppan kyōkai, 2007).
2  See the following article and review by Mair for rationales for the term “Literary Sinitic” in
preference to “Classical Chinese” or “Literary Chinese.” Victor H. Mair, “Buddhism and the
Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages,” Journal of
Asian Studies 53, no. 3 (1994): 707–751 and “Review of Hilary Chappell, ed. Sinitic Grammar:
Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives,” Sino-Platonic Papers 145 (Reviews XI) (2004): 8–14.
3  Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power
in Premodern India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006).