Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan’s Medieval Mirror Genre (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

337 Pages·2020·9.132 MB·

by  Erin L. Brightwell

Reflecting the Past
Harvard East Asian Monographs 433

Reflecting the Past
Place, Language, and Principle in Japan’s
Medieval Mirror Genre
Erin L. Brightwell
Published by the Harvard University Asia Center
Distributed by Harvard University Press
Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 2020
© 2020 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Printed in the United States of America
The Harvard University Asia Center publishes several monograph series and, in coordination with
the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Korea Institute, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese
Studies, and other facilities and institutes, administers research projects designed to further schol-
arly understanding of China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Center also
sponsors projects addressing multidisciplinary and transnational issues in Asia.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brightwell, Erin L., 1973– author.
Title: Reflecting the past : place, language, and principle in Japan’s medieval mirror
genre / Erin L. Brightwell.
Other titles: Place, language, and principle in Japan’s medieval mirror genre
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center, 2020. |
Series: Harvard East Asian monograph series ; 433 | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003449 | ISBN 9780674247819 (cloth) | ISBN 9781684176182 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Japan—Historiography. | Japan—History—Philosophy. | Japan—History—
To 1600.
Classification: LCC DS834.7 .B75 2929 | DDC 952/.02072—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003449
Index by Do Mi Stauber
Printed on acid-free paper
Last figure below indicates year of this printing
29 2827 26 2524 2322 2120
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Note to the Reader xii
Introduction 1
1 New Reflections: Refuge in the Past during the Final Age 34
2 Deviant by Design: Multilingual Writing in Postwar
Medieval Japan 84
3 Containing China: The Continent as Medieval Object
of Knowledge 138
4 Moving Mirrors: Ordering the Past in the Wake
of the Mongols 197
5 Memories of Mirrors: Nostalgia for a Unified Realm 238
Epilogue: Mirror Legacies for Early Modern Japan 275
Character List 287
Bibliography 291
Index 307

Figures
I.1 Utagawa Yoshitora. The Precipitous Descent
at Hiyodorigoe Pass. 1845. xiv
I.2 Map of the settings for the Mirrors. 24
2.1 Excerpt from The Water Mirror. Late Kamakura
manuscript. 118
2.2 Excerpt from Abbreviated Records. Early Edo
manuscript. 119
3.1 Excerpt from The China Mirror. Late Kamakura
manuscript. 192
5.1 Excerpt from The Clear Mirror. 1402 manuscript. 256
5.2 Excerpt from The Mirror of the Gods. 1540 manuscript. 257

Preface
Reiwa 1 (2019).6.13. Around the hour of the Dragon, I set out for Urin’in
Temple. When I arrived at the modest early eighteenth-century recon-
struction, it was deserted, as usual. Despite the Urin’in’s location near
Kyoto’s Kita-Ōji Dōri, a major thoroughfare, and its proximity to the
famous Zen temple Daitokuji, it is off the beaten tourist path. (This
being said, in an unprecedented surge of activity, three visitors passed
through during the hour that I spent here.) Even the seemingly ubiqui-
tous omamori (amulets) are nowhere to be found. The temple’s present
circumstances make it hard to remember that it has imperial origins
dating back to the early ninth century. Even more so that it was once
famous for lectures on the Lotus Sutra and so well recognized that the
unknown author of The Great Mirror chose it as the setting for the first
full-length narrative work to present Japan’s history as driven by cosmo-
logical principles, marking the beginning of an entirely new way of writ-
ing about the past. In spite of the Urin’in’s relative neglect today, because
of its importance to the subject of this book, I thought that a return to it
would provide the best setting to express my gratitude to those who have
made this project possible. Or, to paraphrase one of the narrators who
will appear in it, to reveal just how all of this has come about—for any-
one who would but listen.
This book grew out of my dissertation, so I should begin by thank-
ing my committee members, particularly Tom Hare, my advisor, and Ivo
Smits. I am especially grateful for the intellectual latitude they allowed