Kanbunmyaku

The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-43346-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

Reihe: Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis

In Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature, Saito Mareshi demonstrates the centrality of Literary Sinitic poetry and prose in the creation of modern literary Japanese. Saito’s new understanding of the role of “kanbunmyaku” in the formation of Japanese literary modernity challenges dominant narratives tied to translations from modern Western literatures and problematizes the antagonism between Literary Sinitic and Japanese in the modern academy. Saito shows how kundoku (vernacular reading) and its rhythms were central to the rise of new inscriptional styles, charts the changing relationship of modern poets and novelists to kanbunmyaku, and concludes that the chronotope of modern Japan was based in a language world supported by the Literary Sinitic Context.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Saito, Mareshi

King, Ross

Laffin, Christina

Weitere Mitwirkende

King, Ross

Laffin, Christina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Editors’ Preface: Saito Mareshi, the “Literary Sinitic Context,” and Literary Modernity in the Former Sinographic Cosmopolis

Author’s Preface to the English Edition

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1 What Is the Literary Sinitic Context?: Two Poles of Style and Thought

1 Japan’s Literary Sinitic Context

2 Two Poles of Style and Thought

3 Outline of the Literary Sinitic Context in Its Regional and Temporal Dimensions

4 Literary Sinitic Cultivation

5 The Kansei Reforms

6 The Formation of Literati Consciousness

7 Common Ground for Warriors and Literati

8 How Literary Sinitic Was Studied

9 The Style for Discussion of State Affairs

10 The Patriotic Lamentations of Men of High Purpose in the Late Edo Period

11 The Death Poem of Kondo Isami

2 Why Did the Reading and Writing of Kanbun Spread?—The Unofficial History of Japan and the Voice of Kundoku

1 Kanbun as a Written Language

2 Rai San’yo and His Scholarly Lineage

3 The System of Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi Studies

4 The “Prohibition of Heterodoxy” and the Institutionalization of Learning

5 Learning and the Orientation toward Governance

6 The Grand Ambition of Historical Narrative

7 The Completion of the Unofficial History of Japan

8 Reasons for Bestsellerhood

9 Reading-Conscious Kanbun

10 Criticism of Washu

11 Kundoku Rhythm as Different from Ordinary Speech

12 Vernacular Reading (Kundoku) and Sinoxenic Vocalization (Ondoku)

13 Famous, Captivating Melodies

14 The Shigin Trend

15 The Charm of Grandiose Kanshi

16 The Literary Sinitic Context Popularized

3 The Formation of a National Literary Style: The Civilization and Enlightenment Movement and Kundokubun

1 The Separation of Literary Sinitic and Kundokubun

2 Meiji-Period Evaluations of San’yo

3 Differences in the Three Appraisals

4 What Is “Futsubun”?

5 Two Points of Focus: A Text’s Functionality versus Its Moral Spirit

6 Universal and Common

7 Kundoku as Inscriptional Style

8 The Gradual Dilution of Kanbun’s Mental World

9 A Style Fit for Translation

10 A Time for Utility and Practicality

11 Contemporary Style as Modern Style

12 The Rise of “a Compositional Style for the Populace”

13 A Massive Lexicon of Sinographic Coinages

14 The Writing Style of Enlightenment

15 Rhetorical Kundoku Style: A True Account of America and Europe

16 Sophisticated Contemporary Style

4 When Did the “Modern” Begin in Japanese Literature?: Romantic Love as the Antithesis of Politics

1 Calling into Question “Modern Literary History”

2 Coteries of Kanshi Poets during Meiji

3 Mori Shunto, Leading Contributor to the Thriving of Kanshi

4 The Public and the Private as Constituents of the Mental World

5 Devotion to the Private World

6 The Literati Mentality: Cherishing Literary Sinitic Poetry and Prose

7 Onuma Chinzan in the World of the Literatus

8 The Polarity of “Politics = Public” vs. “Literature = Private”

9 The Separation of Literature from Learning

10 Mori Ogai’s Diary of a Westbound Voyage (Kosei nikki)

11 Mori Ogai’s Self-Consciousness

12 The Framework of Official Career vs. Reclusion

13 Exaggerated Rhetoric

14 The Motif of “The Dancing Girl” (Maihime)

15 The Origins of Renown and Diligent Study

16 Romantic Love as the Antithesis of Politics

17 The Reorganization of “Literature”

5 Japanese Novelists, Nostalgia, and the Exotic: China as the Land of Romantic Love and Revolution

1 The Position of Novels in the Early Modern Period

2 The Relative Status of Poetry and Fiction

3 The Theme of “Emotion”

4 Romantic Love and the Political Novel

5 A Great Compendium of Romantic Fiction

6 A New Focus for Fiction: The Replication of “Human Emotion”

7 Nagai Kafu, Child of a Scholar-Official

8 Diametrically Opposed Father and Son

9 From Prodigal Son to Spitting Image of His Father

10 Consciousness of Foreign Lands Nurtured by Interactions with Qing China

11 Intoxication with Shanghai

12 Reality Seeps into Kanshibun

13 Kafu within the Literary Sinitic Context

14 Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Child of a Merchant Household

15 Drowning Single-Mindedly in Beauty

16 Shina as the Setting for Eros

17 Akutagawa’s Realistic Conception of China

18 Contrasting Tanizaki and Akutagawa

19 What Was the Taisho Ideology of Education?

6 The Horizon of Literary Sinitic: From the Literary Sinitic Context to a New Kind of Japanese Language

1 Characteristics of the Genbun itchi (Congruence of Speech and Writing) Style

2 Stepping Outside the Literary Sinitic Context

3 The Focus of Écriture

4 The Struggle of Natsume Soseki with the New Literary Context

5 The Literary Sinitic Context as Counterpoint to the West

6 A Predilection for Zen

7 The Aspect of Intellectual Play

8 Literary Sinitic Poetry and Prose Today

9 A Different Kind of Japanese

10 Of Pastimes and Personal Refinement

Glossary of Figures Cited

Glossary of Texts Cited

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Saito Mareshi is Professor at the University of Tokyo. Trained at the University of Kyoto, he specializes in premodern Sinitic literature, the history of the sinographic tradition in Japan, and the role of sinographs and Literary Sinitic in modernizing East Asia.

Ross King earned his PhD in Linguistics at Harvard University, and specializes in the history of language, reading, writing and literary cultures in the sinographic sphere, with a focus on Korea in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Christina Laffin received her PhD in premodern Japanese literature at Columbia University, and specializes in premodern Japanese literature with a focus on women’s writing, travel diaries, and the sociohistorical contexts for women’s education, socialization, and literacy.