FINAL REPORT

Japanese Appropriations of Chinese Culture, 800-1950:
Philology, Literature, Thought

International Interdisciplinary Workshop
Barnard College/Columbia University
7-25 August 2006

Instructors: SATÔ Michio (Keiô University), SUMIYOSHI Tomohiko (Shidô Bunko Library, Keiô University), HORIKAWA Takashi (Tsurumi University)

Organizers: Wiebke Denecke (Barnard College) and David Lurie (Columbia University)

        For three weeks in August a group of twenty-eight students and faculty from the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, and Mexico gathered in New York for an intensive workshop on the powerful contribution of Chinese writing, language, and thought to the formation of Japanese culture from the Heian period up until the twentieth century. The workshop was the first of its kind because it built on an existing foundation of technical and linguistic training (a need addressed by other annual workshops on Sino-Japanese [kanbun]). The three instructors presented, in an admirable tour de force, a sweeping survey of this crucial area of inquiry, ranging over the reception of Chinese texts, genres, ideas, and customs throughout most of Japanese history. The workshop was intended to contribute to a paradigm shift that is underway in Western studies of Japan, and more generally of East Asia. By emphasizing the varied roles of Chinese texts and ideas as they transformed, and were transformed by, Japanese authors and institutions, it exceeded the constraints of area studies as usually conceived, advocating instead a transnational, translinguistic approach to cultural and intellectual history.

        There is a growing consensus that sustained attention to Chinese and Sino-Japanese elements is a sine qua non component of the study of Japanese culture from the advent of literacy through the twentieth century. This consensus is apparent in the growing number of established scholars and graduate students who have turned to Sino-Japanese themes in cultural, literary, and intellectual history. However, opportunities for researchers with such interests to convene, exchange ideas and information, and learn from one another have remained limited. Furthermore, there has been too little interaction between Western scholars and students with such interests and Japanese scholars specializing in the Sino-Japanese aspects of premodern, early-modern, and modern Japan.

        This workshop succeeded in remedying precisely these shortcomings. Satô Michio, a leading scholar of Heian-period kanbun literature, introduced the Heian curriculum of education in Chinese canonical texts, the Heian spectrum of kanbun genres, and, appropriately for the scholar most instrumental in rediscovering the mainstream genre of Heian “Topic Poetry,” showed the development of kanbun genres unique to Japan and the interesting ways in which they deviated from Chinese precedent. Horikawa Takashi, specialist in medieval and early-modern literature, elaborated on the intellectual and religious background and motivation of writers who produced the so-called Gozan literature of Zen temples, and who contributed to the thriving production of kanbun literature during the Edo and Meiji periods. Sumiyoshi Tomohiko, with his exceptional expertise in philology and bibliography, led the group through the fascinating history of Japanese manuscript and print culture, showing the ways in which Japanese authors, compilers, and copyists received, reproduced, and transformed Chinese texts, while supplying rich visual evidence from his decades of experience working with various rare-book collections.

        The workshop provided an unprecedented venue for scholarly exchange, one which has already begun to enhance the ongoing transformation of Japanese studies. We are very happy to report that, building on the success of this workshop and the enthusiastic response from both instructors and participants, we have begun planning to continue our efforts to promote the study of kanbun around the globe in the context of a Columbia/Barnard – Keiô – University of Venice consortium, in which these universities take turns in offering summer workshops on an annual basis.

        We are deeply grateful to our sponsors for generously making possible the success of this workshop. Because its format, scope, and content were so well received and addressed such pressing needs in the field, your support has already borne fruit and will continue to do so in the coming years.

        Wiebke Denecke
        David Lurie