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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Chinese Letters and Intellectual Life in Medieval Japan: The Poetry and Political Philosophy of Chūgan Engetsu Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/02q068mw Author Morley, Brendan Arkell Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Chinese Letters and Intellectual Life in Medieval Japan: The Poetry and Political Philosophy of Chūgan Engetsu By Brendan Arkell Morley A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor H. Mack Horton Professor Alan Tansman Professor Paula Varsano Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry Summer 2019 1 Abstract Chinese Letters and Intellectual Life in Medieval Japan: The Poetry and Political Philosophy of Chūgan Engetsu by Brendan Arkell Morley Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese University of California, Berkeley Professor H. Mack Horton, Chair This dissertation explores the writings of the fourteenth-century poet and intellectual Chūgan Engetsu 中巌円月, a leading figure in the literary movement known to history as Gozan (“Five Mountains”) literature. In terms of modern disciplinary divisions, Gozan literature straddles the interstices of several distinct areas of study, including classical Chinese poetry and poetics, Chinese philosophy and intellectual history, Buddhology, and the broader tradition of “Sinitic” poetry and prose (kanshibun) in Japan. Among the central contentions of this dissertation are the following: (1) that Chūgan was the most original Confucian thinker in pre-Tokugawa Japanese history, the significance of his contributions matched only by those of early-modern figures such as Ogyū Sorai, and (2) that kanshi and kanbun were creative media, not merely displays of erudition or scholastic mimicry. Chūgan’s expository writing demonstrates that the enormous multiplicity of terms and concepts animating the Chinese philosophical tradition were very much alive to premodern Japanese intellectuals, and that they were subject to thoughtful reinterpretation and application to specifically Japanese sociohistorical phenomena. No less intrepid in the realm of poetry, Chūgan candidly addressed themes such as illness, war, and poverty, and experimented with unusual Sinitic forms such as hexasyllabic quatrains and the vernacular “song lyric” or ci 詞, which though popular in China was very seldom seen in Japan. The thematic and stylistic breadth of Chūgan’s oeuvre reveals the catholicity of Gozan literary culture and suggests directions for further research into Japanese intellectual history and Sinitic poetry during the medieval era. i Table of Contents Biographical Introduction 1 1 Political Suasion in a Time of Crisis: The Memorials of Chūgan Engetsu and Yoshida Sadafusa 12 2 Figuring Moral Kingship: Constant Norms and Expedient Policies in Chūgan’s Chūseishi 62 3 An Essay on the Kun and the Peng 鯤鵬論: Hermeneutics, Cosmology, and the Figural Reading of Fictional Characters 90 4 Poems of Remembrance, Poems of Social Engagement 130 5 New Directions in Form: Ci Poetry and Hexasyllabic Shi 170 6 Gozan Literature in Retrospect: Kanshibun and the Legacy of Kokugaku 194 Appendix: Kanshibun, Kundoku, and the Japanese Language 209 Bibliography 227 1 Biographical Introduction Chūgan Engetsu 中巌円月 (1300-75) was a Japanese monk of the Rinzai 臨済 sect of Zen Buddhism. He emerged as an early leader in the literary and intellectual movement known today as Gozan bungaku 五山文学, “Five Mountains Literature,” after the so-called “Five Mountains and Ten Temples” 五山十刹 system of ranking and organizing Zen monastic establishments. Born in the eastern city of Kamakura to the Tsuchiya 土屋 family, an offshoot of the once-powerful Taira 平, his childhood appears to have been a difficult one marked by illness and familial upheaval. His brief autobiographical chronicle (jirekifu 自歴譜) records that as an infant, he was taken by a wet nurse to Musashi Province after his father was sent into exile for unspecified reasons.1 At the age of eight he was entrusted by his grandmother to the temple Jufukuji 寿福寺 in Kamakura, where he began his training in the priesthood as a child acolyte (僧童). The text does not specify what this earliest period of instruction was like, but three years later he evidently began to receive a formal, secular education under the supervision of a priest named Dōkei 道恵. The curriculum included The Classic of Filial Piety (孝経) and Analects (論語), both standard works in East Asian education, and also The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (Jiuzhang suanshu 九章算術), a work whose influence on East 1 Chugan’s autobiographical chronicle may be found in Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan bungaku shinshū 五山文學新集 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1969), vol. 4, pp. 611-32. 2 Asian mathematics was comparable to that of Euclid’s Elements in the West.2 At the age of 13 he took the tonsure and moved to the Sanbōin 三寶院 in Kyoto, where he studied esoteric Buddhism (mikkyō 密教), which included meditation on the Matrix- store and Diamond Realm Mandalas (Taizōkai mandara 胎蔵界曼荼羅, Kongōkai mandara 金剛界曼荼羅).3 Shortly thereafter he shifted his interest to Zen, which had established itself as a distinct sect over the course of the previous century. Ties between the Japanese and Chinese Zen establishments were strong, and in 1318, Chūgan, like many promising monks before and after, attempted to travel to China. At the time he was residing at Engakuji 円覚寺, a major Zen temple in Kamakura founded by the expatriate monk Wuxue Zuyuan 無學祖元 (J. Mugaku Sogen) in 1282.4 Chūgan made the lengthy journey from Kamakura to the southern port city of Hakata, and although he apparently found a ship that was heading for his preferred destination of Jiangnan, for reasons unspecified he was refused passage by the ship’s captain.5 The delay would prove fortuitous, however, as it would later afford him the 2 The Jiuzhang suanshu (J. kyūshō sanjutsu) is listed in the Nihon kenzaisho mokuroku 日本見在書目録, a bibliographic source from the early Heian period. Historian of mathematics Fujiwara Matsusaburo (1881-1946) once observed that Chūgan’s references to the Jiuzhang suanshu offer the only direct evidence that the work was still studied in Japan during the medieval era. The paucity of such references notwithstanding, if a mathematically inclined youth at a temple in Kamakura had access to the work and a teacher to teach it to him, then it seems likely that both the text itself and mathematics education more generally were reasonably prevalent in major Buddhist monastic centers. 3 Jirekifu (hereafter JRF) Shōwa 1 (1312); Shōwa 2 (1313). 4 Wuxue had been an advisor to the most powerful military leader in Japan, Hōjō Tokimune 北条時宗 (1251-84), during the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281, and his influence upon the early Gozan system was substantial. 5 JRF p. 614, Bunpo 2 (1318). Gozan bungaku shinshū vol. 4, p. 614. 3 opportunity to associate closely with Kokan Shiren 虎関師錬 (1278-1345), who was in seclusion in Kyoto completing Genkō shakusho 元亨釈書 (1322), an exhaustive history of Buddhism in Japan.6 Chūgan was among the only visitors Kokan accepted, and their meetings are generally thought to have been a major influence on the young Chūgan’s intellectual development.7 Chūgan was finally able to travel to China in 1324, six years after his first attempt. He visited several important Chan temples and was the only Japanese monk to receive the seal of enlightenment (C. yinke, J. inka 印可) from Dongyang Dehui 東陽徳輝 (fl. early 14th c.), a Linji master in the line of Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗 杲 (1089-1163).8 Dongyang appointed Chūgan to the post of secretary (記室) at the temple Dazhishou Shengchansi 大智寿聖禅寺, an unusual achievement for a foreign monk.9 After nearly eight years abroad, Chūgan returned to Japan during the summer of 1332, residing temporarily at Kenkōji 顯孝寺 in Hakata before accompanying his patron Ōtomo Sadamune 大友貞宗 (d. 1334) to Kyoto the following year. Opinionated and headstrong by his own account, he was intensely active politically, submitting two essays and a memorial to Emperor Go-Daigo in 1333. Go-Daigo had formed a coalition of warrior leaders and rebelled against the 6 Marian Ury, “Genkō Shakusho, Japan’s First Comprehensive History of Buddhism: A Partial Translation, with Introduction and Notes” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970). 7 Inoguchi Atsushi 猪口篤志, “Nihon kanshi” 日本漢詩 in Shinshaku kanbun taikei 新 釈漢文大系 (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1972), vol. 45, p. 84; Ury, Poems of the Five Mountains (1977), p. 63. 8 See Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 1994), vol. 2, p. 182 n. 88. 9 Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, ed., Gozan bungaku shū 五山文学集 (1990) p. 235. 4 Kamakura shogunate, and Chūgan was deeply concerned about both the immediate direction of Go-Daigo’s revolution and the long-term prospects for an increasingly militarized Japan. In 1334, Chūgan returned to Kamakura following the sudden death of Sadamune, who had been an ally of Go-Daigo and was instrumental in facilitating Chūgan’s access to the throne. The Ōtomo family would continue to provide financial backing to Chūgan even as his views on the revolution soured. In 1339, three years after Go-Daigo’s nascent regime collapsed, Sadamune’s heir Ujiyasu 氏泰 backed construction of the temple Kichijōji 吉祥寺, located on a family demesne in the province of Kōzuke 上野, and asked Chūgan to assume its headship. Though Chūgan’s involvement in politics seems to have diminished in the 1340s, he regained access to the highest echelons of society when Kichijōji was named an Imperially Vowed Temple (goganji 御願寺) in 1352. For the next two decades he traveled almost constantly, moving nearly every year between Kyushu, Kyoto, Kōzuke Province, and the city of Kamakura.