Discource About Jindai Moji (The Script of the Divine Age) in Tokugawa Japan

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Discource about jindai moji (the script of

the divine age) in Tokugawa Japan

Why did the discours about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period?

Elizaveta Zyrenkova

JAP4691 – Master's Thesis in Modern Japan/60 credits/Spring 2019/

Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS)

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO

20.05.2019

Discource about jindai moji (the script of the divine age) in Tokugawa Japan

1. Why did the discours about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period? 2. What are the main pre-Meiji works that claim that jindai moji existed? What exactly do they say about jindai moji? 3. Do they present jindai moji alphabets? If so, what kind of alphabets are those? 4. What did the creators of jindai moji discourses or alphabets want to say? What did they want the jindai moji they “found” to prove?

Supervisor: Marcus Jacobus Teeuwen

2019

Discource about jindai moji (the script of the divine age) in Tokugawa Japan

Elizaveta Zyrenkova http://www.duo.uio.no/

Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo

Summary

It is a well known fact that the contemprorary Japanese is written with hiragana, katakana and the Chinese characters. There is a theory that claims that an ancient alphabet existed in Japan before any of the aforementioned writing systems. This alphabet is often refered to as kamiyō moji or jindai moji. This theory has emerged during the 14th century in Japan but it recieved most attention during the Tokugawa period. This master thesis focuses on works on jindai moji that were written during the Tokugawa period. I seek to answer auestions such as: What is jindai moji? What did Tokugawa scholars have to say about it? How do different alphabets that claim to be the jindai moji compare to each other? But most importantly: Why did jindai moji recieve so much attention exactly during the Tokugawa period?

This master thesis presents five works on jindai moji that were written during the Tokugawa period (one of which is written by the famous Kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane), two works on jindai moji that were written during the 14th century and one work on jindai moji that was written during the early Meiji period.

These works vary greatly and my main point is that different authors had a very different approach to the jindai moji. Some only used jindai moji it as a supporting argument for some kind of theory, while others were more interested in comparing different alphabets that claim to be the jindai moji. Also at the beguinning of the Tokugawa period the discuassion around jindai moji was connected to the idea of the sankyō itchi (unity of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto) while as we approach the end of the Tokugawa period the discource around jindai moji becomes more nativist.

One of the works on jindai moji that was written during the Tokugawa period (Iroha Monben) has never been translated to English language before. This master thesis includes my full translation of it (Chapter 4). Also I discuss a book called «Alphabets from the heavenly kingdom» (Chapter 8) that features 19 different examples of the alleged jindai moji. I found this book at the Akiruno city document archive. Accoarding to the archive I am the first customer ever to take an interest in this book. This might be the first time this book has been used in a reseach dedicated to jindai moji.

Foreword/ Acknowledgments

The topic of jindai moji does not receive much attention in the media. It is also difficult to find any articles or books dedicated to this topic. When I first got introduced to this topic by my supervisor Mark Teeuwen I could not believe that despite the fact that I have been studying the Japanese language for eleven years, I have never heard about jindai moji.

Several studies have been made on the nativism during the Tokugawa period as well as on the koshi-koden. However I could not find any studies that specifically focused on the discourse around jindai moji that emerged during the Tokugawa Japan. Therefore I decided to take a look on the jindai moji during the Tokugawa period specifically. I could not express my gratitude toward my supervisor enough, as he was the one who introduced me to many of my sources, as well as he was the one who suggested that I take a trip to Japan to find more about the topic.

I would also very much like to thank Linda Aas who helped me greatly with correcting my grammatical and spelling mistakes in this master thesis. English is not my first language, therefore it was absolutely crucial.

I would also like to thank my friends, family and my former Japanese teachers who supported me in my decision to take a master degree in Japanese language and later supported me during the time when I was working of this master thesis. Especially I would like to thank my grandfather Vladimir Ageev who has always believed in me.

Table of contents

Introduction chapter: What is jindai moji? Why did the discource about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period? ...... 11 Chapter 2: Jindai moji before the Tokugawa period ...... 21 Chapter 3: Description of Tokugawa Japan. Taiseikyō...... 25 Chapter 4: Iroha Monben ...... 34 Summary of the first four chapters ...... 46 Chapter 5: Hotsuma Tsutae. New interpretations og the divine age narratives in the ancient texts ...... … 48 Chapter 6: Hirata Atsutane and Kanna hifumi den ...... 57 Chapter 7: My trip to Akiruno. Akiru moji ...... 63 Chapter 8: Alphabet from heavenly kingdom. Toshizawa Uzen…….…70 Summary of chapters 5-8 ...... 76 Conclusion ...... 78

Introduction chapter: What is jindai moji? Why did the discours about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period?

This master thesis is about jindai moji. “Jindai moji” can mean several different things. The word “jindai” refers to “The Age of the Gods” chapters in Kojiki and Nihon shoki, (before Emperor Jinmu). “Moji” is a common Japanese word for letters. Therefore jindai moji can roughly be translated as «letters of divine age».

At the same time it seems that the exact meaning of the word “jindai moji” was not specified during the Edo period when most works on jindai moji were written. Therefore I would like to start with listing all the meanings that the term jindai moji can have.

The accession of Emperor Jinmu is traditionally dated as 660 BC therefore “jindai moji” can mean “ancient letters created in Japan before 660 B.C.” Currently the Japanese language is written with Chinese characters, combined with two authentically Japanese syllabary systems (hiragana and katakana), Latin letters and Arabic numerals. According to those who claim that jindai moji has existed in Japan before 660 B.C. jindai moji are letters that apparently existed in Japan before any of the aforementioned writing systems and they are currently not in use. It is unclear if the jindai moji alphabet included letters only, or if it included both letters and numerals. Those who study jindai moji, it seems, rarely focus on that particular aspect of jindai moji.

As a Japanese language lover myself, I soon found myself interested in this theory – that Japan has a long forgotten ancient alphabet but that is no longer in use. However as I started to research this topic I soon started to realise that the existence of such an alphabet is unlikely. So why continue researching this topic?

Even if such an alphabet has never existed there are still several different reasons to research this topic. Among those reasons is the fact that there are reasons why certain people during certain times have claimed that jindai moji letters exist. It could be interesting to find out what those reasons could be. Another reason to research the topic is the fact the jindai moji alphabets actually do exist. But most likely those alphabets are far less ancient that they claim to be. Who made those alphabets and why is another interesting topic for research. Finally as someone generally interested in languages I could not resist taking a closer look at the alphabets themselves.

The alphabets that claim to be jindai moji do come in all shapes and forms. There are at least twenty of them and I was lucky enough to find a book where the majority of those alphabets are listed with some information about places where those alphabets were originally found.

Earlier I have said that jindai moji can mean several different things. First of all, the word “jindai moji” stands for alleged ancient Japanese letters. But “jindai moji”, it seems, can also

12 mean the “ancient Japanese language” itself. Some of those who wrote books on jindai moji (such as for example “Taiseikyō” published in Edo in 1679, “Iroha Monben” published in Kyoto in 1763, “Hotsuma Tsutae”, distributed in 1760s etc.) seem to use the term jindai moji both when referring to ancient Japanese letters and when referring to a language that was used in Japan at the time when jindai moji letters apparently were in use. It is worth noticing that many scholars seem to use the term jindai moji as an umbrella term for all the alphabets that claim to be jindai moji. So far I have not seen any scholar discuss which of those alphabets could be “the real one”. It is of course important to remember that there is no actual “real one” as it is unlikely that an ancient alphabet called jindai moji has ever existed.

Jindai moji is also an idea of important political value. Quite a few of those who have written books on the subject of jindai moji (for example “Shaku Nihongi” published in 1301, “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” published in 1367, “Taiseikyō”) have never actually showed the alphabets to their readers or even discussed such alphabets from a language perspective. Instead they seem to use the jindai moji as an argument to support the rather nativist agenda that their books have.

There is also another aspect to jindai moji. The word “jindai” refers to the Shinto idea, that there has once been a “divine age of Gods” in Japan. Many of those who have written books on jindai moji have taken a religious approach to the topic. To be completely fair having both a religious and a rather nativist approach at the same time is probably common among such authors.

One of the great difficulties that come with studying jindai moji is that it can be very hard to separate this topic from many others. The discussion around jindai moji usually involves the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami, ancient Japanese prince Shōtoku Taishi, famous Japanese scholar Kūkai, Chinese characters, Siddham, ancient Japanese poetry, Buddhism and Confucianism. Some authors have managed to connect jindai moji to almost all of those topics at the same time and some of them have managed to do that in a way that in my personal opinion would be rather unacceptable to a contemporary reader.

It seems to me that it is almost impossible to study jindai moji separately from all of the aforementioned religious and political topics. That of course makes it much more difficult to focus on studying jindai moji from the linguistic perspective. Also very few of those who study the history of the Japanese language mention jindai moji in their works which makes the academical research of the topic even more challenging.

However the position of jindai moji in all these debates is exactly what makes it worthwhile studying. It is not just the letters themselves that are interesting but it is their place in debates about Japan, the “Age of the Gods”, Buddhism, Shinto, and nativism that makes them worthwhile to study.

A significant number of works on jindai moji (for example “Taiseikyō, “Iroha monben”, “Hotsuma tsutae”, “Kanna hifumi den” by Hirata Atsutane, “Letters from heavenly kingdom” by Yoshizawa Uzen) was written during the Tokugawa period in Japan. Therefore I decided that in my master thesis I am going to focus on the works from the Tokugawa period (1603- 1863).

It is difficult to know if authors of the works on jindai moji that I am going to cite agreed on what exactly “jindai moji” means. There is a possibility that by “jindai moji” they all meant different things. I do however find it unlikely. And, even if this is the case, most of those authors seem to talk more or less about the same thing. The reason why I think that is because it is often quite obvious that they have read each other’s works. In my master thesis I want to take a close look at these scholars and their works, as well as compare them to each other.

By doing that it might be possible to find the reason why so many scholars were interested in the topic of jindai moji exactly in the Tokugawa period as well as what kind of significance that topic might have had in the Tokugawa period. I hope to be able to make an objective approach to the topic and take a close look at the actual alphabets the scholars of the Tokugawa period were able to find.

As I have mentioned before, the theory that claims that there has once existed an authentically Japanese alphabet is very interesting if one is to study the history of the Japanese language. However it is important to mention that the alphabets are likely all Tokugawa-period creations and can tell us nothing about early Japanese language. The reason why they are interested to study for the scholar of Japanese language is because these are the new ways to write Japanese language that were (likely) developed during the Tokugawa period. The alphabets are, as I have also already mentioned, fairly different from each other in their form. Some of them can fairly easily be used to write present day Japanese.

However the approaches that the Tokugawa period scholars used were rather religious as many of those scholars have claimed that the alphabets were used by the Shinto Gods. One can easily start wondering if many of the scholars had some agenda to their research.

When I first started to write my master thesis I soon discovered that what I was writing did not make much sense unless I included long passages about the Japanese history and society of the time when a certain book on jindai moji was published. Many of those books do not focus on jindai moji, they only mention it in relation to other topics so I had to include some general information on those other topics as well.

I decided to take a risk of not excluding my somewhat long passages on Japanese history from my master thesis if such passages seemed necessary in order for me to be able to discuss the connection between jindai moji and other history related topics. Because I am

14 writing about Tokugawa Japan and not contemporary Japan, several topics that I am going to talk about in my master thesis may be somewhat unfamiliar to some readers.

This master thesis is divided into eight chapters. In the second chapter I am going to briefly discuss works on jindai moji that were written in 14th century and then in later chapters I am going to discuss works on jindai moji that were published in Japan during the Tokugawa period. I am going to discuss the similarities and differences between those works.

Almost every single work on jindai moji published during the Edo period (that I was able to find) seems to use jindai moji as a supporting argument for some kind of agenda. Those agendas however are not only different depending on which book we are analysing but one can also see an interesting development where books on Jindai moji that were written in early Tokugawa period (for example “Taiseikyō” and “Iroha Monben”) have one type of agenda while those written in late Edo period (“Hotsuma Tsutae”, “Kanna hifumi den”) tend to have a different more nativist agenda to them.

I was able to find an article on jindai moji (“Akiru jinja. Shinji uta kaiseki hōkoku” by Suzuki Toshiyuki) that was published relatively recently. The article refers to a book on jindai moji that was originally published during the Tokugawa period. The main point of the article is that in the city of Akiruno (near Tokyo) there is an ancient shrine called Akiru Jinja. According to the article the document written in jindai moji is stored inside of this shrine. To find out if what the author of the article is saying is true I took a trip to the city of Akiruno. The first part of my master thesis includes anonymous interviews about jindai moji with citizens of Akiruno.

In the chapter 4 of my master thesis I discuss the history of the Japanese language and what kind of writing systems were used to write the Japanese language during the different periods in Japanese history. Also I discuss how the theory about jindai moji fits or does not fit into the general history of Japanese language (as it is seen by present day Japanese Academia). In chapter 9 I take a closer look at all jindai moji alphabets that I was able to find and take the liberty of comparing them to each other. Also I offer some linguistic evidence that supports the opinion that the majority of the alphabets that different scholars were able to find during the Tokugawa period could not have existed before 660 B.C.

Before I proceed I believe that it is necessary to take a closer look at how several contemporary Japanese dictionaries and encyclopaedias define terms “jindai moji” and “jindai”. I have already listed several different meanings the term jindai moji can have, but those were based on my own understanding that is again based on the works on jindai moji that I happened to have read.

I believe that it is also necessary to discuss several official definitions of the terms “jindai moji” and “jindai”. I would like to start with the official definitions of term “jindai moji”.

Nihon kokugo daijiten (2005) explains the term “jindai moji” as follows:

The letters that are said to have been used in our country before the Chinese characters were brought to Japan (Nihon kokugo daijiten 2005, “Kamiyō moji” entry).

Dejitaru daijisen, (2001) explains the term “jindai moji” as follows:

The letters that are said to have been used in Japan in ancient times, before the Chinese characters were brought to Japan. There are several different types of jindai moji such as the Hifumi alphabet, the Anaichi alphabet and the Ahiru alphabet.

In old times many of those who preach Shinto believed that such letters had once existed but currently all of the aforementioned alphabets are considered to be contemporary creations because of the fact that those alphabets consist of phonograms.

In the Edo period several works published on the topic have caused controversy. Among those works are Hirata Atsutane’s «Shinji hifumi den» and Ban Nobutomo’s «Kana no moto sue» (Dejitaru daijisen, 2001, “jindai moji” entry).

Nihon kokugo daijiten (2003) explains term “jindai moji” as follows:

The letters that are said to have been used in our country before the arrival of Chinese characters. There are three different types of jindai moji: Hifumi alphabet, Anaichi alphabet and Ahiru alphabet. There are no reliable ancient sources that can prove that such letters have ever existed. All of the aforementioned alphabets seem to be based on Iroha. There are several different books published on this topic including Hirata Atsutane’s “Shinji hifumi den” that supports the “jindai moji theory” or “Kana no moto sue” by Ban Noritomo.

Jindai moji is also called shinji (神字) and jindaiji (神代字)

This information is based on “Kokugo no tame” that was published in 1895 and on “Fushin chū” that was published in 1910. (Nihon kokugo daijiten 2003, “Jindai moji” entry)

Finally Kokushi daijiten (1979) defines the term “jindai moji” as follows:

Unique letters that are claimed to have existed in ancient times and were used to write the Japanese language. Sometimes those letters are also called “kamiyō moji”. No scholars have yet been able to confirm that such letters have actually existed in ancient Japan. So far scholars have been able to find some drawings that resemble letters in certain caves across Japan. It has been claimed that those drawings are jindai moji. However, if such letters really were used by Japanese people, there should be some evidence of such use, for example in ancient official documents. If should also be clear that such documents are written in the ancient Japanese language. Therefore the language in such documents should be somewhat similar to the language in which the known ancient Japanese sources (for example Kojiki) are written. Currently there is no reliable evidence of any authentically Japanese ancient symbols that were used to write the ancient Japanese language. Works such as «Kogo Shūi», «Kakumei kanmon» by Miyoshi Kiyoyuki, «Hakizakigūki» by Ōeno Masafusa, «Nihonshoki

16 sanso» by Ichijou Kanera either state that there were no authentically Japanese letters in ancient Japan (Joko period) or state that kana is an authentically Japanese alphabet that did not derive from Chinese characters but was created as something authentically Japanese and unrelated to Chinese characters. For example «Shaku nihongi» written by Urabe Kanekata states that kana was used in Japan before the Chinese characters. It is possible that Shaku Nihongi has influenced scholars such as Hirata Atsutane and Ban Noritomo to publish their controversial works on jindai moji in the Edo period. Hirata Atsutane’s claim, that letters he calls “Hifumi script” existed in ancient Japan, is currently not supported by Japanese Academia. It is also worth noting that the Hifumi script is somewhat similar to Hangul. The contemporary scholar Yamada Yoshio has published the work “Iwayuru Jindai moji no ron” in which he denied the existence of jindai moji and stated that no sample material provided by other scholars can confirm the fact that jindai moji existed in ancient Japan (Kokushi daijiten, 1979, “jindai moji” entry).

Now after I have presented several official definitions of the term “jindai moji” I would like to present two official definitions of the term “jindai”. Official definitions of the term “jindai” are arguably less important for this master thesis than the official definition of the term “jindai moji” but I have decided to include those anyway.

Nihon kokugo daijiten (2005) explains term “jindai” as follows:

“Person who is being possessed by a God during the religious festival. This information is based on an essay written by Karahizu Ihitsu around 1750. (Nihon kokugo daijiten 2005, “jindai” entry)

Otherwise the term “jindai” could mean:

The era when Japan was ruled by Gods. Usually refers to the time before the reign of Emperor Jinmu. This term and «in old times» are sometimes used interchangeably. (Nihon kokugo daijiten 2005, “jindai” entry)

Dejitaru daijisen (2001) explains term “Jindai” as follows:

1. The era before humans when Gods ruled the world. It usually refers to times before the emperor Jinmu. This information is based on Hitachi Fudoki (written around 717-724), Man’yōshu (8th century), Kokin wakashū (around 905-914), Makura no sōshi (around 10th century), Nippo Jijō (1603-1604).

2. Refers to a period that was ruled by a certain God. This term can also be used interchangeably with «long ago». This information is based on Genji monogatari, Masu kagami (1368-76).

As we can see the term “jindai” has several different meanings including “a possessed person”, “long ago” and “a time that was ruled by a certain God”. It is difficult to say which one of those meanings would fit best when it comes to the translation of term “jindai moji”.

One can chose to translate jindai moji as “letters that were used in Japan in old times” but one can also chose to translate it as “letters that were used by Japanese Gods”. I would argue that most scholars who have published works on jindai moji during the Tokugawa period would probably explain jindai moji as “letters that were first used by Japanese Gods, then by Japanese people”. (Dejitaru daijisen, 2001, “jindai” entry)

Now I would like to conclude my Introduction chapter with a short summary of this chapter.

The term “jindai moji” can mean several different things. But first of all it is a term for an ancient authentically Japanese alphabet that allegedly was used in Japan before the arrival of Chinese characters. In this master thesis I am going to focus on works on jindai moji that were written by several scholars during the Tokugawa period.

Studying jindai moji can be difficult since many of those scholars, in my own personal opinion, use theories around jindai moji as a supportive argument for their nativist or religious theories rather than discuss jindai moji from a language perspective. However this is one of the reasons for why it is interesting to study jindai moji.

This master thesis is divided into ten parts. In the first six chapters I am going to name all of the main works on jindai moji that were published during the Tokugawa period in Japan. I am also going to talk about the Tokugawa period in general. In chapter 9 I am going to discuss jindai moji from the language perspective and present all types of jindai moji that I was able to find.

Also in this master thesis I will try to answer the following questions:

1. What are the main pre-Meiji works that claim that jindai moji existed? What exactly do they say about jindai moji?

2. Do they present jindai moji alphabets? If so, what kind of alphabets are those?

3. What did the creators of jindai moji discourses or alphabets want to say? What did they want the jindai moji they «found» to prove?

My main research question is: Why did the discours about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period?

The fact that so many Tokugawa period scholars who have published works on jindai moji have likely had agendas to their research might be one of the reasons why the topic of jindai moji is so rarely discussed by present day Japanese Academia. I would not like to note that by saying that I do not assume that the jindai moji has likely existed, nor do I try to criticize the scholars for their approach.

However I would like to claim that the topic possibly deserves more attention.

I would like to one more time thank my supervisor Mark Teeuwen. Without his great help it would have been impossible for me to write this master thesis. Also Professor Teeuwen was the one who introduced me to jindai moji. Unfortunately I do not have a background in Japanese religion, but I do hope that in my master thesis I will be able to do the topic justice.

From now on I would like to take a look at the likely reason for why the discource around the jindai moji appeared during the Tokugawa period.

As I have said earlier, the discourse about Jindai moji first appeared during the 14th century in Japan. However it disappeared and then reappeared only a few centuries later, in Tokugawa Japan.

Japan has a long literary tradition of nostalgic writings. Even before the Tokugawa period Kakinomoto Hitomaro expressed a nostalgic attitude towards the times when Man’yoshu (Japan’s oldest poetry anthology) was written. He expressed concern for the loss of country elegance identified with earlier times. (Nosco, 1990, p.6). During the medieval period of Japanese history (1185-1600) a longing for the past, and attributing to it desirable qualities that happened to be lost in one’s own time, became a literary conceit.

The Kojiki and the Nihon shoki both include “Divine age chapters” which describe how Japan was created in ancient times. During the 18th century several Japanese scholars engaged in studying the Kojiki, the Nihon shoki and several other ancient sources. They concluded that the earliest ages in Japanese history were far better than their own time. Given the long existing Japanese tradition of nostalgic writings – this is not at all surprising. Those scholars depicted the early ages in Japan in an idealised fashion and explained the loss of the ancient Japanese beauty in their own times with the introduction of foreign modes of thought into Japan. (Nosco, 1990, p.8).

They claimed that Confucianism was inferior to the “Way of Japan”. According to them Chinese people were naturally disobedient and inclined towards wrongdoing. A Japanese person, however, possessed the so called “true heart” at birth. The “true heart” of a Japanese person was however spoiled by the Chinese way of thinking, as Japanese people were exposed to unnecessary Chinese influence. But that was reversible. A Japanese person could “restore” their “true heart” if they reunited themselves with the native “Way of Japan”.

Their views were of course rather xenophobic as they went as far as to claim that the glories of ancient Japan were purely and exclusively Japanese. Hirata Atsutane, who wrote a work on jindai moji, was one of those scholars.

Tokugawa society saw the increase of literacy and the development of communication technology. Several 18th century scholars recruited private students. Kokugaku or National learning, in many ways a reaction against Confucianism, was a popular movement. Several kokugakusha recruited students as well as other scholars. These scholars claimed that information about the so called ancient “Way of Japan” could be recovered from ancient

19 texts through application of, for example, linguistic or historical analysis. For those scholars, the ancient time of Japan was an ideal age and the ancient people were an example of Japanese people of high morals. This was all because they were free from foreign influence.

Seventeen century poetics in Japan featured the revival of interests toward waka, traditional Japanese poetry. Contemporary ways of creating poetry were refreshened by adding ancient style waka elements. Creating poetry became far more popular in seventeen century Japan than it had been in previous times (Nosco, 1990, p.236).

Shinto studies during the seventeenth century attempted to update Shinto theology with neo-confucian vocabulary. However, in the eighteenth century Shinto scholars joined the quest for a native ancient “Way of Japan”. The Tokugawa period in Japan was a fertile time for nativism. (Noisco, 1990)

Kokugaku scholars asked questions such as “What is “Japan”?”, “How did Japan emerge?”, “What binds Japanese people together?”. In order to answer these questions, many of them used analyses of ancient texts. Nativism in the Tokugawa period was centred on the issues of language. The ancient texts were for the nativist Kokugaku scholars a source of individual identity (Burns, 2003, p.2).

Before the Tokugawa period, the Japanese people mostly had other sources of identity such as status, occupation, village, religion etc. During the Tokugawa period however “Japan” itself become to be constituted as the primary mode of community (Burns, 2003, p.2). The second half of the Tokugawa period saw economic transformations, multiple peasant riots, and unrest. The social divisions that I talk about in chapter 3, “The depiction of Tokugawa Japan. Taiseikyō”, became difficult to maintain.

Susan L. Burns argues that the Kokugaku movement was “not an exercise in antiquarianism, nor an expression of nostalgia, but a moment of social formation in which one set of representations, one “imaginary” community was beginning to fail and another was taking form”. (Burns, 2003, p.3) It is however important to remember that nostalgic practise was somewhat traditional for the literature of the time. The word view that attributed a status of “ideal time” to a certain moment in past was also quite familiar to Japanese people of the time because of Confucianism.

However it is hard to argue that Tokugawa Japan experienced something close to a crisis of a community, and Kokugaku scholars as well as several pre-Kokugaku scholars, for example Keichu, whom I mention in “Chapter 5.Hotsuma tsutae” sought to find an answer to the question “What is Japan?”.

Several of those scholars either compared Japan to China, or, as I have mentioned earlier, blamed the crisis of the community in contemporary Japan on Chinese influence that had spoiled the society. Not only was Chinese culture and Confucianism (and sometimes also Buddhism) criticized in this particular way, but nativist scholars in Tokugawa Japan also

20 criticized the Chinese language. One such scholar called Kamo-no-mabuchi (1697-1769) had written a text called Goikō where he expressed his opinion of why the Japanese language is superior to the Chinese language.

Surely Tokugawa scholars had different approaches to the ancient Japanese language. Norinaga argued that Kojiki itself describes the times when Japan was a harmonious society, where there was need for laws and institution, and if Kojiki is read correctly, character by character, it reveals the “recipe” for this kind of society. For Kamo-no-mabuchi, who lived earlier then Norinaga, the Japanese language itself was a manifestation of the pure hearts that all Japanese people possessed. Ancient Japanese society was harmonious, so a writing system was not needed. I believe that jindai moji happens to be an example of yet a different approach to the ancient Japanese language. While some scholars believed in the phonetical analysis of ancient texts and others claimed that the ancient Japanese language did not need a writing system because it was superior to other languages, people like Tainin (more on him in chapter 4) and Hirata Atsutane argued that ancient Japanese society indeed had its own writing system that is now lost.

It is interesting that several Tokugawa period scholars felt the need to discuss the situation with the usage of Chinese characters in Japan. Surely at this point Japan already had its own alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana. Those however were originally based on Chinese characters. Perhaps scholars of the Tokugawa period felt such a need to distance themselves from “malicious Chinese influence” represented by Chinese characters, that they went as far as to actually create a completely new alphabet and then claim that this alphabet belongs to an ancient Japanese society.

Therefore jindai moji is an interesting lens through which one can study discourses about Japan and its relation to Chinese culture in the Tokugawa period.

So, what did the creators of Jindai moji discourses or alphabets want to say? What did they want the jindai moji they «found» to prove? It seems that they tried to distance themselves from Chinese culture and Chinese influence. Jindai moji would prove that Japan once had not only a pure and beautiful authentically Japanese culture, but also its own alphabets and therefore did not need Confucianism, the Chinese world view or the Chinese characters. In the times when the entire idea of National learning (Kokugaku) was viewed in opposition to Chinese learning, it’s understandable why certain scholars tried to find or even create an authentic Japanese alphabet. Also, the “Divine age of Gods” chapters in both Kojiki and Nihon shoki were important to many Kokugaku scholars. Surely even a few not exactly trustworthy sources that claimed that an ancient, authentically Japanese alphabet once had existed would have been of interest in times like these.

It is important to note that nativist discourse in Tokugawa Japan was perhaps a predecessor of post-Tokugawa discourse of the Japanese nation. Kokugaku and other nativist scholars did to a degree inspire the emergence of Japanese national consciousness (Burns, 2003, p.5).

Jindai moji however remained somewhat obscure and did not have much influence on the post-Tokugawa nation related discourses.

Chapter 2 “Jindai moji before the Tokugawa period”

Introduction

Many works on jindai moji written during the Tokugawa period (for example “Taiseikyō”, “Iroha Monben” and “Kanna hifumi den”) mention Shōtoku Taishi, a real political figure who lived in 6th century Japan. What exactly those works say about Shōtoku Taishi varies. However most of those works state that Shōtoku Taishi is related to jindai moji. Therefore I think that it is important for me to talk about who Shōtoku Taishi was before I start talking about jindai moji. Therefore in this short chapter I am briefly going to talk about Shōtoku Taishi. In this chapter I am also briefly going to talk about another person called Kūkai or Kōbo Daishi. Kūkai is also mentioned in some works on jindai moji. In this chapter I am only going to present Kūkai very briefly. I am going to talk more about Kūkai in chapter 4 (“Iroha monben”).

I am also going to present some of the early works on jindai moji that were written before the Tokugawa period. There are two early works on jindai moji that I am aware of which had been written during the 14th century. I find it to be an interesting coincidence that those works were written in 14th century. It is of course very interesting to find out why works on jindai moji appeared for the first time in 14th century Japan. However this chapter, as well as the second one, doesn’t contain much analysis. In these chapters I am mostly going to present events and historical figures as well as describe the historical landscape on a basic level. I believe that I need to do so before I can present the topic on a little more advanced level.

Main part

The whole theory about jindai moji is built around alternative understanding of the history of Japanese written language. The usual “canon” understanding of the history of Japanese written language is as follows. In 593 A.D. the Japanese empress Suiko appointed her nephew as regent. This nephew’s name was Prince Shōtoku. Prince Shōtoku or Shōtoku Taishi as he is often called made a great effort to establish a stable government.

Shōtoku taishi's is the person who edited the Imperial annals. Later commentators thought that Shōtoku Taishi must have had written materials dating from before the the introduction of writing systems in Japan.

Sangōsho is written in Chinese characters. That is also true for other documents produced under Shōtoku’s reign. It is in fact unknown when Chinese characters came to Japan but some assume that it happened during the 5th century. (Como, 2006)

Under the reign of Empress Suiko/Prince Shōtoku the Japanese court sent several diplomatic missions to China. That is said to have resulted in the increase of the number of Japanese people who could write Chinese characters. (Como, 2006)

Approximately one century later there lived a Japanese Buddhist monk and scholar called Kūkai (also called Kōbo Daishi) who is sometimes praised for the creation of a Japanese syllabary – the kana. Until this day the kana and Chinese characters are used in combination to write the Japanese language. It is of course worth mentioning that the syllabary that Kobo Daishi has created is not the hiragana or katakana alphabet that Japanese people use today but I am not going to talk about that in detail in this chapter. For a long time it has also been assumed that Kūkai authored a poem called Iroha, which contains each kana syllable exactly once and is used as an ordering of the kana syllabary. However contemporary research has proved that Kūkai most likely was not the person who wrote the Iroha poem. (Abe, 1999)

During his lifetime Kūkai visited China where he was introduced to the Siddham script. The Siddham script is an abugida (a writing system in which every unit is based on consonant letter) that was used in India to write Sanskrit at the time. There are some obvious similarities between the Siddham script and the Kana syllabary.

Traditionally it is assumed that before the Chinese characters came to Japan, Japan did not have its own writing system.

However this belief was questioned in 1301 by Urabe Kanekata in his work called “Shaku Nihongi”. Urabe Kanekata claimed that Iroha might have been a re-editing of ancient Japanese characters that apparently were used in Japan before the Chinese characters. He believed that Kūkai was the one who had re-edited the poem. Urabe Kanekata’s claim was supported by Inbe no Masamichi. (Morrow, 2014)

Inbe no Masamichi’s work called “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” was authored in 1367. In his work Inbe no Masamishi claimed that Japan had its own ancient characters until the time of Shōtoku Taishi. Masamichi claimed that Shōtoku Taishi was the one who replaced the ancient Japanese script with Chinese characters. Before Shōtoku Taishi, Masamichi claimed, the ancient Japanese characters and Chinese characters were used in combination. (Morrow, 2014)

The main argument for Urabe Kanekata was the ancient Japanese practise of scapulimansy. Scapulimancy stands for a “reading the future” practise that was performed by throwing the shoulder bone of a deer into a fire and then has a specialist “read” the results. (Morrow, 2014)

Kanekata claimed that ancient Japanese people must have used some type of characters to write down the results. Kanekata also writes that the Japanese Shinto Gods themselves did perform scapulimancy and were likely to write the results with the ancient Japanese script. That is also stated in the Nihon Shoki itself so Kanekata definitely was not the first person to claim that.

At this point we can already see how the discourse about the ancient Japanese alphabet has a very interesting religious side to it.

Urabe Kanekata and Inbe no Masamichi were the first scholars to mention the ancient Japanese alphabet. They are yet to use the term jindai moji. However they were followed by multiple scholars of the Tokugawa period, many of whom have presented the scripts that could have been the ancient script that was used in Japan before the Chinese characters. Many of these scholars were also fairly religious and some of them were nativists. (Morrow, 2014)

As we can see both “Shaku Nihongi” (1301) and “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” (1367) were been written during the 14th century. The 14th century in Japanese history is traditionally divided into three periods. The beginning is considered to be a part of the Kamakura period (1185-1333) and the rest is the so called Kenmu Restoration (1333-1336) followed by the Muromachi period (from 1336 to 1573).

As we can see the wind of change was blowing through 14th century Japan. I find it very interesting that both “Shaku Nihongi” and “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” were written exactly in the fourteen century. It becomes even more interesting if one takes into consideration the fact that the next significant work that mentions jindai moji was published in the 17th century (Tokugawa period).

I decided to take a look at events that took place in 14th century Japan. I decided to do so because it might be interesting to compare them to the Tokugawa period. I wonder if it will be possible to find out why did the interest for jindai moji first appeared in 14th century Japan, then disappeared for 300 years and then appeared again in the Tokugawa period.

The Kamakura period started with a very significant change in Japan’s political system. In 1192 a man called Yoritomo Minamoto became «Sei-i-tai-shōgun». He was then a head of a new military government – «the Kamakura shogunate». Before the creation of the shogunate ruling emperors, empresses and their regents had been the most politically powerful figures in Japan.

However after the creation of the shogunate, the court was not that powerful anymore. Although the imperial family and the court still existed in the city of Kyoto the shogun became de facto the most powerful political person in the country. The shoguns residence was at the time located in Kamakura; therefore the period received the name “Kamakura period”.

During the Kamakura period a new type of literature appeared in Japan. It was called “Godzan Bungaku” (or “Literature of the five mountains”). Godzan Bungaku was created inside powerful Japanese Buddhist monasteries and was greatly influenced by Buddhism in general. Its name “Literature of the five mountains” most likely reflects the fact that there were five main Buddhist monasteries in Japan at the time. (Kabanov, 1985)

Godzan Bungaku includes both poetry and prose. Many of the literary works classified as Godzan Bungaku have been directly influenced by Chinese literature of the time and, most importantly, the majority of Godzan Bungaku is written in classical Chinese.

Early Godzan Bungaku poetry is focused on the so called «satori». “Satori” is a Japanese Buddhist term that can be translated as “seeing into one’s true nature”. Some scholars argue that one can also see the “wabi”, “sabi” and “yugen” aesthetics expressed in some Godzan Bungaku works. (Kabanov, 1985)

Some of the most well-known Godzan Bundaku poets such as Soseki Muso (1275-1351) and Yubai Sesson (1290-1346) lived the greater part of their lives in the 14th century. As we can see, the discussion around jindai moji in the 14th century appeared at the time when Godzan Bungaku literature flourished.

At the time the Japanese language itself was written in several different ways. There was no single way to write Japanese. Also I believe that it is possible to talk about the “overuse” of the Chinese language in the Japanese literature of the time. I dare say that the discussion around the “true Japanese script” in the 14th century could have started for those reasons. Also, topics with a certain nativist agenda to them are more likely to appear when the group’s (in this case nation’s) identity is threatened, which might have also been the case in 14th century Japan. Both “Shaku Nihongi” written in 1301 and “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” written in 1367 focused on Shinto and not that much on Buddhism. That is important because Shinto is considered an authentically Japanese religion.

In 1333 political change happened once again. Emperor Go-Daigo attempted to rule without the influence of the shogunate. After three years he had absolute power and then he was replaced and forced to flee while the new Ashikaga shogunate was established in Muramachi. That was the start of the Muramachi period that lasted until 1573.

Emperor Go-Daigo did not give up and until 1392 Japan practically had two courts – one supported by the Ashikaga shogunate and one that was created by the emperor Go-Daigo in Yoshino after he had to flee. However, to put it in simple words, the Ashikaga shogunate won. Neither the Kamakura nor the Muromachi period in Japan had been particularly stable for Japan. But both saw the flourishing of the arts. The famous Golden temple was built in Kyoto in 1397. The discussion around the jindai moji after it appeared in the 14th century for a brief period of time soon disappeared again.

The development of Buddhist schools of Shinto in this period possibly also has influenced the jindai moji discource. These are largely Tendai and Shingon schools in the time. Tendai and Shingon schools argue that the native kami represent “original enlightenment” in raw form, and are therefore superior to the Buddhas who represent “acquired enlightenment”. (Breen and Teeuwen, 2010)

Conclusion

In this chapter I have briefly presented some historical figures such as Prince Shōtoku Taishi and the Buddhist monk and scholar Kūkai. Two early works on jindai moji were manuscripts for internal use written during the 14th century and one of them mentions Shōtoku Taishi. The manuscript claims that Shōtoku Taishi had replaced an authentic Japanese alphabet with the Chinese script. Shōtoku Taishi is going to be mentioned in the same way in several later works on jindai moji. Another 14th century work on jindai moji mentions that the poem Iroha (allegedly created by Kūkai) was a re-editing on ancient authentically Japanese characters. In other words Kūkai had originally written the poem with an authentically Japanese alphabet (jindai moji). In Chapter 4, I am going to take a close look at a work on jindai moji that mostly talks about how Kūkai allegedly wrote the Iroha poem with jindai moji.

It seems that the discourse around jindai moji appeared for the first time in the 14th century, a difficult time for Japan as it was, among other things, a very politically unstable time. The 14th century saw the flourishing of a type of literature called Godzan Bungaku that was written in Chinese. Japan did not have a single writing system at the time and the Japanese language had been written in several different ways. Apart from the absence of a single way to write Japanese, there has clearly been an overuse of the Chinese language in poetry as Japanese poets were writing in Chinese. Those, along with the fact that nation’s identity was somewhat threatened, could have been reasons for the fact that the discourse about jindai moji for the first time appeared in 14th century Japan.

Chapter 3: “Description of Tokugawa Japan. Taiseikyō”

Introduction

As I have said earlier for my master thesis I decided to focus on some of the works on jindai moji that were published during the Tokugawa period. I do not think it would be possible for me to analyse those works without first taking a look at the society of the Tokugawa period. That is because I believe that many of those works include information that can only be understood in the context of their time. Also the majority of works I am going to analyse in my master thesis do not focus on jindai moji directly. They focus mostly on other subjects.

Such subjects often involve religion. Therefore I also find it necessary to take a brief look at the main religions of the Tokugawa period. Although jindai moji does (I believe) classify as a language related topic it seems that jindai moji has many times been used as an supporting argument for one or another opinion the author has, where those opinions are not necessarily very language related (as I have already stated in my Introduction chapter).

I would like to start with a general description of the Tokugawa period as I believe it is necessary as mentioned above. First I am going to present some basic information on how the Tokugawa period started, what kind of relationship the Tokugawa shoguns had with the imperial family and some general information about the city of Edo. Later I am going to briefly talk about daimyo during the Tokugawa period. Then I am also going to briefly talk about roads and freedom of movement in Tokugawa Japan. Later I am also briefly going to mention the different classes of Tokugawa society as well as talk a little bit about the outcasts. Historically there are different ways to look at the Tokugawa period and I am going to talk about that too. Then I am also going to present a new type of village community – the mura.

After that I am briefly going to present different types of schools where people who lived in Tokugawa period Japan could learn to read and write. Confucianism was an extraordinarily important ideology during the Tokugawa period and Confucian classics were learned at schools at the time. Therefore in this chapter I am going to talk about Confucianism during the Tokugawa period. Then I am going to briefly talk about Christianity, Judaism and Islam in Tokugawa Japan.

Much like the previous chapter this chapter is meant to be a somewhat introductionary chapter where I talk about the historical landscape in general. This chapter is not going to contain much analysis. I believe that it is necessary for me to present the Tokugawa period historical landscape on a basic level before I can go into a more advanced level.

Finally in this chapter I am going to talk about the first work on jindai moji that was published during the Tokugawa period. It is called Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō. Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō does not provide much information on jindai moji; it only mentions jindai moji very briefly. However, I believe that Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō has much in common with later texts on jindai moji.

Main part

The Tokugawa period started in 1603 with the unification of Japan by Nobunaga Oda and Hideyoshi Toyotomi and the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The first Tokugawa shogun – Tokugawa Ieyasu originally was Oda and Toyotomi’s ally. However after Hideyoshi’s death he seized the power from Hideyoshi’s son Hideyori and became the first Tokugawa shogun. The Tokugawa period is named after the Tokugawa shogunate. It is also

27 not unusual to call this period the “Edo period”, which lasted for approximately two hundred and fifty years.

The Tokugawa period was a relatively peaceful period in Japanese history as the conflict between Hideyori and Ieyasu Tokugawa was the only military conflict that happened during that time, with the exception of the Christian rebellion that happened in 1637-1638 (more on the rebellion later in this chapter).

During the Tokugawa period Kyoto was the official capital of Japan. However, the Tokugawa shogunate’s headquarters were placed in another city called Edo. During the 15th century Edo was still a relatively small fishing village located in Eastern Japan. However, after the Tokugawa headquarters were placed there, the city of Edo experienced rapid growth that resulted in its becoming possibly the largest metropolis in the world by 1721 (Holcombe, 2011, p.185). I suppose one can say that at that point Edo had already become de facto the capital of Japan.

The emperors of Japan remained fairly powerless and the country was ruled by the shoguns. There have in fact been a few marriages between members of the Tokugawa family and the imperial family. In 1620 a granddaughter of shogun Hidataga Tokugawa married emperor Gomidzunō. Their daughter Meisho became an empress. She was the first female emperor in Japan since the 8th century. Shogun Iemochi Tokugawa was married with a princess called Kadzunomiya (Mescheryakov, 2012, p.27).

Before its unification, Japan was divided into more than one hundred independent territories each ruled by a daimyō (landowner). Each of these territories, while being a part of Japan, was in a sense an independent country. After the unification of Japan, a new way to control the daimyōs was developed. All daimyōs were now required to spend much of their time in Edo. That way daimyōs became more oriented towards the shogun and that also made daimyōs use some of their resources as they now had to maintain two expensive establishments – one in Edo and one in their own province (Holcombe, 2010, p.180). While the daimyōs had to spend approximately half of the year in Edo, but then could return to their provinces, the retainers of the shogun were restricted in their travel. In order for such a person to travel more than ten miles from the city of Edo, a special official permission was required (Holcombe, 2010, p.180).

Ordinary citizens did not possess the right to free travel either. During the Tokugawa period it would be rather difficult for anyone to travel from their home district to another district, as one would need an official permission to do that (Mescheryakov, 2012, p.35).

During the Edo period the network of roads in Japan was developing rather rapidly. Some scholars such as Holcombe suggest that this development was likely a consequence of daimyōs regular travels from their district to Edo and back again. (Holcombe, 2010, p.184).

By the end of the Edo period there were more than two hundred daimyōs in Japan (Holcombe, 2010, p.184).

During the Tokugawa period the samurai class had elite status. Also the samurai status has now become hereditary (Holcombe, 2010, p.188). The samurai had constituted around seven percent of the population and possessed an honorary right to have a family name. For merchants, artisans and peasants having a family name was not allowed.

The Tokugawa society was divided into four large groups. This social order was called shinōkōshō. The first group would be samurai and daimyō, they were the most privileged group of the four. The next group were peasants, the third group were artisans and the fourth and the least privileged group were merchants. It was impossible for an individual to move from one group to another. Even the entertainment industry was divided so that members of one group could not attend entertainment that was meant for another group. Samurai, for example, were prohibited from attending kabuki as kabuki was for the lower classes only (Holcombe, 2010, p.188).

Priests and court nobles were outside of this system. So were professional actors, musicians and other artists (Duus, 1998 p.21).

Another group that was outside of the system were the outcasts, for example burakumin. Burakumin was the name for people working with animal slaughter and leather production. Such outcast groups experienced fairly noticeable discrimination (Duus, 1998, p.21).

In 1635 the Tokugawa shogunate banned foreign travel to Japan (Holcombe, 2010, p.183). The country had then become a sakoku (“a closed country”). Outside influences were certainly not welcomed by the Tokugawa shogunate.

There are different ways to look at Tokugawa society. Historically many scholars have argued that the Tokugawa shogunate made a very successful attempt to “freeze society” from developing and that the Tokugawa system of control was “retrogressive” (Hall, 1974, p.3).

In the beginning of the 20th century several scholars have argued that the Tokugawa shogunate was responsible for the “refeodilisation” (going back to the feudal system) of the country” (Hall, 1974, p.4). According to this view, at the time the Tokugawa shogunate rose to power, there were some anti-feudalist tendencies in Japan. Such tendencies were represented by the fact that Hideyoshi Toyotomi himself was able to rise from a relatively humble origin to an extraordinary high place in that society. Such a rise would no longer be possible in Tokugawa Japan.

On the contrary some scholars have argued that Japan never actually was a feudal society until the Tokugawa period and have called the politics of the Tokugawa period “revolution into feudalism” (Hall, 1974, p.5).

Also during the Tokugawa period a new type of village community developed – the mura. The Tokugawa government had in many ways moved samurais and daimyōs “off the land” and therefore peasants that previously were the cultivating families attached directly to the military heads now did not experience as much direct personal control. They were now controlled by the government (Hall, 1974, p.6). According to Araki peasants did experience some sort of “emancipation” because of the samurai being driven off their land (Hall, 1974, p.6). It is also worth noticing that during the 16th century the population of Japan had doubled (Holcombe, 2010, p.187). John W. Hall points out that traditionally many of the Japanese scholars were most interested in the conditions of the peasantry when analysing the Tokugawa period (Hall, 1974, p.6).

In Tokugawa Japan, peasants were not prohibited from carrying weapons. John W. Hall notes that the likely reason for why such strict division between the armed samurai class and the disarmed lower social classes was needed was that muskets had been introduced to Japan during the 16th century. Muskets were used during the unification of the Japanese islands (Holcombe, 2010, p.179). The officials of Tokugawa Japan as expected did not use this argument when explaining their politics to ordinary Japanese citizens. Instead, the need for division was explained from the perspective of Confucian values which were successfully spread through education.

During the Tokugawa period it was possible for peasants, artisans and merchants to get education. That was true for both men and women (and apparently for other genders as well (such as for example han’in’yō). Peasants, artisans and merchants could not get a formal education. They could however attend schools such as hankō, terakoya, juku, shinjuku, governmental elementary schools and the Confucian academy of the shogunate (article about education p 4).

Hankō was very similar to the governmental elementary school except it was established by a certain feudal lord and not the government. Terakoya were schools run by temples. Juku and Shinjuku were the private schools often run by a private scholar. It has been argued that by attending such schools commoners could learn to read and write, as well as use the abacus (article about education p 4). Otherwise the curriculum would be different depending on the school. However the contemporary research shows that students of such schools despite being able to write their own name and being able to read what is written in either form of kana were not able to read official documents that were written with Chinese characters (Rubinger, 1990, p. 606).

Both in the schools that peasants, artisans and merchants could attend and in the schools that were aimed at students of samurai descent, there was a focus on Classical Chinese and Neo-Confucian studies. That was especially true for the schools aimed at samurai youth. It seems that is was normal for students to study Confucian Analects at school, as well as other Confucian classics. However we do not have enough information about the significance of school attendance for a particular student. There is evidence that full literacy in Chinese was

30 expected of elites in the latter part of the 17th century (Rubinger, 1990, p. 603). Naturally they would also be expected to read kanbun-kudoku. Since all of the official documents were written in Chinese, all government officials also had to master kanbun-kudoku.

To read a Chinese text using kanbun-kudoku style was to read a Chinese text “in a Japanese manner”. The words of the original Chinese text would be transposed and reordered to fit Japanese syntax. Then, the grammatical particles and inflectional morphemes (absent in Chinese) would be added (Hmeljak-Sangawa, 2017, p.6).

It has in fact been claimed that the Tokugawa period was “the Golden age of Confucianism and interest in language and classical culture from China” (Holcombe, 2010, p.183).

For writing taxes and reports, people of the Edo period commonly used a Sino-Japanese hybrid language, also called the “kanbun-yomikudashi style writing style”. This writing style was based on the kanbun-kudoku reading technique. In the kanbun-yomikudashi style, Japanese texts were written according to Classical Chinese syntax and word order. It seems that throughout the Edo period this technique had developed and towards the end of the Edo period several authors started writing kanbun-yomikudashi style using the Japanese word order (Hmeljak-Sangawa, 2017, p.10).

This writing style was seen as one of two ways to write Japanese. The first way was generally called kanbun. Literal Japanese at the time had to master both kanbun and another writing style called wabun. Wabun was following archaic Japanese conventions of spelling and style that developed in the Heian period and was arguably more Japanese then the kambun (article page 10). However writing in the kambun style seems to have been somewhat more common (Hmeljak-Sangawa, 2017, p.10).

It is however important to mention that even though the education was accessible to peasants, artisans and merchants of all genders, towards the end of the Edo period many of those belonging to classes below the samurai class only mastered the very basics of writing. Also the number of literate women was largely dependent on the where they lived. It seems that while one could find some literate women in the urban areas, in rural areas the male/female school attendance ratio was approximately 20/1 (Hmeljak-Sangawa, 2017, p.5). These are numbers from the late Tokugawa period.

Some researchers viewed the Confucian education as something that prepared Japanese commoners for the acceptance of modern political concepts (Hall, 1974, p.3). Other claimed that these Confucian ideas were “outdated” and reactionary even in Tokugawa Japan (Hall, 1974, p.2). However there is no doubt that Confucian ideology was useful for the Tokugawa government and military elite. Confucianism suggested that there is a natural division in society by status and vocation (Hall, 1974, p.10). Therefore it justified the fact that it was extremely difficult to change from one social class to another. Loyalty to superior authority is

31 also extremely important in Confucianism. That aspect of Confucian ideology possibly helped maintain peace and stability in Tokugawa Japan.

Confucianism views religion (in this case – teachings as the word “religion” did not yet exist) as a somewhat superstitious aspect of human society. That has been used as an explanation for the fact that Tokugawa society seemed to be less religious than the people had been in previous periods of Japanese history (Mescheryakov, 2012, p.43).Yet Confucianism was very beneficial for the samurai elite who could claim that “leisure of work allows them to cultivate the Confucian values” (Holcombe, 2010, p.183).Confucianism was not only spread through schools. In the beginning of Tokugawa period Hayashi Razan (1583-1657) held many successful lectures on his interpretations of the classical Confucian Analects (Holcombe, 2010, p.183).

One can perhaps claim that Confucianism was somehow more optimistic than for example Buddhism which views human life (and that of other species) as suffering. Such a notion is absent in Confucianism. Shinto and Buddhism still coexisted but commoners did not in fact have the freedom to choose the nearest temple but the one a citizen of Tokugawa Japan was supposed to attend. One would still be attending both a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple but commoners lost the freedom to choose their favourite school of Buddhism (Mescheryakov, 2012, p.45). I will discuss the status of Buddhism and Shinto later.

The first work on Jindai moji that was published during the Tokugawa period was called Enpōhon Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō. From now on I am going to refer to it as Taiseikyō for convenience puppose. It was published in the city of Edo in 1679. Taiseikyō probably classifies as a text that claims to be a true and lost history from the divine age (Morrow, 2014, p.2). Such texts are a phenomenon in Japanese history. There are quite a few such texts and they started to appear during the Edo period. Typically those texts claim to provide the reader with unique lost information about ancient Japan. This is also true of the Taiseikyō.

Taiseikyō was an encyclopaedia of 72 volumes. It contained information on many topics such as poetry, philosophy, national history and ritual institutions (Morrow, 2014, p.4). It was probably written and published by several people including the zen monk called Chō’on Dokai, the hermit called Ikeda, Kyōgoku Kuranosuke, Nagano Uneme who was Kyōgoku’s spiritual teacher etc. (Morrow, 2014, p.4).. Apart from being an encyclopaedia, Taiseikyō was also an expanded version of a historical text called Kujiki. The original Kujiki is a history of the Japanese nation that was written approximately between the seventh and tenth centuries. Before publishing the Taiseikyō Kyōgoku Kuranosuke had already published another allegedly extended version of Kujiki which he called Sendai Kuji Hongi (the title is the same as the full name of the Kujiki which at the time held to be the oldest Japanese chronicle, predating Kojiki. It was demoted to the status of a forgery only later, in the eighteenth century. Kujiki was at the time believed to have been written by Shôtoku Taishi (Morrow, 2014, p.4).

When Kyōgoku Kuranosuke met Chō’on Dokai he recommended that he should also talk to Kyōgoku’s spiritual teacher – Nakano Uneme. There is a record that describes how Nakano and Chō’on met for the first time. According to the record the very moment Chō’on was introduced to Nakano he felt as if Nakano possessed some rare ancient knowledge. Chō’on had been previously informed that Nakano possessed the world’s only complete concealed version of the Kujiki (Morrow, 2014, p.4).

Not only did Chō’on trust this information but he also felt as if Nakano had become his spiritual teacher and he was now “initiated into an esoteric lineage”. This is indeed a very esoteric take on the situation. As Avery Morrow notes, this sounds as if Chō’on had founded some sort of a hermitic order (Morrow, 2014, p.4).. I suppose one can claim that Taiseikyō was among other things also a product of the relationship between Chō’on and Nakano. Taisekyō is arguably also a very esoteric work.

Even though it is known that Nakano was not a monk and had never received any official training as a monk or a shrine keeper, he did write a lot on the teachings in Tokugawa Japan. He also possibly expressed his own thoughts on some of the teachings. Taiseikyō claims that Prince Shōtoku Taishi authored a constitution divided in five articles (one article for peasants, one for Buddhists, one for Shintoists, one for Confucianists and one for Politicians) (Morrow, 2014, p.3).

The constitutions were published in 1675 by Nakano Uneme, Chō’on etc. The language used in those constitutions make it impossible for them to have been written in the 7th century (Morrow, 2014, p.7). I would argue that it is almost impossible to analyse those constitutions without first taking a brief look at some of the teachings that had influenced the life of people of the Tokugawa period. In this chapter I have very briefly taken a look at Confucianism; in other chapters I am also going to talk about Shinto and Buddhism, since will argue that Taiseikyō is a reaction to this ideological strife that was taking place in Japan at the time (between different religions). The relationship between the different teachings in Tokugawa Japan was rather difficult and the different teachings often denied the other’s teachings (Morrow, 2014, p.4).

In the alleged five constitutions Shōtoku Taishi informed Buddhists, Confucianists and Shintoists that each of their teachings had its place in life and was needed in Japan (Morrow, 2014, p.4).

The Taiseikyo does not contain as much information on Jindai moji as some other works that I am going to discuss later. According to the Taiseikyō, Shōtoku Taishi found some buried documents in a place called Awa-no-miya, which were allegedly written in the divine age. The documents were allegedly written in an ancient Japanese script (jindai moji). From these ancient texts Shōtoku Taishi had gained knowledge about Japanese history.

The Taiseikyō does in fact contain some general rules for the rise and fall of political regimes and it transcended the existing authorities but the Taiseikyō was not a rebellious work and I would argue that it was more an esoteric and somewhat religious work than a political one (Morrow, 2014, p.5). Despite the fact that the Taiseikyō did not question the authority of Tokugawa shoguns, it was still banned in 1681 as a “false text” (Morrow, 2014, p.8).

Among other things the Taiseikyō also talks about the “Single creator that rules boundlessly over infinity”. According to the Taiseikyō nothing existed before the Creator and the Creator is without form. The creator produced the universe. Such a Creator is superior to all kami. Such a concept had never appeared in a Shinto text before the Taiseikyō (Morrow, 2014, p.7).

I would now like to briefly take a look at Christianity, Judaism and Islam during the Tokugawa period in Japan. Christianity had been known in Japan since the 16th century and was discriminated against by the government. It was prohibited following the Christian Shimabara rebellion in 1637-1638. Tokugawa people could differentiate between several different types of Christians and sometimes they did so in a somewhat amusing way. One of the documents written at the time states that Christians can be divided into three groups: kirishitan, fuden and fuju fuse. While kirishitan was the usual word for Japanese converts at the time, fuden seems to be an obscure word and fuju fuse seems to be an entirely Buddhist movement (Screech, 2012, p. 4). The discrimination of Christianity and its prohibition are often explained by the shogunate’s fear of invasion as well as cultural differences. However some scholars have arued that the conflicts between different Christian groups such as for example Jesuits and English anti-Jesuit Christians could have played an important role in how the shogunate viewed Christians (Screech, 2012, p. 1).

I could not find much information on either Judaism or Islam in Tokugawa Japan. When it comes to Judaism, it seems that it is easier to find information about people of Jewish descent who visited Japan or described the situation in Japan than people who actually preached Judaism in Japan. It is believed that the first Jews who came to Japan during the 15th century were Jewish citizens of Portugal and according to the Portugal law of the time; they were forced to either convert to Christianity or leave Portugal. I was able to find a text written by a Dutch Philosopher of Jewish descent, Benedictus de Spinoza, in which he describes the hardships of Christians living in Japan at the beginning of the Edo period. Unfortunately it seems that neither Benedictus de Spinoza nor Portugal citizens of Jewish descent who came to Japan in late 15th century were particularly interested in investigating the status of Judaism in Japan at the time (Barbasiewics, 2013, p.6).

When it comes to Islam, I was only able to find a short remark made by Frois, a member of the Jesuit order, who angrily writes about a sailor of Arab descent who arrived in Malacca from Japan in 1555 and claimed that while in Japan he had done “as much as he could” to make the Japanese people understand Islam (Lach, 1965, p.518). Given the fact that Tokugawa perceived the fuju fuse as Christian it is possible that some foreigners who preached Judaism or Islam would have been considered Christian or even Buddhist.

Taiseikyō was published in 1679 approximately 50 years after the Shimabara rebellion. It is possible that Taiseikyō was influenced by some of the monotheistic religions that existed in Japan in the beginning of the 17th century.

Also, Taiseikyō was at the time understood as a central text of Sankyō itchi, the unity of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto. Even though it was banned, it remained widely read and quoted. That is the reason why it could inspire further developments in the Jindai moji.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have briefly discussed the Tokugawa period on a basic level. I believe that it was necessary to do so before discussing the Tokugawa period on a more advanced level.

The first work on jindai moji that was published during the Edo period is called Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō. It was published in Edo in 1679, four years after the same authors published five constitutions allegedly written by Shōtoku Taishi himself. In these constitutions Shōtoku Taishi allegedly told Buddhists, Shintoists and Confusianists that each of their teachings was important for Japan in its own way. The Taiseikyō claimed that Shōtoku Taishi found (in a place called Awa-no-miya) scrolls where Japanese history was written with authentic Japanese script.

The Taiseikyō and the aforementioned five constitutions are somewhat esoteric texts. The Taiseikyō claims that there is a single creator that rules over all kami. Such an idea had never been presented in a Shinto text before.

The Taiseikyō was not a rebellious work but it was banned two years after its publication. I would argue that the Taiseikyō is not quite as aggressive and nativist as some later works on jindai moji.

Chapter 4: “Iroha Monben”

Introduction

In this chapter I am going to talk about another work on jindai moji that is called Iroha Monben. This chapter contains a full translation of Iroha Monben. I decided to include the whole translation because it seems that Iroha Monben has never been translated into English before. At least I was not able to find such a translation. Therefore I decided to include my own translation of Iroha Monben since it can possibly be useful to other people interested in it. Also I do not think that it is possible to discuss Iroha Monben without presenting its whole text first. That is because Iroha Monben contains several different topics that are somewhat unrelated to each other but are all related to language as a subject.

It would be difficult to present all of those subjects without including the author’s words on every one of those topics.

Apart from Iroha Monben, I am also going to talk about Kūkai and his theory of divine order, as it is relevant to what the author of Iroha Monben talks about in Iroha Monben. Kūkai’s theories are rather difficult, so instead of just talking about his thoughts on divine order, I decided to include some direct translations of Kūkai. Those translations were made by Professor Abe (Abe, 1999).

Kūkai’s theory about divine order is also relevant to the next chapter of this master thesis. Apart from Kūkai’s theory on divine order, I am also going to briefly talk about the poem Iroha. Currently, Japanese Academia claims that Iroha was not created by Kūkai; however, at the time when Tanin was writing his Iroha Monben, it was generally assumed that Iroha was created by Kūkai. Iroha Monben claims to focus on the Iroha poem while in reality Iroha Monben also talks about several other topics including jindai moji. That being said, for the author of Iroha Monben, jindai moji and Iroha seem to be related topics.

In the end of my translations I decided to keep certain Chinese characters untranslated since the author talks about the form of these characters rather than the meaning of them and if I was to translate those characters into English my translation would not make much sense. Hopefully I will be forgiven for that decision.

Kūkai’s teachings are rather Buddhist so I decided to also include some information at the beginning of the chapter on Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan. But the goal of this chapter is to present Iroha Monben, which in my opinion probably happens to be one of the most important works on Jindai moji that was published in the Tokugawa period. The reason why I think that Iroha Monben is so important is because it offers some explanations many other works on Jindai moji do not offer. Typically works on jindai moji either mention jindai moji very briefly or they only include the alphabets themselves and no explanation. In this regard Iroha Monben is different.

Main part

The second work on jindai moji that was published during the Tokugawa period is called Iroha Monben. “Iroha Monben” can roughly be translated as “Interrogation of Iroha”. In comparison to Taiseikyo, Iroha Monben focuses on Buddhism. However, just as Taiseikyo did, Iroha Monben offers a new take on ancient texts. The authors of Taiseikyo claimed that they had found five constitutions written by Shotoku Taishi himself. Therefore, it offered some previously “unknown” information regarding Shotoku Taishi.

Iroha Monben is markedly different from Taiseikyo as it does not touch on the subject of Shotoku Taishi and his alleged constitutions. However, it offers some “new information” on another influential person that lived in ancient times, the famous Buddhist monk Kūkai, also called Kobo Daishi.

As Iroha Monben focuses on Buddhism I believe that it would be reasonable to start this chapter with some general information on Buddhism during the Tokugawa period.

During his rise to power in the late 16th century Oda Nobunaga competed with a particularly religious Buddhist Ligue that called itself the True Pure Land Ligue (Ikkō Ikki). The Ligue was quartered at the temple fortress Ishiyama Honganji near the city of Osaka (Holcombe, 2010, p.180). Such leagues had emerged during the Sengoku period as an alternative to a usual daimyo ruled domain. The conflict between Oda Nobunaga and the league lasted for approximately 10 years before the Ishiyama Honganji ligue lost in the conflict in 1580 (Holcombe, 2010, p.180). Oda Nobunaga did not show much mercy to Buddhists in general. He is known for having destroyed ancient buildings located near Kyoto on Mount Hiei that belonged to Tendai sect (Holcombe, 2010, p.181).

Before the Tokugawa period many Buddhist sects, much like the True Pure Land League had been militant. Those were not always allied with the government. And the Tokugawa government did much to prevent such organisations from taking arms against the them (Labbe, 2017, p.4). While the Tokugawa government used Confucianism as a justification for the social system created by them, Buddhism was highly controlled (Labbe, 2017, p.5).

As mentioned previously the Tokugawa government required every person to register at their local temple. Since different Japanese temples belonged to different sects of Buddhism this also meant that every person would now be attached to a certain sect of Buddhism (Labbe, 2017, p.6).

The Tokugawa government also had full control over those who became heads of temples. The temples were no longer only controlled by the sect they belonged to, but also and most importantly – they were now controlled directly by Tokugawa government that had a say in the hierarchy of Buddhist temples and clerical ranks (Labbe, 2017, p.8). The government even stripped the imperial family of power to give the clerics full recognitions by giving them purple robes (Labbe, 2017, p.7). Now only those who had proven themselves loyal to Tokugawa government could be awarded with a purple robe directly by the Tokugawa bakufu (Labbe, 2017, p.8).

In many ways monks who worked in temples would be the government’s officials. They would now spy on ordinary people to make sure that they did not belong to any sect that was not approved by the government. The temple’s registers of the time include information on each member of the households that belonged to their temple (Labbe, 2017, p.9).

During the Tokugawa period several shrines were built by Tokugawa or daimyō to honour a certain family member, usually the one who founded their domain (Labbe, 2017, p.11). Tokugawa Ieyasu himself has been enshrined at the city of Nikko (Labbe, 2017, p.11). Professor Lowy argues that Tokugawa shoguns have had such impact on religious aspects of

37 commoner’s lives made them seem divinely appointed rulers that were worth being worshiped (Labbe, 2017, p.12).

Now I would like to come back to Iroha Monben. Iroha Monben is written by someone called Tainin. It was published in Kyoto in 1763, almost hundred years after the Taiseikyō. Iroha monben talks about Kūkai, the Iroha poem and Dharma. Therefore I decided to talk about these subjects before I proceed to Iroha Monben.

As I have said earlier, Kūkai was a Buddhist monk and scholar. In pre-20th century documents he is often praised for the creation of the Iroha poem. This poem is used as an ordering of the kana syllabary. Iroha contains each syllable exactly once. It was written with Man’yōgana which is a phonetic use of Chinese characters. Therefore the person that has created Iroha used Chinese characters to write Japanese syllables (more on Man’yōgana in the chapter 4 of my master thesis).

The Iroha poem might have been inspired by the Nirvana Sutra. (Abe, 199) This is one of the possible translations of Iroha:

“Although its scent still lingers on, the form of the flower has scattered away

For whom will the glory of this world remain unchanged?

Arriving today at the younger side

Of the deep mountain of evanescent existence” (Translated by Pr. Abe) (Abe, 1999).

Komatsu Hideo revealed that the last syllable of each line when combined reveal a hidden sentence which can be translated as: “Die without wrongdoing”(Abe, 1999). Poem is written in classic 7-5 pattern (more on this pattern in the next chapter).

Iroha Monben consists of 38 questions all answered by Tainin. It is unclear where do the questions come from. It is possible that the questions might have been created by Tainin himself (Kawaguchi, 1994). Several of the questions touch on the subject of jindai moji, others focus on Iroha. Many of the questions are dedicated to the Chinese characters that Kūkai has allegedly used to write Iroha. Tainin goes on to tell which characters Kūkai has originally used to write different Iroha syllables.

Tainin claims that Kukai was familiar with jindai moji and the Iroha was originally written in Jindai moji as well. According to Tanin jindai moji existed long before Shōtoku Taishi, but Shōtoku taishi was the one who changed the official Japanese alphabet from Jindai moji to Chinese characters. jindai moji still exist but they are kept in secret (Kawaguchi, 1994).

Tainin goes on to talk about similarities between the Iroha and the alphabetical order in Siddham (script that was used to write Sanskrit in c.550-1200). He explains this with his

38 theory that the 47 dharma sounds used both in Japanese and Sanskrit were created by the goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami herself, and then two other Shinto gods called Onamuchi and Yagokoro made a language out of those 47 dharma sounds. That was a sacred language that was written with the jindai moji. That is why it easy to translate Iroha to Sanskrit (Kawaguchi, 1994).

It has held a high status in Japan since the ancient times (Kawaguchi, 1994). Some esoteric Buddhist sects in Japan practise writing of mantras and sutras in Siddham. That is also true for the Tendai sect that was originally found by Kūkai himself. Kūkai had a chance to study Siddham at the time he was visiting China (Abe, 1999). Kukai’s interest in Siddham had likely influenced a creation of kana as both Siddham and Kana happen to be abugidas.

The idea of a divine language can arguably be traced back to Kūkai himself. He wrote a few works on language where he expressed his somewhat esoteric thought on different aspects of languages. Kūkai was a true Buddhist who happened to live in times when the ancient regime had solidified its power by promoting Confucian values (Abe, 1999).

During his lifetime Kūkai has written several works, including one that is called “Voice, letter,reality”. In this work he argues that “everything in this world is a sign of a cosmic text”. (Abe, 1999, p.278). Kūkai writes “Vibrating in each other’s echoes are the five great elements. That gives rise to languages unique to each of the ten realms. All in the six sense fields are letters, the letters of the Dharmakāya, which is reality” (Abe, 1999, p.278).

Therefore according to Kūkai all sorts of things and events are signs or letters, while reality and world is a text. Abe (1999) notes that “For Kūkai everything that differentiates itself from anything else – is a letter. All sensory precepts of the six sense fields – sight, sound, scent, taste, touch, and concepts (the sixth organ is mind) are letters”.

In “Voice, letters, reality” Kūkai also talks about the cosmic order. According to him “Letter makes possible articulation of the world by names – that is the sign’s work of dividing world into discrete parts and categories”. For Kūkai that means that letters give rise to cosmic order. (Abe, 1999, p.279). As we can see Kūkai uses the concept of “language” in a much wider sense than usual. However he also talks about sounds, voice and letters as they are used in language as a material for communication. On this subject he writes “Language derives from voice. Voice distinguishes itself in terms of long and short, high and low, straight and bent. These are called patterns. Those which manifest particular patterns are letters, which never fail to give rise to the names” (Abe, 1999, p.278). Names as we have seen previously divide the world into categories and give rise to the cosmic order.

I believe that this information is very relevant for the next chapter of this master thesis. When it comes to Iroha Monben I believe that another part of “Voice, letters and reality” is slightly more relevant then the part where Kūkai talks about the cosmic order. The most

39 relevant for the discussion around Iroha Monben would be the part where Kūkai talks about Siddham.

In his “Introduction into Siddham” as well as in “Voice, letters and reality” Kūkai states that all letters derive from the letter A. According to Kūkai “A” transforms itself into twelve essential vowels and semivowels which then join themselves with thirty five consonants to produce 408 letters” (Abe, 1999, p.279). “A” is also a first letter of Siddham.

Kūkai claims that letter A can show us how all things in this world are nonarising. That is because “all languages depends on names, names arise from letters” and when people hear a language spoken they hear sound A “underlying all syllables”. Letter “A” stands in the origin of all letters as a mark of absence (Abe, 1999, p.278). In the same way all things consist of different causes and conditions. And all of those causes and conditions again consist of causes and conditions. There is no origin. That shows us that everything in this world is “nonarising” in its nature.

Kūkai not only claims that letter “A” represents the fact that everything in this world in “nonarising”. He also states that not only letter “A” but all twelve essential vowels and thirty five essential consonants in Siddham have a sacred meaning to them. Kūkai‘s work “Essential Characters of the Sanskrit Siddham Script and Their interpretation” where he talks about meaning of those vowels and consonants is based on a translation of a manual on the Sanskrit phonetic system. Here are some of the examples of Siddham vowels/consonants and their meanings:

“A” – originally nonarising, “Ā” – quietude, “I”– senses, “Ī” – disaster, “Ka” – action, “Kha” – space, “Ta” – arrogance, “Tha” – longevity, “Pa” – primary truth, “Pha” – foam, “Ya” – vehicle, “Ra” – taint etc. (Abe, 1999, p.292).

Kūkai’s writing seems somewhat esoteric. So does Iroha Monben which also focuses mainly on Kūkai and the sacred meaning of language. Although Iroha Monben is fairly different from Kūkai’s works I decided to first briefly talk about Kūkai and his thoughts on language and then proceed to Iroha Monben. Now as I am done with that I suggest that we take a look at Iroha Monben itself. As I have said earlier Iroha consists on thirty eight questions.

What follows in my translation of the Iroha Monben as found in Kawaguchi (1994).

Question number one: “Do we know for sure if the 47 syllables that are used in Iroha were created by Kōbo Daishi”. Tainin’s answer is – “We cannot know for sure”.

Question number two: “If so, who else do you think could have made the Iroha?” Tainin’s answer is – “Originally, the 47 sounds were made by Amaterasu Ōmikami, then Onamuchi and Yagokoro made a language out of it, and this language was written with Jindai moji. This way of writing was called Jinsho 神書. Then Kobo Daishi memorised the 47 sounds and

40 wrote them down using the Chinese cursive script that was popular in Tang China at the time. People mostly are not familiar with this information”.

Question number three: “Can I please hear more about the information that you just gave me”. To answer Tainin says that the contemporary Iroha was once created by Shinto Gods and since then it has never undergone any changes. Therefore the contemporary Iroha is the exact copy of old Iroha, that Gods have created”.

Question number four: “The Chinese characters first came to Japan at the time of Emperor Ōujin. Can you call Chinese chatacters jindai moji?”. Tainin’s answer is: “No, Chinese characters are not Jindai moji, which existed in Japan before Chinese characters were adapted from China”.

Question number five: “Why do you think that Japan had its own alphabet before the Japanese people started to use the Chinese characters? If such an alphabet has ever existed we would have known about it. Also every literary work we have left from the ancient times suggests that there had never been any alphabet in Japan before Chinese characters. How do you explain that?”. Tainin’s anwer “Nihon shoki suggests that during the ancient times, the Japanese people used something called shizen moji (natural characters?). If the Japanese people in ancient times did not have any language and script, they would not have called the Shinto Gods for “Amaterasu” but would have instead called her something like “Big Sun goddess”.

Question number six: “It is now clear for me that people in old Japan had their own alphabet. But don’t we know about this alphabet? ». Tainin’s answer: “Scrolls written with jindai moji can still be found in some old Shinto shrines. But they are kept a secret”.

Question number seven is – “Is it true that China did not have an alphabet in ancient times?”. Tainins’s answer: “That is true. No alphabet has existed in ancient china before Cangjie. He was a historian at the Yellow emperor’s court. He looked at the footprints of the birds and got inspired to create letters that would be similar to those footprints.

Question number eight is: “There are certain styles of writing Chinese characters that are somewhat popular now. For example – the seal engraving style of writing Chinese characters (tensho 篆書) and the scribe’s style of writing Chinese characters (reisho, 隷書). When were these styles of writing Chinese characters invented?” Tainin’s answer: “There are ten different ways to write Chinese characters, and these two styles are among those. We do not know who has made each of these styles. Today it is not unusual to use the Chinese cursive. Kobo Daishi also wrote with Chinese cursive”.

Question number nine: “Now I understand that the ancient knowledge about those ancient letters was lost at some point in Japanese history. People in our generation do not know about such letters. But I wonder if people generally could write those jindai moji symbols during the reign of the Emperor Ōujin? Tainin’s answer: “I do know that people could write

41 those symbols during the reign of Shōtoku Taishi. He was the one to change the official Japanese writing language into Chinese Characters and then Kobo Daishi wrote Iroha in Chinese characters using the Chinese cursive”.

Question number ten: “Were Japanese people familiar with kana before the Iroha?” As an answer Tainin goes on to say that the Chinese characters were brought to Japan by Ajiki and Wari from Paekhe.

Question number eleven: “Is there any evidence that Kobo Daishi was the one who made Iroha”? Tainin’s answer: “There is a copy of Iroha that is signed by Kobo Daishi. It can be found in Kandouji”.

Question number twelve: “If you look at the original Iroha some characters do not even look like the Chinese characters we know. Can you explain that?” Tainin’s answer: “That is because Kobo Daishi used a rare writing style. Those who are not familiar with this particular writing style will likely not be able to understand Kobo Daishi’s writing”.

Question number thirteen: “Is it true that the Katakana that is so popular today was once made by a scholar called Kibi no makibi?” Tainin’s answer is “That is what people say, but we do not have enough evidence to claim that that is true”.

Question number fourteen: “Is the old divine Japanese script that you have called for jindai moji similar to Siddham?” Tainin’s answer is “Yes, it it extremely similar to Siddham. That is why one can easily write Iroha with Siddham”.

Question number fifteen: “I have never seen an Iroha poem written with Siddham. If such a version of the Iroha exists please show it to us”. Tainin’s answer is “I understand. You need to understand that the first ever version of Iroha was written in jindai moji. Then Iroha was also written in Siddham. On the next page I have written Iroha with Siddham, please take a look at it. Also note that Iroha that is written with jindai moji is the same poem as the Iroha written in Siddham. Also, Iroha is going to sound the same no matter with which alphabet it is written”.

Question number sixteen: “Siddham is an alphabet that is used to write Sanskrit. How is it possible that Iroha will sound the same in Sanskrit as it sounds in Japanese?” Tainin’s answer: “Siddham consists of forty seven letters. These were transmitted to people by a sun deity. This deity is the same deity as Amaterasu Ōmikami. How is it possible you ask? First please take a look at Iroha. It consists of 47 symbols. So does Siddham. Don't you find such similarity to be a little mysterious? In my opinion this mysterious similarity can be explained by the dharma. But people generally do not realise that.”

Question number seventeen – “Both India, China and Japan have always used the sacred letters the Mahavairocana tantra is written with. Therefore these three countries are the sacred countries. What kind of letters are used in other countries?” Tainin’s answer: “Apart

42 from the three countries that you have named, there are also other countries that use the sacred letters. These countries are: Korea, Ryukyu, Taiwan, Tokyo and Vietnam. All of these countries also use the Chinese characters in addition to the sacred letters. There are also other countries such as Holland, Jakarta, Mongolia, Siam, and Cambodia. Those countries use horizontal characters. None of those countries use Siddham. In those countries the teachings and religions such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Shinto are unknown (do not exist). Therefore those nations have a different understanding of honour than we do. I want you to understand that India, China and Japan are somewhat supreme to other countries.”

Question number eighteen: “We call Iroha “the mother of letters”. That is because you can put different letters from Iroha together. That way you can write a special syllable. For example if you put Iroha’s letters «chi», «ya» and «u» together, and you will be able to write “chau” (read chō). You can do the same thing with Sanskrit. Why is that? Tainin’s answer:“Yes, it is true that when you write Siddham you can put different letters together in the same way. Sanskrit and Japanese are rather similar. For example “sora” means “sky” both in Sanskrit and in Japanese. “Hata” also means the same thing in Sanskrit and in Japanese. One can find many examples that can prove that Sanskrit and Japanese are similar. Chinese however is not that similar to Sanskrit.”

Question number nineteen: “I have a question about Iroha. Which character do you use to write syllable “I”? Is it 似 or 伊? Tainin’s answer is “You write it with character 似”.

Question number twenty: “I have another similar question about Iroha. Which character do you use to write syllable “he”. I have heard various theories that claim that you can write it either with 辺 or 閉 or 反 or 皿. Which one is right?” Tainin’s answer is «I believe it is 反. My source is Jikōroku (字考録).

Question number twenty one: “I have another similar question about Iroha. Which character do you use to write syllable “to”? Is it 土 or 止?”. Tainin’s answer is “You write it with 土”.

Question number twenty two: “I have a question about syllable “ri”. Is it true that Kukai has taken the element 旁 from character 利 and used it to write “ri”?» Tainin’s answer is «That is unlikely the truth. Kukai has written the whole character 利 with cursive writing style, he did not just write element 旁. My source is Unsendo (雲石堂)?”.

Question number twenty three: “Is it true that Kūkai wrote syllable “re” with character 礼?” Tainin’s answer is “Yes, it is correct. Unsendo says otherwise but Unsendo is mistaken. Unsendo says that he wrote “re” with the character 列.

Question number twenty four: “Is it right to write syllable “so” with character 所?. Tainin’s answer is “No, you should write it with character 豊”.

Question number twenty five: “I have heard that you can write syllable “tsu” either with character 徒 or 津 or 鬥 or 門. Which one is right? Tainin’s answer is: “You should write it with 鬥”.

Question number twenty six: “Is it correct to write syllable “wo” with the character 於? I have heard that you can also write the syllable “wo” with a different character. Tainin’s answer is “In this case that different character is just a non-standard version of 於. I would suggest you use 於”.

Question number twenty seven: “I have heard that you can write the syllable “ko” either with character 古 or with the character 己. Which one is right? Tainin’s answer is: “You should write it with 己

Question number twenty eight: “Which character do you use to write the syllable “e”? Is it 江? Tainin’s answer is “Unsendo says that it is wrong to write the syllable “e” with character 衣. You should rather write it with 江. According to Kaihara Atsunobu it is also possible to write the syllable “me” with character 兄”.

Question number twenty nine: “Is it correct to write syllable “me” with the character 女?” Tainin’s answer is “According to Sōsho Inkai (草書韻会) “me” should be written with 女. It is wrong to write it with 妙”.

Question number thirty: “Can you explain the situation with the syllable “we”? Tainin’s answer: “As you might know there existed two different ways to write this syllable. The first way to write the syllable “we” is as follows: ゑ. This letter (letter ゑ) was originally the character 行 written in cursive style. There is another way to write the syllable “we”. This another way to write “we” was originally character 草 written in the cursive style. My source is Iroha Jikōroku (字考録).

Question number thirty one: “I could not find the character 京 in Kōbo Daishi’s work. The character京 exists in contemporary Japanese, but it seems as if Kōbo Daishi did not use this character. Can you explain that? Tainin’s answer: “We do not know for sure if Kodo Daishi has ever used this character. After all, Kyoto is one of the words we write with this character and Kyoto is a beautiful capital of Japan where angels live. Note that in Tenri paper (天理抄), the character京 is used many times”.

Question number thirty two: “«Tenri paper and Mizomo maki (童蒙抄) state that Kobo Daishi went to Taejingu shrine (太神宮) where he met Gods and they have told him all four wisdoms of the Nirvana sutra (涅槃経, 四句の文). What do you think about this rare theory?” Tainin’s answer is “I do not believe in it”.

Question number thirty three: “We know that Kōbo Daishi made his own choice to use Chinese characters to write Iroha. Do you think that it was reasonable of him to do so?

Tainin’s answer is “In China, Son Kyū (呉の孫休) made his own choice to create letters (商舁などの字). Ze-tian Wu-hō (唐の則天武后) made his own choice to create eigon (嬰崟). Min (明の人) made his own choice to create shūpan(秀幇). Kobo Daishi is a saint. Why would it be wrong for him to use Chinese characters to write Iroha? Besides, he did not create Iroha. And remember that he had only taken Chinese characters that were already known from the old times and written them with a cursive style. Other than that, he did not change anything”.

Question number thirty four: “When it comes to Katakana is it correct to write hen only or should one write the whole Chinese character?” Tainin’s answer: “According to 寂本 in order to write Katakana you should take a part of a Chinese character that has the least number of strokes. It is not always hen that has the least amount of strokes”.

Question number thirty five is “In Katakana there are four special letters such as ン, 「, 寸. I wonder how these were written in old times.” Tainin’s answer: “In old times people used certain Chinese characters instead of those letters. In the times when Manyoshu was written, characters such as 武、事、時、and 為 were used instead of those katakana letters.”

Question number thirty six: “In Japan when children learn to write, the first thing they have to learn is Iroha. I wonder what Chinese children learn first when they learn to write.” Tainin’s answer: “They learn 25 letters of Chieftain (知礼也の二十五字である)”.

Question number thirty seven: “Is it true, that every syllable of Iroha has a secret meaning to it? If it is true please explain what the sacred meaning of those syllables is?” Tainin’s answer is “Yes, every syllable of Iroha does have a secret meaning to it. In fact every single word that was created in the age of the Gods has a special sacred meaning to it. As I think we all know, it is not easy to translate a text from one language to another. For example an ordinary person will not be able to translate Sanskrit into Chinese. When Sanskrit is translated into Chinese, a Sanskrit word for Buddha can be translated to Chinese as 能仁. In Japanese this word is read nōnin and it is one of the ways to say Buddha but it is not a direct translation of the Sanskrit word for Buddha. This is an example of how a translator does not always need to translate a word directly. When Shōtoku Taishi transcripted the original Iroha to Chinese characters, he did not do a direct translation of the original sacred meanings that each of the syllables had in the old times. Instead, he has written a poem with Chinese characters and kungana.

Question number thirty eight is «Can you explain what kind of letters are the kungana that you are talking about? What can we learn from the sacred meaning of those?». Tainin’s says: “I will now explain it to you in detail, so please pay attention”. However instead of explaining he goes on to write a text that can roughly be transcripted as follows:

“hi-fu-mi-yo-i-mu-na-ya-ko-to-mo-chi-ro-ra-ko-shi; ki-ru-yu-I; ri-wa-nu-so; wo-ta-ha-ku; me- ka-u-o; e-ni-sa-ri-be-te-no-ma-su; a-se-e; ho-re-ke; hitoha; fukumu; michiarite; yoki; inochi;

45 mukihi; naari; wo; yato; kotoha; tomogaraku; motono; chinaminari; kokoro; haara; hare ko ri; shinobe; kimiha; aru; jiyu; takanikuraishi; yashi; kareha; watakushini; nusuminashizo; wotokoha; tagayashi; hatauchiku; sagishi; meha; kogahiniumiworu; ieha; nigiha; hisa; kayakuse; kotoariha; mubeniterase; horiha; mamori; susume; ajikikotoha; semetaese; hoshimito; warewo; wakeshire”.

Then he goes on to say “As you can see the sacred meanings of the Iroha syllables have a connection to Confucianism, Buddhism, Shinto and the art of medicine. Therefore Japanese people should have deep respect for Iroha. In our time, many people discuss the Iroha but it seems as if nobody tries to explore the history of Iroha. I am extremely grateful that by the blessing of Amaterasu Ōmikami and Onamuchi I was able to write this work on Iroha. It is up to you to decide it you agree with what I have written in my work or disagree with it.” (Kawaguchi, 1994).

As we can see Iroha Monben consists of thirty seven questions. Tainin asks if Kūkai has made the Iroha. According to Tainin, the 47 syllables used in Iroha were originally transmitted by Amaterasu Ōmikami.Tanin claims that Iroha was not only created by Gods but it also has never undergone any changes.

Tainin is convinced that Jindai moji is an ancient Japanese alphabet that existed before Chinese characters. According to him, Jindai moji still exists but it is kept a secret. Tainin claims that Jindai moji was common knowledge in Japan before Shōtoku Taishi changed the official Japanese writing from jindai moji to Chinese characters. According to Tainin, it is very easy to write Iroha with Siddham, and the alleged reason for that is the fact that jindai moji is also very similar to Siddham.

When he answers question number fifteen Tainin says “On the next page I have written Iroha with Siddham, please take a look at it”. I have taken a look at the old copy of the original Iroha Monben that can be found in the digital library of the Aichi prefecture. Tanin’s version of Iroha written with Siddham can be found on page 18. At the end of Iroha Monben (last pages) he has also written examples of different Chinese cursive writing styles.

Tainin claims that because Holland, Jakarta, Mongolia, Siam, and Cambodia use horizontal letters, and do not use either Chinese characters or Siddham, those countries have a different understanding of honour “than we do”. He then goes on to say that Japan, China and India are generally superior to other countries.

Tainin is not very consistent when he answers questions about Iroha. He cites Unsendo as his source yet criticizes it. When it comes to questions number 26 and 30, Tainin uses characters that are not in use in contemporary Japanese, so I have to include pictures of them instead of writing them.

Overall one can say that Tanin has a rather esoteric view of Iroha and language in general. He also has a somewhat nativist agenda to his work. It is especially evident in the part where he claims that Japan, China and India are superior to other countries.

Thirteen years after its publication, Iroha Monben was discovered by other scholars and largely criticized by them. As one of those scholars (Ketōjin) has put it “My friend gave me that book and it was ridiculous. At first I decided that it would be best for me to just laugh of this book and then forget about it, but then I thought that there is just too much misinformation in this book and I decided to take action”. He was not the only one who decided to speak against Iroha Monben (Kawaguchi, 1994) However, Iroha did not receive as much attention as Taiseikyō did.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have taken a look at Iroha Monben which was published in Kyoto in 1763, eighty four years after the ban of Taisekyō. It was published by a man called Tainin who decided to write down thirty seven questions of unknown origin and then answer them. Most of the questions are about what kind of characters Kōbo daishi (Kūkai) originally used to write a certain syllable. However, some questions are about China and Chinese characters and some questions are about jindai moji. Tainin has a very esoteric and religious take on jindai moji as he claims that jindai moji was created by the Shinto Gods. He also claims that every word in the old Japanese language had a sacred meaning to it.

That reminds of me of Kūkai’s “Essential Characters of the Sanskrit Siddham Script and Their Interpretation” where he claims that every Siddham letter has a sacred meaning to it. Kūkai generally has an extraordinarily esoteric and interesting take on language as a concept. According to him “everything in this world is a sign of a cosmic text” (Abe, 1999).

Summary of the first four chapters of this master thesis

This is a summary of: Introduction chapter, “Jindai moji before Tokugawa period”, “Description of Tokugawa Japan. Taiseikyō” and “Iroha Monben”.

My topic for this Master thesis is: “jindai moji during the Tokugawa period”. According to the Yoshikawa bunkan encyclopaedia, jindai moji is: “Unique letters that are claimed to have existed in ancient times and were used to write Japanese language” (Kokushi daijiten, 1979, “jindai moji” entry). Many works on jindai moji had been written during the Tokugawa period. Therefore I decided to take a look on the works at jindai moji that were published during the Tokugawa period.

Usually it is assumed that Japan did not have its own writing system before Chinese characters were brought to Japan from the continent. This belief was questioned by Urabe Kanekata in 1301 when he published his work “Shaku Nihongi”. In “Shaku Nihongi” he claims that Japan had its own alphabet before the Chinese characters and the famous Iroha poem (that consists each Japanese syllable exactly once) must have been written with this alphabet. In 1367 Inbe no Masamichi published his work “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” where he agrees with Urabe Kanekata and claims that the ancient Japanese script was replaced by Chinese characters because of Shōtoku Taishi. According to Urabe, Shōtoku Taishi replaced jindai moji with Chinese characters on the official level.

As we can see, both of those works were published during the 14th century. Somehow no works on jindai moji were published during the 15th and 16th centuries (or those works are now lost). However in 1679 a group of people (Chō’on Dokai, hermit called Ikeda, Kyōgoku Kuranosuke, Nagano Uneme etc.) published “Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō”. This work claims that Shōtoku Taishi found some buried documents in a place called Awa-no-miya and these documents were written in jindai moji. Allegedly the documents contained an early record of Japanese history. Taiseikyō does not criticize Urabe Kanekata’s “Shaku Nihongi” or Inbe no Masamichi’s “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu”. However while “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” claims that Shōtoku Taishi replaced jindai moji with Chinese characters, on the official level the Taiseikyō seem to suggest that Shōtoku Taishi was not familiar with jindai moji until he found those scrolls in Awa-no-miya.

Taiseikyō was followed by “Iroha Monben” which was published in 1763 by someone called Tainin. “Iroha Monben” consists of 37 questions. All of those questions are answered by Tainin. Sometimes Tainin lists his sources, but he does not list any sources when he talks about jindai moji. A huge part of “Iroha Monben” is dedicated to jindai moji. According to Tainin jindai moji is an alphabet that was used in Japan before the Japanese people started to use Chinese characters. He is convinced that jindai moji still exists but people generally do not know about it. According to Tainin, jindai moji is somewhat similar to Siddham. Tainin suggests that people could write in jindai moji during the reign of Shōtoku Taishi. According to Tainin, Shōtoku Taishi had replaced jindai moji with Chinese characters on the official level. Tainin uses the term “jinsho” (神書). Jinsho seems to mean “an ancient Japanese language written with Jindai moji”. It seems Tainin agrees with both Urabe Kanekata and Inbe no Masamichi, but disagrees with Taiseikyō.

Neither “Shaku Nihongi”, “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu”, “Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō” nor “Iroha Monben” provide us with any examples of jindai moji.

Both “Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō” and “Iroha Monben” are fairly religious and quite controversial. The authors of Taiseikyō have previously published the five constitutions allegedly written by Shōtoku Taishi in which he tells Confusianists, Buddhists and Shintoists that each of their teachings is important for Japan in its own way. Iroha Monben seems to

48 suggest that jindai moji is older than Chinese characters. Tainin also claims that Japan, China and India are superior to other countries. It is very clear that Iroha Monben is more nativist in its nature than Taiseikyō.

Chapter 5: “Hotsuma tsutae. New interpretations of “Divine age narrative” in ancient texts”

Introduction

In this chapter I am first going to take a look at the history of the Japanese language. This chapter does not include any advanced analysis of the history of Japanese grammar, or history of the phonetic aspect of Japanese. However, the chapter does provide a short introduction into the history of Japanese writing systems. Jindai moji is an alleged ancient alphabet, therefore it is important to take a look at what kind of writing systems and writing styles were in use in Japan, in different periods of Japanese history (before the Tokugawa period and during the Tokugawa period). I am going to take a look at the following writing styles: the kanbun, the man’yogana, the sen’myogaki, the okototen, the wabun, the kanamajiribun, the sorobun and the gesaku.

Later in this chapter I am going to discuss Keichu who was a Buddhist monk and the first scholar to specifically research Japanese phonetics. The discussion around Jindai moji during the Tokugawa period was related to the nativism that flourished in 17th and 18th century Japan. The nativists based their theories on phonetic analyses of the ancient Japanese texts such as for example the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki. In this chapter I am also going to take a look at different approaches that the nativists took in order to “better understand” the Nihon shoki and the Kojiki.

Later in this chapter I am going to take a look at “Hotsuma Tsutae” which happens to be the third work on Jindai Moji that was published in the Tokugawa period. It was completed in 1777. The “Hotsuma Tsutae” has much in common with the Tokugawa nativists as the author of “Hotsuma Tsutae” also seems to be interested in the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki. The “Hotsuma Tsutae” presents a version of Japanese mythology (the “Age of Gods” chapter in both Kojiki and Nihon Shoki) that is radically different from the one from the Kojiki version and the Nihon shoki version. I am going to discuss in which way Hotsuma Tsutae’s version of Japanese mythology is different from that of the Kojiki.

Finally I am going to briefly explain the waka genre of Japanese poetry and briefly discuss what kind of waka was popular during the Tokugawa period. Also I am going to briefly discuass the status of Shinto in Tokugawa Japan. All of that is relevant because of the contents of the Hotsuma Tsutae.

Main part

Since the term jindai moji represents the alleged ancient Japanese letters, it would be unthinkable to discuss jindai moji without taking a close look at the history of the Japanese language. We would need to take an especially close look at which writing systems were used in the different periods of Japanese history for writing the Japanese language.

As Habein notes, it is generally agreed that the Japanese people did not have their own alphabet or any other writing system before they were introduced to the Chinese script (Habein, 1984, p.7). As we have already seen both Taiseikyo and Tainin would likely question this statement.

Scholars have not yet come to agreement as to when exactly the Chinese script was introduced to Japan, however it is likely that it happened sometime around the 4 th century A.C (Habein, 1984, p.7). Kojiki states that ten volumes of Rongo (Linyu, The analets of Confucious) and one volume of Senjimon (Chi’entzu wen, the thousand character classic) were brought to Japan in the sixteenth year of Emperor Ojins reign by a Korean scholar called Wari. Nihon shoki also mentions Wari.

Neither of the sources (Kojiki and Nihon shoki) is completely reliable from the history perspective as both sources blend Japanese legends with facts when it comes to describing early periods of Japanese history (Habein, 1984, p.7).

Today scholars believe that the first introduction of Chinese characters was unlikely through Chinese books, but most likely was in the form of inscriptions such as those on swords and mirrors (Habein, 1984, p.7). It is important to note that it has been proven that at least some of the inscripted swords and mirrors that date from the fifth and sixth century were actually produced in Japan but likely inscribed by either Chinese or Korean people (Habein, 1984, p.8). One could ask, if Jindai moji had already existed in the 5th century Japan, why weren’t the Jindai moji symbols symbols inscripted on Japanese mirrors and swords instead of Chinese characters.

The tradition of writing Japanese in a writing style called “kambun” emerged sometime around seventh century. Writing kanbun continued to be popular throughout 19th century. The earliest text written in this style dates from the 7th century and can be classified into two groups: kinsekibun (inscriptions in stone or metal) and documents that did not survive but were included in some later chronicles dating from the 8th century.

The kambun style emerged largely because the Japanese people in the early periods of Japanese history were trying to write in Chinese. It is believed that the fact Japanese intellectuals were writing in Chinese influenced Japanese language in general, especially when it comes to vocabulary with many of Chinese loanwords being present in both Classical and Contemprorary Japanese (Habein, 1984, p.3).

Kanbun was not the only available style of writing the Japanese language. Man’yogana is a phonetic use of Chinese characters to write Japanese. Man’yogana was largely used in Man’yoshu. In Kojiki, proper names are written in man’yogana.

Sen’myogaki is another writing style that was used to write imperial rescripts and norito since the 10th century. In the Sen’myogaki writing style, two sizes of characters were used. Small characters indicated inflections and particles.

During the 9th century, Buddhist priests developed yet another writing style called Okototen. Texts written with Okototen style would have diacritic marks so that it would be easier for a reader to understand with which particles the Chinese characters should be read.

There are also several other Japanese writing styles several of which were in use during the Tokugawa period. Japan in the Tokugawa period had no unified Japanese writing style. Different styles would be used for different purposes.

Yet it is possible to talk about the two “big” Japanese writing styles: kanbun and wabun. While kanbun was basically the Japanese language written with Chinese characters and Chinese word order, wabun was much closer to the spoken Japanese of the Heian period and it was written in Hiragana. Wabun writing style developed at sometime in the latter half of the 10th century.

During the Edo period every official document was written in kanbun. Wabun existed as well, but was used for different purposes and to some degree considered to be feminine. Other writing styles that had already developed before (or during) the Tokugawa period were:

The Kanamajiribun style was used in the late Heian period. Kanamajiribun is a mixture of Kanakana and Chinese characters with Japanese Syntax. The wakan kankobun style was developed during the Kamakura period. This writing style is somewhat close to classic wabun but it has larger number of Chinese loanwords. It was used in Heike Monogatari.

Sorobun is also a writing style developed in the Kamakura period. It is close to kanbun but has some inflections and honorifics.

During the Edo period the kanabun writing style was used for popular printing. The kanabun style uses some wabun language, some spoken language of the Tokugawa period and is written with hiragana and a few Chinese characters. The gesaku writing style emerged in Edo in the late 18th century. Gesaku was a new entertaining prose literature that used dialects. The gesaku writing style used quotation marks.

The Tokugawa period saw the rise of the early modern language studies. However the first scholar to specifically research the Japanese phonetic system was Keichu (Murphy, 2009, p.66).

Before the Tokugawa period, elite samurai and aristocrats used the kanazukai (study of ancient use of the script) by Fujiwara no Teika for interpretations of the ancient texts (Murphy, 2009, p.67).During the Tokugawa period, the middle class emerged. Scholarship was now also popular among the middle class, which led to several scholars to introduce new methods of studying Japanese phonetics. Keichu criticized Fujiwara no Teika’s method of studying the the ancient use of the script as he found that the ancient texts Keichu had studied for his commentary of Man’yoshu did not always fit into the system that was proposed by Fujiwara no Teika (Murphy, 2009, p.68).

Keichu is considered to be the father of Kokugaku, a nativist and anti-Buddhist movement that immerged in the second half of the Tokugawa period. It is worth noticing that Keichu was praised by several prominent Kokugaku scholars regarding the fact that Keichu was a Buddhist. Keichu was also praised by Hirata Atsutane who had has published several works on jindai moji. I am going to talk more about Kokugaku and Hirata Atsutane in the next chapter.

The third work on jindai moji that was published in the Tokugawa period is called Hotsuma tsutae. It was first distributed in 1760 and completed in 1777 (Morrow, 2014, p.10).

It is a poem that consists of more than ten thousand lines. The poem is written in a repeated 5-7 meter (Morrow, 2014, p.10). Each line is written both in jindai moji (with furigana transcription to it) and in Chinese characters. The author claims that he has deciphered and translated the poem was originally written in jindai moji to Classical Chinese. Supposedly he found the original document during the 1740s (Morrow, 2014, p.10). Hotsuma Tsutae is possibly the longest existing text written in jindai moji. It also seems to be Japan’s first epic poem (Morrow, 2014, p.10). The author claimes that the Hotsuma tsutae manuscript was found in Awa-no-miya (Morrow, 2014, p.14).

The poem focuses on Shinto mythology but at the same time provides the reader with an alternative take on this mythology. Hotsuma Tsutae seems to be loosely based on Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. However it opens with the biography of a female poet called Princess Waka. Princess Waka is of divine origin and is considered a kami, but she was abandoned (by her family) and raised by the Kanasaki family. Later she becomes a poet and popularizes the waka meter.

If Hotsuma Tsutae would strictly follow Shinto tradition it would likely open with a creation myth and not with the biography of a poet. From Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, we know that the creators of Japan: a god called Izanagi and a goddess called Izanami has abandoned their first child to the waves. This deformed child was female and her name was Hiruko. Hiruko is only mentioned as an abandoned deformed child in both Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Neither of them goes on to tell what happened to the abandoned child. Neither is Hiruko mentioned in the final tally of Izanaga and Izanami’s children (Morrow, 2014, p.11). Hotsuma tsutae seems

52 to claim that Hiruko was found by the Kanasaki family and later became a poet called Princess Waka. Later in the Hotsuma Tsutae Waka reunites with her birth parents.

While describing the upbringing of Princess Waka, the author of Hotsuma Tsutae also offers an explanation of how children were raised in the divine times, including the traditional childhood festivals. Later Hotsuma tsutae goes on to revise several other traditional Japanese myths. The author of Hotsuma tsutae claims that the poem provides readers with unique information about ancient Japanese civilisation.

Objectively speaking there can be no doubt that Hotsuma tsutae provides its readers with a unique take on Shinto mythology as it presents traditionally female goddess Amaterasu Omikami as a male prince. However, the poem has never received much attention neither by the court where it was presented during the rule of Emperor Meiji, or by the Japanese Academia (Morrow, 2014, p.14).

The aspect of the Hostsuma Tsutae that has received some attention by Western scholars such as Avery Morrow is how the emperor of Japan (or more precisely emperors of Japan) is presented there. Hotsuma Tsutae claims that the ancient emperors (amakami) possessed knowledge about a unique philosophical teaching called Way of Ise. This was a philosophy of governance and it was taught to the ruling class by the amakami. Hotsuma Tsutae also claims that ancient Japanese society had a remarkable class system based on the Way of Ise. In this system, it seems no misunderstanding between people of different social classes existed due to the proper education of people by the amakami (Morrow, 2014, p.12).

Amakami are according to Hotsuma Tsutae “a heart of a nation”. I believe such an approach to information about ancient Japanese society is closer to nativism then the ones presented by Taiseikyo and Iroha Monben.

As we have seen, Hotsuma Tsutae is loosely based on Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Both Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were of great interest to the Tokugawa period scholars. Early in the Tokugawa period the researches were far more interested in the Nihon Shoki than they were in the Kojiki. Early Tokugawa researchers would in fact compare both Kojiki and Nihon Shoki to Chinese Confucian classics (Burns, 2003, p.36). It was fairly difficult for those researchers to read Kojiki as Kojiki was inscribed in Chinese characters, as some of the characters were used phonetically and some others were used to signify grammar that was unknown to Tokugawa readers.

The researchers who explored Kojiki often did so from within Neo-Confucian paradigms of sicusive practise that were well established in Japan at the time (Burns, 2003, p.38). Some phrases would be singled out as “meaningful” while others would remain unread.

However during the Edo period, several scholars started questioning whether or not such early Japanese works as Kojiki and Nihon shoki exemplified Confucian norms. Among those

53 scholars were Itō Jinsai, Ogyū Sorai, Keichū, Kamo no Mabuchi and Kamo no Azumaro (Burns, 2003, p.38).

According to Susan Burns, Tokugawa readers were specifically interested in the Divine age section of early Japanese works. The Divine Age or jindai is the period of Japanese history “before the age of men”. “Age of men” starts with the birth of the emperor Jinmu. The divine age section opens with the beginning of heaven and earth and the appearances of three deities: Ame no Minakanushi, Takamimusubi and Kamimusubi. Then another two deities appear: Kami-ashikabi-hikoji and Ame no Tokotachi. The seven generations of deities appear, with Izanami and Izanagi as a part of the seventh generation. Izanami dies and Izanagi washes himself in a river that leads to the birth of several other deities among whom are Amaterasu and Susanō. Ninigi the grandchild of Amaterasu, marries an earthly deity. Emperor Jinmu is Ninigi’s grandchild (Burns, 2003, p.39). This is of course an extremely short and incomplete description of events depicted in early Japanese texts.

During the Tokugawa period, Kojiki was interpreted several times, with interpretations sometimes being highly Confucian and based on Nihon Shoki. Tokugawa scholars interpreted Divine age narratives in several different ways. For example, the so called Suika Shinto sect of Yamazaki Antai suggested that Nihon Shoki’s opening passage “when heaven and earth were not yet separate” expresses that “the universe consists of the single principle” (Burns, 2003, p.42). A scholar called Hokuseki had a completely different approach to the ancient Japanese texts. He argued that Kojiki should be read phonetically and kami written with a character for deity would only mean “above” and the character for heaven should be understood as sea (ama). In his interpretation, Kojiki was a purely historical document that described a history of the ancient court (Burns, 2003, p.48). But most importantly studying ancient Japanese language was now viewed by several scholars as a way to detect “historical and cultural difference” between Japan and other cultures (mostly China).

As we can see, studying the ancient Japanese texts was actively happening in the Tokugawa Japan and different scholars had different approaches to those texts. It is not at all surprising that discussion around Jindai moji appeared during this time as texts featuring the ancient Japanese language and the Divine age were now viewed as an important source of information about cultural and linguistic differences between Japan and China (Burns, 2003, p.52). Both Taiseikyō, Iroha Monben and Hotsuma Tsutae can possibly be seen as interpretations of the ancient Japanese texts. Taiseikyō can to a degree be seen as an interpretation of Shōtoku Taishi’s writings, Iroha Monben is an interpretation of Iroha, while Hotsuma Tsutae is yet another interpretation of Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. And all of those works provide us with some “forgotten” information about the Divine age.

Later in this chapter I would like to take a look at another rather nativist subject in Hotsuma tsutae – Kotodama. But I believe that since Hotsuma tsutae largely focuses on Shinto, it would be reasonable to first take a look at what kind of role Shinto played in Japan during the Tokugawa period. It has been argued that during the Tokugawa period Shinto was

54 somewhat weak (Labbe, 2017, p.16). However, as we have seen in previous chapters, Confucianism has been remarkably powerful through this period of Japanese history. Suika Shinto sects for instance, suggested a Confucian interpretation for Nihon Shoki.

Overall it can be said that confucianists of Tokugawa Japan sympathized more with Shinto then with Buddhism. Confucianism was not exactly a religious teaching it was more of a school of thought. However, if the confucianists felt a need to deepen their religious sentiments Shinto was a perfect religion to turn too. Never the less Shinto was important for the nation seen it was since as the only authentically Japanese religion (Labbe, 2017, p.15). Second – Shinto could benefit from the Confucian philosophical teachings and therefore was easier to control than, for example, Buddhism.

Hayashi Razan, an influential scholar and advisor to the second Tokugawa shogun – Tokugawa Hidetaga – was convinced that advertising the unity of Confucianism and Shinto was the perfect was for the Shogunate to fight militant Buddhism. Hayashi Razan was in a way specialising in Confucianism. He had a great appreciation for the works of another scholar – Fujiwara Seika, who had lived approximately one hundred years earlier.

Both Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan must have had a very deep understanding of the power of military Buddhism as they both had lived (a part) of their lives during the Azuchi- Momoyama period when militant Buddhism had flourished In Japan.

Hayashi Razan has famously written that the “rise of Buddhism made people abandon the Way of the King and Shinto” (Labbe, 2017, p.15). He also argued that Shinto was to a degree just a local Japanese form of Confucian ideas (Labbe, 2017, p.16). He writes “Way of king transforms itself into Shinto and Shinto transforms itself into the Way of Confucianism” (Labbe, 2017, p.15). This view was largely supported by the Tokugawa government which has largely determined what kind of role Shinto has played in Tokugawa society.

Exactly as it was before the Tokugawa period, Shinto in Tokugawa Japan was centered on the worship of various deities. During the Tokugawa period the idea that Shinto and Confucianism are easy to combine and can exist in harmony has found its way into education.

It is no coincidence that the author of Hotsuma tsutae decided to dedicate a big part of his work to the concept of Kotodama. That is because as we have seen he had already dedicated another part of his work to Shinto mythology since Kotodama is often seen as a concept deeply connected with Shinto.

The concept of Kotodama is somewhat simple yet incredibly complicated if one seeks to fully understand it. The word Kotodama derives from «koto» - thing, and «tama» soul. Kotodama is a belief that words can be so powerful that it is possible to make an idea in a human brain come true just by verbalising it (Hara, 2001, p.280).

It has been argued that the foundation for the Kotodama concept was animism represented in Shinto (Hara, 2001, p.282). However such an approach can be problematic for several reasons.

The word Kotodama has been known since the Nara period. However the meaning of the word “kotodama” has changed several times. Originally the word “Kotodama” stood for the divine power of Shinto gods (kami) in prayer offered to them (Hara, 2001, p.281). Then its meaning has changed. For some time the meaning of the word kotodama was “souls and spirits in a ritual prayer to Shinto gods”. Then finally the meaning of the word changed into the meaning this word has today.

It is reasonable to think that at the time Hotsuma tsutae was written the word “Kotodama” already had approximately the same meaning as it has in contemporary Japanese.

Kindaichi has argued that in contemporary Japanese the word “kotodama” has three different meanings. In this case I believe that it would be possible to say that the word “kotodama” represents three different concepts. The first concept is, as mentioned earlier that an idea can come true if it has been verbalised. The second concept is that such power already lies in some particular expressions and poems. The third concept is that such power lies in each word inherited from ancestors (Hara, 2001, p.281).

It has been pointed out by several scholars that just as Shinto is a uniquely Japanese religion, Kotodama also seems to be a uniquely Japanese concept (Hara, 2001, p.281). As we can see the author of Hotsuma tsutae purposely focuses on concepts that can be seen as uniquely Japanese yet all of those concepts the ones that he chooses to mention seem to be somewhat connected to religion. He makes an artificial connection between waka and Shinto Gods.

Waka poetry has been known since the age of Kojiki. The first rather modern style waka that has come down to us is the fourth poem number four in Man’yoshu. This poem seems to be written to honour the imperial hunt. The poem is as follows:

“tamakiharu uchi no ouno ni uma namete

Asa fumasuramu sono kusafukano”

This poem is not a straightforward sentence. Some scholars have argued that such a rhythm has unlikely existed when the poem was written. This type of inversion that is relatively common in Man’yoshi can also be seen in this poem (Morris, 572, 22).

An important characteristic of all Man’yoshu poems is the 5-7-5 meter, that in other words can be called the five seven pulse. To achieve this rhythmic effect that in Japanese is called go-shichi-cho one should either break the poem at the juncture favoured by syntactic inversion or perform another action that will help the poet archive a rhythm that can be described in the following: 5-7 pause, 5-7 pause, 7. (Morris, 1989). Otherwise waka comes in

56 different forms such as choka and tanka. In order for a waka poem to be called choka it should consist of 5-7 phrases repeated at least twice and then end with a 5-7-7 ending”. Tanka often has a 5-7-5/ 7-7 rhythm to it (Morris, 1989).

Tachibana Moribe, a scholar who lived in Japan during the Tokugawa period has formulated a relatively easy recipe for how to write a Man’yoshu style waka poem. According to Moribe “When you compose your waka poem you seek to express something you have in your mind. Therefore your poem will have to break depending upon the thing or matter involved. It will break after the fourth ku (phrase) or otherwise the second. We can see it in all ancient poems (Morris, 1989).

In the beginning of the Tokugawa period waka poems were not very fashionable. However that changed in the late half of Tokugawa period. Satiric waka become especially popular in cities such as Edo and Osaka. Also as Avery Morrow has noted, “Waka meter of the Man’yoshu was gaining prominence in the eyes of philologists as a window into ancient “purely Japanese” mentality” (Morrow, 2010, p.11). This must be the exact reason why the author of Hotsume Tsutae chooses to talk about it. In 1742 a writer called Kada no Arimaro published his essay Kokka Hachiron (Eight essays on Japanese poetry). In Kokka Hochiron Kada no Arimaro seems to claim “pure Japaneseness” is only express in the traditional Japanese poetry and not in the other genres of the contemporary Japanese literature. He writes “poetry alone uses the natural sounds of our country” (Flueckiger 2010, p.151).

As mentioned earlier according to Hotsuma tsutae the waka rhythm was popularised by Princess Waka herself. If she preferred choka poems or waka poems is not specified by the author. One can easily start questioning the agenda behind the Hotuma tsutae. However it has been the only work that actually included examples of “Jindai moji alphabet”.

Conclusion:

In this chapter I have taken a brief look at the writing styles that were in use in Tokugawa Japan. I have also taken a look at Keichu and the early Tokugawa nativists, the waka poems and the status of Shinto in Tokugawa Japan. However my main focus in this chapter was the “Hotsuma Tsutae”, a work on jindai moji that was completed in 1777. The “Hotsuma Tsutae" is markedly different from both “Shaku Nihongi” which was published in 1301, “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” which was published in 1367, “Taiseikyō” which was published in 1679 and “Iroha Monben” which was published in 1763. That is because none of the aforementioned works provide the reader with any example of Jindai moji. “Hotsuma Tsutae” was the first work that “proved” the existence of Jindai moji by showing the reader the “actual” ancient symbols.

There is no evidence that can prove that the symbols Hotsuma Tsutae is written with are truly ancient. However, it is quite fascinating how the author of Hotsuma Tsutae was able to write a ten thouthand lines long poem with those symbols. The poem is written in a

57 language that the author calls the Woshite language. There is no indication that the Woshite language was actually used in ancient Japan, and most likely this language happens to be constructed.

Chapter 6: “Hirata Atsutane and Kanna Hifumi den”

Introduction

This chapter is dedicated to a famous Tokugawa period scholar called Hirata Atsutane. More specifically, the chapter is dedicated to Hirata’s take on jindai moji. However, first I am going to take a brief look at the Kokugaku movement which Hirata Atsutane was a part of. Keichu whom I have mentioned in the previous chapter was highly praised by some Kokugaku scholars. However, Keichu is considered one of the early Tokugawa period nativists, while in the times of Hirata Atsutane the nativist Kokugaku movement was in the full bloom.

There is a very important connection between the Kokugaku movement and Jindai moji as several works on Jindai moji (such as for example “Taiseikyō”, “Iroha Monben” and “Hotsuma Tsutae”) talk about an ancient glorious way of living that is worth returning to. That is especially true for “Hotsuma Tsutae”. Kokugaku nativists also hoped to find a “true Japanese way of living” which would help contemporary Japanese people. There are a few other similarities between the works on jindai moji that were published in the Tokugawa period and the Kokugaku movement in general.

Hirata Atsutane, for instance, was both a famous Kokugaku scholar and wrote a work on Jindai moji. Before talking about Hirata Atsutane I am going to take a brief look at his teacher Motoori Norinaga who perhaps is the best known Kokugaku scholar. Then I am going to talk about Hirata Atsutane’s early works that clearly reveal his nativist and even somewhat nationalistic views. Hirata Atsutane, much like other Kokugaku scholar was extremely sceptical towards foreign influence on Japanese culture.

Then I am going to present Hirata Atsutane’s work called “Kanna hifumi den” which presents the so-called Ahiru script, which Hirata Atsutane believed to be the true Jindai moji. I am briefly going to present the disagreement between Hirata Atsutane and his college Yashiro Hirokata. Yashiro Hirokata believed that Jindai moji has a connection to the Ryūkyū Islands. Hirata Atsutane disagreed with him.

Lastly I am going to take a brief look at the relationship between Hirata Atsutane and a certain young man called Torakichi. Torakichi claimed to know the Jindai moji script as well as being able to write with it. Despite the fact that there was no evidence of Torakichi actually understanding what he was writing, he was largely supported by Hirata Atsutane.

Main part

The Eighteenth century in Japan saw a development of the so called Kokugaku movement, “National learning” as opposed to studies of China (“Chinese learning”). The Kokugaku was a lineage of scholars who actively engaged in studying ancient Japanese texts, such as the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki, hoping to find a “true Japanese way of living” which would help contemporary Japanese people to regain the elegance and moral of their predecessors who lived in ancient times. In other words they tried to glean a “native ancient Way” from the aforementioned Kojiki, Nihon shoki and other ancient texts. This “native ancient Way” was also referred to as “the Way of Gods” and “the natural Way of heaven and earth” (Nosco, 1990, p.9).

Finding “the Way” was an important task for the Kokugaku scholars, as contemporary Japanese people (according to Kokugaku scholars) were victims of malicious Chinese influence and therefore needed to change their ways in order to become as glorious as the ancient Japanese people. Kokugaku scholars were not just sceptical towards China. They were sceptical toward Confucianism specifically. However, there have been some similarities between the Kokugaku movement and Confucianism. The Kokugaku scholars saw ancient Japan as ideal, while the Confucianism typically situated the idealised realm in the times of Court of Duke of Chou. The Kokugaku scholars believed that every Japanese person could return to the ancient way of the Japanese people, because all Japanese people were originally born with the “true Japanese heart”. Confucianism believed that the seeds of goodness can be found inside every person and can be animated with beneficial consequences (Nosco, 1990, p.10).

Motoori Norinaga is perhaps the most famous Kokugaku scholar. He also happens to be a teacher of Hirata Atsutane, another famous Kokugaku scholar who wrote a work on Jindai moji (as I have mentioned earlier). However, I would like to first take a look at Motoori Norinaga. He was born in a merchant family, received a good education and became a physician. Apart from being a physician, Motoori Norinaga published several very influential works among which is the “Kojiki den” – his philological analysis of the Kojiki. The “Kojiki den” is an extremely ambitious philological exercise, possibly the most ambitious philological exercise ever undertaken in Japan.

Motoori Norinaga believed that the essentials of the “native ancient Way” were encoded within the Kojiki. Norinaga believed that the trancendental nature of Japanese Gods made them incomprehensible for the human intellect (Nosco, 1990, p.161). Accoarding to Norinaga, all human thought, creativity and production lay with Gods. He believed that questions of human existence were unanswerable for humans. Only a divine revelation could shed light on such matters.

Motoori Norinaga used term “natural Shinto”. Several other scholars of the time have referred to Shinto as a natural Way indigenous to Japan. However, Norinaga himself might have chosen the term “natural Shinto” in order to distinguish his own understanding of Shinto from others. According to Norinaga, the Japanese people in ancient times dedicated

59 themselves to “natural Shinto” and therefore “the land was at peace without government”. However in medival times customs of Japanese people changed under foreign influence, and people became deceitful. According to Norinaga, “natural Shinto”enabled ancient Japanese people to basically be moral without morality (Nosco, 1990, p.169).

Motoori Norinaga had around five hundred students and Hirata Atsutane was one of them.

The Japanese scholar Atsutane Hirata lived in the late Tokugawa period. He is one of the most relevant scholars when it comes to discussing jindai moji. That is because Hirata was one of the scholars who wrote a separate work on Jindai Moji that actually offered examples of the jindai moji alphabet.

Hirata believed in Japan’s superiority. He was also generally negative towards foreign cultures, much like his teacher and the Kokugaku movement in general.

One of his first works was titled “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu”. Edited in 1807, “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu” was written in response to foreign nations trying to contact Japan. Hirata writes that interventions with foreigners are harmful to Japan. Later he writes that foreigners visiting Japan in the past resulted in some negative changes in Japanese culture (Hansen, 2008).

Hirata considers the very moment when the Japanese people were introduced to the Chinese characters to be an example of such negative influence. Hirata writes: “When Oharida first sent the envoy to the Tang dynasty in the august spirit of the kami (Japanese Gods), and people were allowed to learn about the ways of that country, numerous people developed a longing to study those things, and so there came to be a lot of intercourse between the two countries… After that, we could not discern the trunk from the branches. Even our writing system was changed”(Hansen, 2008).

From this passage we can clearly see how Hirata is generally negative toward the Chinese influence on Japanese people. He clearly thinks that it would have been better if the intercourse between China and Japan had never happened. In this early work, Hirata is yet to talk about jindai moji in detail. However, he mentions that the authentically Japanese writing system was changed to the Chinese characters because of the contact between two countries.

It is possible to assume that when talking about “our own writing system” in “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu”, Hirata means Jindai moji. In “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu” the so called “our own writing system” is used as an important argument supporting Hirata’s negative view on foreign cultural influence. For Hirata Jindai moji is not only an ancient alphabet that once existed in ancient Japan. Jindai moji has a symbolic value. It symbolises the damage Japan has suffered from Chinese influence.

According to what he writes in “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu” the Japanese people of the late Tokugawa period were fairly fascinated by foreign cultures. That seems to have upset Hirata greatly (Hansen, 2008).

He writes:

“We strayed from the ancients laws. We praised all foreign practises and trinkets…. I am both angered and saddened” (Hansen, 2008).

Later he also criticizes the Japanese people for not having enough admiration towards their own country. Instead of admiring Japan, the Japanese people tend to admire foreign cultures. The Japanese people who admire the foreign cultures tend to think that their own country is not good enough.

Hirata writes: “Furthermore, the scholars attracted by foreign theories are always saying that our country is very small; in addition they say that Japan’s development is retarded” (Hansen, 2008).

The “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu” is not necessarily a work about jindai moji. In fact, in this work Hirata only mentions the jindai moji once. Also he does not even use the word “jindai moji” but rather refers to jindai moji as “our writing system”. However I would argue that this work is important to understand Hirata Atsutane’s views on foreign influence and the Chinese characters.

Also I would argue that for Hirata there is no real difference between the Chinese influence, Indian influence or Western influences. All foreign influences are equally bad. At least that seems to be true for his early work “Chishima no shiranami fuchizu”.

Hirata praises the Tokugawa leadership for implementing a policy of isolation from foreign contact. He argues that the leadership before Tokugawa did not recognise how noble Japan is compared to China and India. According to Hirata, Tokugawa leadership was much better in recognising that, and the policy of isolation has served Japan justice.

Here is Hirata’s answer to those who “criticise” Japan for being a small country: “A large stone of several jō is not as valuable as jewel of one square sun… No matter how large it is, an inferior country is an inferior country. No matter how small and narrow it is, a superior country is a superior country” (Hansen, 2008).

And here is what he had to say to those who criticized Japan for being too slow in development:

“Immediately after they are born, birds and beasts pick up grain and insects to eat. In the same manner, only two or three month after they are born… they can do almost anything by themselves… Comparatively speaking humans are certainly slow developing. Yet, this is the basis for why humans are better than beasts” (Hansen, 2008).

As we can see from these passages, for Hirata Atsutane, Japan was always superior. As Wilburn Hansen puts it: “For Hirata Atsutane, if Japan came first it was superior because It came first, if it came last, then it was superior because it came last” (Hansen, 2008).

In other words Hirata Atsutane was not exactly open towards any criticism of Japan. Therefore it would not be reasonable to expect him to be critical of any knowledge that he would gain about the jindai moji. It is especially true as the jindai moji arguably had a symbolic value for Hirata, as these alphabets were a glimpse of the Old Japan that existed before the foreign influences corrupted it.

I did mention earlier that Hirata Atsutane wrote a separate work on Jindai moji. That work is called “Kanna hifumi den” and it was edited in year 1823. Hirata also mentioned Jindai moji in his later work called “Senkyō Ibun” (written 1 year later) (Hansen, 2008).

In “Kanna hifumi den” he explains what Jindai Moji is to him.

Hirata writes that jindai moji was a writing system used by the kami (Japanese Gods) in ancient Japan before the Chinese characters came to Japan. According to Hirata Atsutane the ancient Japanese script was replaced with Chinese characters by Shōtoku taishi (574- 622).

In his work “Kanna hifumi den” Hirata takes a somewhat academic approach to the topic of Jindai moji. Hirata has collected every single example of what these ancient symbols could be. In fact Hirata has collected the whole fifty different examples of what he meant were the different types jindai moji (Hansen, 2008).

Later he goes on to discuss Yashiro Hirokata’s theory on Jindai moji. Hirokata assumed that Jindai moji had a connection to the Ryūkyū Islands. Hirata Atsutane is not necessarily agreeing with Hirokata. Hirata has his own theory on jindai moji. The theory is as follows:

One of Hirata’s findings was an alphabet from the Grand Shrine of Izumo. He titled the alphabet the “Ahiru/Hifumi” alphabet. From now on, I am going to refer to this alphabet as “Ahiru alphabet” for convenience purpose. Hirata recognised this alphabet as the true jindai moji. His main argument is that the alphabet is available in both block and cursive versions and that the alphabet consists of 47 symbols, which makes it possible to use it to write contemporary Japanese.

Hirata even published a sequence written in the block version of the alphabet. He called the sequence the “Hifumi Uta”. The two versions of the alphabet (the cursive version and the block version) were allegedly taken from two different sources. The fact that he could see the correspondence between the two alphabets made Hirata quite confident in his conclusion that “Ahiru” is the true jindai moji. However Hirata does not give enough information about his sources. He claims that one of his sources is the so called Hijin no sho

62 and another one is the secret source called Satsujin no sho. He does not fully explain what these sources are and where they can be found (Hansen, 2008).

“Ahiru alphabet” has its own order of the syllables. The order is as follows:

«hi»-«fu»-«mi»-«i»-«mu»-«na»-«ya»

«ko»-«to»-«mo»-«chi»-«ro»-«ra»-«ne»-«re»

«ki»-«ru»-«yu»-«wi»-«tsu»-«wa»-«nu»-«so»

«wo»-«sa»-«ha»-«ku»-«me»-«ka»-«u»-«o»

«e»-«ni»-«sa»-«ri»-«he»-«ta»-«no»-«ma»

«su»-«a»-«ta»-«we»-«ho»-«n»-«ke»

By looking at the alphabetic order of the “Ahiru/Hifumi alphabet” one can easily see where the alphabets name comes from. The alphabet does contain graphic elements, fairly untypical for both kana alphabets, such as circles. That resulted in some scholars, for example Nobutomo Ban claiming that “Ahiru Hifumi” is way too similar to hangul and rejecting Hirata’s theory. Hirata in turn criticized his detractors for having too much support for a kana syllabary (Hansen, 2008).

The alphabet does actually have a symbol for “n”. That is although in Old Japanese the sound that would usually be depicted by corresponding katakana letter ン in the contemporary Japanese would not be separated from the syllable “mu” normally depicted with katakana ム.

At some point in his career Hirata Atsutane met a young man called Torakichi. Torakichi completely changed Hirata Atsutane’s vision of Jindai moji. Before he met Tokakichi, Hirata Atsutane assumed that Jindai moji were preserved either by people who lived in the mountains, or kept in secret in some ancient shrines (Hansen, 2008, p.132). Hirata hoped to find Jindai moji in the mountains as one of his students Satō Nobuhiro showed him an example of Jindai moji that allegedly was taken from the mountains.

However, Hirata Atsutane did not expect to meet a person who allegedly grew up with sanjin who lived in the mountains. There is no evidence that Torakichi did grow up among sanjin. But Hirata Atsutane for some reason believed everything that Torakichi was saying to him about Jindai moji.

Torakichi could read and write only a few Chinese characters. However with his calligraphic skills Torakichi was participating in entertainments in Hirata Atsutane’s salon. Torakichi would “draw” jindai moji that he had allegedly learned from sanjin, and then show them to the guests in the Hirata Atsutane’s salon. Torakichi even requested the best quality brush

63 and ink. Once, he even blaimed his poor performance before Hirata Atsutane’s guests on the quality of thee instruments (Hansen, 2008, p.132).

Torakichi himself could not read what he was writing. According to Torakichi, sanjin only taught him how to write the jindai moji symbols. Apparently they did not teach him what those symbols ment. Hirata Atsutane found this suspicious. However he did not doubt that Torakichi could write Jindai moji. Instead he suspected that Tokakichi lied to him about not knowing what those meant (Hansen, 2008)

Torakichi also described his training that he received from sanjin. He claimed that for hand training he was told to hold fine sand in his hand and practise drawing circles in it. When he mastered the circles he was requested to draw triangles. Then he learned the characters. As Torakichi has said himself “The teaching method had me learn one character at a time, along with all its alternate forms” (Hansen, 2008, p.133). According to Torakichi, sanjin used the same kind of brush, ink and paper that were used by common Japanese people.

Torakichi also wrote quite a few protective amulets and magical kuji. Hirata Atsutane apparently had no doubt that all of those were a representation of Torakichi’s knowledge of the “Ancient Way”.

Conclusion:

In this chapter I have taken a look at the Kokugaku movement and Motoori Norinaga, as well as Hirata Atsutane’s take on Jindai moji and his relationship with Torakichi, who claimed to know the Jindai moji script.

Just like the author of “Hotsuma Tsutae”s, Hirata Atsutane actually provided his readers with some examples of the jindai moji. The alphabet that he believed was true jindai moji is called “Ahiru alphabet”. It consists of 47 symbols. Hirata Atsutane has trascribed all of them with kana. The Ahiru alphabet does have the symbol for “n” although in Old Japanese the sound that in contemporary Japanese would usually be depicted by the corresponding kana for “n” would not be separated from the syllable “mu”.

Chapter 7: “My trip to Akiruno, Akiru moji”

Introduction

In previous chapters I have discussed works on jindai moji that were published during the Tokugawa period in Japan. This chapter is a bit different. Previously I have taken a look at works such as: “Shaku Nihongi” (14th century), “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” (14th century),

Taiseikyō (17th century), “Iroha Monben” (18th century), “Hotsuma Tsutae” (18th century) and “Kanna hifumi den” by Hirata Atsutane (early 19th century).

There is also a work on Jindai moji, “Thoughts on the ancient letters” (文字考) that is written by Naozumi Ochiai. It was published in Tokyo in 1888. This is no longer the Tokugawa period, but the early Meiji period. During the Meiji period texts claiming to date from ancient times (these are also called koshi-koden) continued to appear. Japan was replete with conflicting ideas on the role of religion. However, Naozumi Ochiai’s “The thoughts on the ancient letters” does not claim to be an ancient text. Yet it includes some information on alleged ancient documents. One of those documents is an alleged ancient scroll written in Jindai moji. The scroll was allegedly once stored in a place called Akiru Jinja (currently located in the city of Akiruno).

I found this case interesting as the alleged scroll with jindai moji must have still been in Akiru jinja during the early Tokugawa period. I decided to take a trip to the city of Akiruno in order to gain some information about the so called Akiru moji from the locals. I went to the Akiru Jinja itself as well as to the Akiruno city museum. The latter provided me with yet another book on jindai moji, that I am going to discuss in the next chapter. In this chapter I describe how I found the information about the Akiru moji case, my trip to the city of Akiruno, as well as what kind of information on Jindai moji I was able to gain from the locals. I also take a close look at the article on Akiru moji that is loosely based on Naozumi Ochiai’s “Thoughts on the ancient letters”.

Strictly speaking this article as well as “Thoughts on the ancient letters”, is not very relevant to the discussion about jindai moji during the Tokugawa period, but I decided to include it anyway, as the article as well as “Thoughts on the ancient letters” seem to be an example of how the Tokugawa period theories on jindai moji survived until this day. It has been claimed that some of the contemporary occult literature has been influenced by the Tokugawa period texts about jindai moji (Morrow, 2014). However I would argue that belief in jindai moji in contemporary Japan also exists outside the occult circles. And it also happens to be based (at least to a degree) on Tokugawa literature on jindai moji.

Main part

I decided to search «jindai moji» on google.co.jp and go through the results. With this method I was able to find out that there has recently been held a jindai moji related seminar in Tokyo. I also found a few blogs where young people wrote about their travelling experiences. In one such blog, a person was writing about their trip to the city of Akiruno, where they visited the Akiru shrine (the Akiru Jinja).

The reason why I found this particular case interesting is because that person wrote that they have visited the shrine first, then went home, researched the shrine and found out that

65 the shrine is somehow related to jindai moji. Apparently they did not find any indication that the shrine was connected to jindai moji while they were visiting the shrine.

I was later able to find an article about how exactly the Akiru Jinja related is to jindai moji. According to the article, a short poem written in jindai moji was once stored in Akiru Jinja, but it was lost to fire in the first year of the Tanpei Era. The Tanpei Era started in December 1830; therefore the fire must have happened exactly in that particular month.

I do not hold this particular article as a reliable academic source since it is unclear what kind of connection the author has to Japanese Academia, if any. The same can be said about some of the sources he has used for his article. However the same can be said about a few other sources I have already analysed in this master thesis.

First of all, it is worth noting that the article is written by a someone called Suzuki Toshiyuki and published by Senzai Noryōku Kaihatsu Kenkyūkai (潜在能力開発研究会) which can roughly be translated as “Research group focusing on potential development”. In his article Suzuki refers both to an article written by a Japanese scholar Kiyohiko Ago (“The research of Jindai Moji”, published in 1996) and to a book called “Thoughts on the ancient letters” (文字考) written by Naozumi Ochiai and published in Tokyo in 1888. The last book can easily be accessed online (Waseda university’s database).

Naozumi Ochiai seems to be the first person to have ever mentioned the Akiru Jinja case in his work, even though at the time he was born (year 1840) the poem would have already been lost to fire.

Although Naozumi Ochiai’s book contains quite a few beautiful drawings of jindai moji, many of which illustrate the stones engraved with jindai moji, the book does not contain a picture of the poem that apparently has been stored in Akiru Jinja. Neither does it include a copy of its text.

The same cannot be said about Suzuki’s article as it includes both a picture of the poem and the full transcription of it. Suzuki does not provide his readers with information on which source the information has been taken from.

The poem seems to be written in an alphabet that can be classified as abugida. The author (either Suzuki or the other person who has done the transcription) has transcripted the poem with 62 hiragana symbols. The one who has transcripted the poem was unsure about certain syllables. The transcription is as follows: ka ko ho wi (かこほゐ) (where wi is uncertain) mi no ko tsu (みのこつ) no so no mi (のそのみ) (where so and mi are uncertain)

66 u ko ho yo (うこほよ) mi ha sa mo (みはさも) (where ha is uncertain) ma ta wi ko (またゐこ) (where wi is uncertain) su ta te no (すたての) ka mu tsu so (かむつそ) wa shi wi ko (わしゐこ) (where shi and wi are uncertain) no na tsu ku (のなつく) o ra chi wa (おらちわ) (where chi is uncertain) ko su su ha (こすすは) e o he ya (えおへや) nu ho re chi (ぬほれち) ke ho (けほ) (where ke is uncertain) tsu ko (つこ) te ha (ては) (Suzuki, 1999)

According to Suzuki, the exact translation of the text is unknown. However, he goes on to make his own translation of the poem which is as follows:

“Yachihoko, the God of battle has scraped the earth. That resulted in earth rearing and then the sea appeared”.

The original text in Japanese is as follows:「武勇の神」である「八千戈神」から『矛で大地を削ったら大地が轟き一つの海が出てきた。 (Suzuki, 1999)

Suzuki explains why he believes that the poem is about “Yachihoko, the God of battle”. The poem contains the word “okuninushi”. The name “Yachihoko” appears in the Nihon shoki where it is listed as another name for a God called Ōkuninushi. In the “Kojiki” Yachihoko is listed as a God/Goddess of Battle. Therefore Suzuki chose to use “Yachihoko, the God of battle” for his translation. (Suzuki, 1999)

Thereafter Suzuki expresses his concern that Yachihoko might have been one of the gods worshiped in the Akiru shrine. According to the official information on the Akiru Jinja website, the Gods worshiped in the Akiru Jinja are:

1. Ōmononushi-no-kami (大物主神) 2. Ajisukitakahikone-no-kami (味耜高彦根神) 3. Takehinatori kami (建夷鳥神) 4. Amenikoyane-no-mikoto (天児屋根命) (Nihon rekishiteki chimei taikei tōkyōto no chimei, 2002, “akiruno, akiru jinja” entry)

Ōmononushi-no-kami is a God that is worshiped in several Japanese shrines. Ōmononushi- no-kami is considered to be an ally of Goddess Ōkuninushi kami. He is also said to have a deep connection to the imperial family as his daughter became a wife of emperor Jinmu. (Nobutaka, Endo and Mizue, 2003)

Ajisukitakahikone-no-kami is a father of Taketsuhiko who is a God of Rain. It is said that in his early years Ajisukitakahikone-no-kami had a very powerfull crying voice, and he would cry so loudly that he would be taken on a boat and flooted across to Yachijima island just so he would stop crying. (Nobutaka, Endo and Mizue, 2003)

Takehinatori kami is mentioned in the Kojiki as the son of the God called Amenohito and according to the Kojiki he also is a ancestor of several other Gods. (Nobutaka, Endo and Mizue, 2003)

Amenikoyane-no-mikoto is said to be the God who, together with Futotama-no-mikoto held a specific ritual when The Goddess Amaterasu hid in Ama-no-Iwato (heavenly cave). (Nobutaka, Endo and Mizue, 2003)

As we can see Ōmononushi-no-kami is currently worshiped at the Akiru Jinja shrine. Okuninushi and Ōmononushi-no-nushi are considered to be allies. This is the most likely reason for why Suzuki believes that Okuninushi was once worshiped there at the Akiru Jinja as well. Unfortunately Suzuki does not explain much in his article and one can only assume what the reasoning behind this part of the translation would be.

Suzuki also gives interesting additional information on when and how the original poem was found and stored. According to Suziki it was excavated from a place called Ebisuoka in the 8th year of Keicho era (1603), added to Akiru Jinja’s collection of documents and then lost to fire in the year 1830. (Source)

In the end of the article Suzuki promises that if he finds more information on Akiru moji he will definitely report it.

Lastly, I would like to note that the article is not very objective. In the middle of it there is a quote from a Japanese scholar Kiyohiko Ago, where Ago praises the poem by calling it “matchless, gracious, and elegant”. (Suzuki, 1999)

In order to find more about the Akiru moji case I went to the city of Akiruno. It took me about two hours to arrive there from Shinjuku station. At the Musashi-Itsukaichi station (the city of Akiruno) I asked a local guide to help me find the temple.

The guide Mr. F got a little surprised when he heard where I wanted to go. “Are you sure you got the name right?” – He asked me. – “Are you sure it is not Kotokuji you want to visit?”. I answered that there is no mistake in the name and the place I want to visit is Akiru Jinja. He then explained to me that I am the first customer, who has asked him anything about Akiru jinja.

On the way to Akiru jinja I asked Mr. F it he has ever heard about the scroll with Akiru moji which apparently was once located at the temple. Mr. F said that he had never heard about Akiru moji.

As we approached the shrine we saw Mr. Y who happened to be what Mr. F called “an expert on Akiru Jinja”. Mr. Y was accompanied by a middle aged woman.

Mr. F asked Mr. Y If he had ever heard about “Akiru moji”. “Of course” Mr. Y replied “I was just talking about Akiru moji. Here, have the picture I printed out” (he gave me a sheet of paper with some printed pictures on it).

“What exactly are those Akiru moji?”, Mr. F asked.

“That is an ancient alphabet that was created at Akiru temple”, Mr. Y replied.

“Is it possible to see the original scroll?” Mr. F asked Mr. Y.

“I don’t think so”, Mr. Y replied. “It is locked inside the temple”.

“How old is the alphabet then?” the women asked Mr. Y.

“Well before the kanji came to Japan”

“That long ago? But how old exactly is it?” She asked again.

“Well, kanji came to Japan in the Nara period”, said Mr. Y.

“I know that” She said laughing.

“The Akiru alphabet was made before that”, said Mr. F – “Now, excuse us we have to go”.

With that said, Mr. Y and the woman left.

Mr. F promised to talk with Mr. Y about this topic later.

Mr. F and I went inside the shrine and the additional shrine buildings but no one was there, so we were unable to talk to people who are working in the shrine about Akiru moji.

The paper Mr. Y gave me had three pictures on it. The first one was the alleged picture of a text written in Akiru moji. It was the same picture Suzuki has used in his article. Another two pictures on the sheet were examples of other jindai moji, titled “Ahiru moji” and “Isukirisu moji”.

Mr. F has suggested that we go to other temples and shrines that are located at Akiruno and find out if they know anything about Jindai moji. It so happened that none of the employees at the other shrines and temple located at the city of Akiruno (the ones we were able to visit) had any knowledge about the topic of jindai moji.

On our way to Kotokuji temple we saw several kōshinzuka stones. Some of them possibly had bonji symbols engraved on them. One of the stones had two unusual symbols engraved on it. Mr. F did not know the meaning of those. According to him the stones were most likely made in the Edo period. Recently the stones were collected from the different parts of the city and put together.

I noticed that several stones we passed on our way to the temples and shrines had bonji symbols engraved on them. The Daihiganji temple had a bonji symbol painted on its roof but one of the temples employees knew what the symbol meant.

Mr. F got very tired and invited me to his home to drink tea with him and his wife. Mrs. F made a Chestnut desert and suggested that I go to the local document archive (五日市郷館土館) to find more about jindai moji.

I went straight there. At the Akiruno local document archive I met Ms.S who was specialising in old documents. She also happened to be the only employee (among those who had greeted me at the document archive) who knew what jindai moji was.

“These are the ancient alphabets that allegedly were created before kanji”, she said when asked about jindai moji by another employee.

Ms. S turned out to be somewhat sceptical toward the existence of Akiru moji.

“Are you sure that you read the name right?” She asked me. “Maybe you need Ahiru moji (Ahiru alphabet)? If it is Ahiru moji you want to know more about, then you need to go to Tsushima”.

I showed Ms. S the paper Mr. Y gave me at the shrine.

Ms. S called the picture suspicious (she used the word ayashii). She then made a copy of the paper for the record.

Ms. S. also provided me with an old book in somewhat poor condition. I suspect that the book was possibly eaten by book worms. The book happened to be printed in the year 1885 and was titled “Alphabet from heavenly kingdom” (天白王國古字).

The author had allegedly collected around 19 different examples of jindai moji from all across the country, and then decided to put them into one book. I will talk more about the book in the next chapter. Ironically, even though this rare book on jindai moji was stored in the local Akiruno city document archive, it did not contain any information on Akiru moji.

For me personally, the Akiru moji case remained somewhat mysterious, as I was not able to find any more information on Akiru moji or Akiru Jinja in general. Mr. F has contacted Mr. Y to ask where Mr. Y has gotten the pictures that he gave me. As a response Mr. Y has send Mr. F an article written by Toshiyuki Suzuki. The article happened to be the exact same article that I discussed earlier.

Conclusion:

In this chapter I have taken a break from discussing the Tokugawa period works on Jindai moji. Instead I shared the information on Akiru moji that I was able to find, as well as described my trip to the city of Akiruno in order to find out more about Akiru moji. Naozumi Ochiai was the first scholar to talk about Akiru moji in his book “Thoughts on the ancient letters” (文字考) that was published in Tokyo in 1888. Naozumi Ochiai’s book does not include a picture of a poem that allegedly was written with Akiru moji. According to Naozumi Ochiai, the poem was once stored in Akiru Jinja, but it was lost to fire in 1830. I found Naozumi Ochiai’s book through the article by Suzuki Toshiyuki which includes a picture of the poem. It is unclear where such picture came from. Suzuki transcripted the poem with 62 kana syllables. According to Suzuki’s translation of the poem the meaning would be “Yachihoko, the God of battle has scraped the earth. That resulted in earth rearing and then the sea appeared”. I was not able to find more information on Akiru moji in the Akiruno city document archive. The only employee in the archive who possessed knowledge of what jindai moji is, seemed extremely sceptical towards the existence of the so called Akiru moji. Suzuki’s does not go in great detail when explaining where he got this information. It would not be unreasonable to suspect that some of that information was simply made up by Suzuki himself. In that way his work is quite similar to the works on Jindai moji that were written during the Tokugawa period.

In the next chapter I am going to take a look at yet another work on Jindai moji, that I have found in the Akiruno city document archive. Ironically the book doed not contain a word about the so called Akiru moji.

Chapter 8 “Alphabet from heavenly kingdom” by Yoshizawa Uzen”

Introduction

As I have mentioned earlier, jindai moji can be studied in two different ways. One can choose to see jindai moji simply as a fraud that was created by the Tokugawa period scholars. Or one can choose to see jindai moji as letters that, although most likely not ancient, can be used to write Japanese language or a constructed language (such as for example Woshite language from “Hotsuma Tsutae”). If one chooses to mainly see jindai moji as a fraud that was created during the Tokugawa period, then the main questions would then be – why was it created during the Tokugawa period and what did the creators of Jindai moji discourses or alphabets want to say? What did they want the jindai moji they «found» to prove? However, if one chooses to see jindai moji as letters/symbols that can be used to write the Japanese language or a constructed language, one will also face some additional questions such as what kind of alphabets are Jindai moji and how are the jindai moji alphabets different from each other.

Earlier I have taken a look at works such a “Shaku Nihongi”, “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu”, “Taiseikyō” and “Iroha Monben”. Neither of these works included any examples of Jindai moji. Therefore studying these works can help answer questions such as “why was Jindai moji created in a certain time in Japanese history?” and “What did the creators of Jindai moji discourses or alphabets want to say?”. But they do not tell us anything about the alphabets themselves.

However works such as “Hotsuma Tsutae” and “Kanna hifumi den” by Hirata Atsutane include examples of jindai moji. Therefore studying these particular works can help answer both “what the creators of jindai moji discourses or alphabets wanted to say” and “what kind of alphabets are jindai moji”. In the previous chapter I have taken a look at the so-called Akiru moji (Akiru letters). The information on Akiru moji in based on a book by Naozumi Ochiai (“The thoughts on the ancient letters”). Despite being Meiji period (and not Tokugawa) the book includes both general information on jindai moji and examples of jindai moji, therefore I decided to include it in my master thesis.

In this chapter I am going to take a look at a book that I found in the Akiruno city document archive. According to the archive I am the first customer to have shown some interest for the book. The book has never been translated to contemporary Japanese or English. The book does actually mostly contain of pictures, and not text. The book was published during the late Tokugawa period in 1857, which makes it more relevant than Naozumi Ochiai’s “The thoughts on the ancient letters”. The book is markedly different from all of the other works on jindai moji that I have discussed previously. That is because this book does not contain much information on jindai moji in general (such is what is jindai moji, when were it created, why is jindai moji important) but rather just focuses on the jindai moji alphabets itself. The book provides the reader with 19 different jindai moji alphabets and additional information on them.

The book hardly has any relevance if one seeks to answer questions such as “Why was jindai moji created in a certain time in Japanese history?” or “What did the creators of jindai moji

72 discourses or alphabets wanted to say?”. But it is very relevant if one is interested in the jindai moji alphabets themselves and wants to know how they are different to each other. This book is going to be the last work on jindai moji that I am going to take a look at in this master thesis.

Main part

The book that I found in the Akiruno city archive is called “Alphabet from heavenly kingdom” (天白王國). It was written by a person called Uzen Yoshizawa and published in Edo in 1857.

On the second page the author has painted a figure of a human. The figure has its right hand lifted. The figure is also surrounded by Chinese characters. The Chinese characters are written in a vertical line.

The first Chinese character in this vertical line is the character for sky (天). The character is put in a circle. Below the character for “sky” there is the character for human (人) put in a triangle. Then below the character for human there is a character for earth 地 (earth) – put in a circle again. (Yoshizawa, 1857)

Below the character for earth there is an old character for God (示申). Below the character for God there is a rare character. The top part of this character seems to be the character for rain (雨) and the bottom part is the character for monarch (王). None of the two last characters is put into a circle or into a triangle (Yoshizawa, 1857).

It is unclear for me what the message behind the drawing is and for what reason the author put some of the characters into circles or triangles.

That picture is in fact surrounded by symbols from the Ahiru alphabet. Interestingly the Ahiru alphabet in Yoshizawa’s book is written in a different alphabetic order than in the Hirata’s “Kanna hifumi den”. In his work “Kanna hifumi den” Hirata wrote two phrases using the hybrid style – Chinese characters and Ahiru moji put together. Yoshizawa seems to have copied both of them. The two phrases describe elements of the Ahiru letters.

The phrases are as follows:

Tate (written with Ahiru letteters) gosho (五書)

Yoko (written with Ahiru letters) kyūsho (九書)(Yoshizawa, 1857)

These can roughly be translated as “tategoshō” – five lines written vertically and “yokokyūsō” – nine lines that are written horizontally.

While Hirata in his original work transcripted the phrases with katakata, Yoshizawa did not. But even for someone who happens to be unfamiliar with Hirata’s work it will be possible to

73 read those words, since the whole Ahiru alphabet is conveniently transcripted later in Yoshizawa’s book.

The book contains around 19 examples of jindai moji (19 alphabets). It seems like the author has collected these alphabets form all across the country.

Yoshizawa provides the reader with information about in which particular the area of Japan in which each alphabet was found. But other than that Yoshizawa does not write a word in mainstream Japanese. For me personally the description of places (where the alphabets were found) was the only easily assessable information in the book. It seems that Yoshizawa prefers to use jindai moji (alone or combined with Chinese characters) or paintings to express his thoughts.

In one case it is not even specified where the original alphabet was found. One of the alphabets is not transcripted.

For some alphabets each letter is available in two versions. Yoshizawa Uzen does not explain whether these are two different letters or two different ways to write the same letter. Also, it is not always clear (specifically in the first half of the book) where a certain alphabet ends and another alphabet begins.

In some cases an alphabet contains only of a few symbols. For example one abugida type alphabet contains 10 symbols. It is unclear if these symbols are the only ones the alphabet contains of or if the other symbols have been lost (remain unknown). It seems as if every single of these alphabets has its own order of the letters. In one case the Iroha order is used.

Below is the list of the alphabets with some additional information.

1. The ahiru alphabet.

This alphabet is most likely taken from “Kanna hifumi den” by Hirata Atsutane. Both versions of the original alphabet are available. The alphabet is transcripted with katakana.

2. The alphabet found in Horyūji temple

It has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet and consists of forty-seven symbols. It resembles the cursive version of the Ahiru alphabet. The alphabet is transcripted with a block version of the Ahiru alphabet.

3. The alphabet that was found in Izumo-no-kuni

It has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet and consists of forty seven symbols. The alphabet is transcripted with katakana. It also somewhat resembles f the cursive version of the Ahiru alphabet.

3. The alphabet that was found in Tsushima-no-kuni

It is yet another alphabet that has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet. The alphabet consists of forty seven symbols, all transcripted with katakana.

4. An alphabet. The origin is unknown.

This alphabet also has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet and also consists of forty seven symbols. It is also transcripted with katakana. Despite the fact that all of the aforementioned alphabets have the same alphabetical order and all contain the same number of letters, the letters themselves are not the same. However, all of those alphabets do resemble the cursive version of the Ahiru alphabet.

5. An alphabet that was found in a place called Hakke (伯王 ), (current Prefecture Yoshida)

The alphabet consists of forty seven symbols, all transcripted with katakana. This alphabet also has same the alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet.

6. An alphabet that was found in Izumo-no-kuni kita hō (In the north of the Izumi kuni)

The alphabet consists of forty seven symbols, all transcripted with katakana and it has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru alphabet.

7. An alphabet that was found in Sumi-no-kuni

This alphabet also has the same alphabetic order as the Ahiru script and also consists of forty seven letters. At this point Yoshizawa Uzen has included seven different alphabets with the same alphabetical order and the same number of letters.

8. An alphabet that was found in Miyata Ishise (Nara)

This alphabet is also transcripted with katakana and, like the previous seven alphabets; this one also has the same alphabetical order as the Ahiru script.

9. An alphabet that was found in Awa no kuni (current Prefecture Nakata)

Yet another example of an alphabet that consists of forty seven symbols, is transcripted with katakana and uses the alphabetical order of the Ahiru script. At this point Yoshizawa Uzen has included nine alphabets that are somewhat alike yet different. Despite having the same alphabetical order, the alphabets truly are different. So far I have not seen two alphabets use the exact same symbol although some symbols are somewhat alike. For example a symbol for the syllable “ke” that happens to be the last one for all of those alphabets is somewhat alike in all alphabets. Yet despite being alike, all of those different symbols for “ke” still are not the same.

10. An alphabet that was found at Hachimangu at Kamakura

This alphabet is markedly different from the first nine alphabets that Yoshizawa has included in his book so far. The alphabet looks like fairly simple curved lines. The alphabet is not transcripted. Thirteen letters are available.

11. Another alphabet was found at Awa no kuni (this one happened to be the only one that is not transcripted and it also is the one that is reminding me of simple curved lines).

This alphabet and the next one both contain of forty seven symbols and both use the Ahiru alphabet order of letters. The Iroha poem is titled “Jindai yonjuu nana gon” (神代四十七言).

12. An alphabet that was found in Kashima jingu (current Prefecture Ibaraki).

13. An a lphabet that was found in Echigo no kuni, Yashiko jinja.

Another alphabet that is different from the majority of the alphabets in Yoshizawa’s book. The Iroha order is used. Visually it resembles the one that was used in “Hotsuma Tsutae”.

14. Another alphabet that was found at Izumo-no-kuni

The gojūon order is used. Visually this alphabet also resembles the one from “Hotsuma Tsutae”.

15. The origin is likely unknown but the alphabet is “reported by an important person”

The Ahiru alphabet order is used. Visually it resembles the previous two alphabets. However this alphabet is markedly different from the previous two, since the previous two include circular elements as the part of some letters. This alphabet does not include any circular elements.

16. 17.18. Three alphabets were found by someone called Imube at “Sogendo kyokurei jingu”

The first two of these alphabets use the Ahiru alphabet order but only contain ten symbols each. The last one uses the gojūon alphabetical order but only consists of forty symbols.

19. Another alphabet found at the Awa no kuni (more spesifically Migi awa-no-kuni)

The last alphabet is not an abugida. In this alphabet each symbol stands for several syllables, much like a Chinese character does. Yoshizawa does not provide us with the list of all symbols this alphabet has. He only uses the alphabet to write one phrase. The phrase is fully transcripted with katakana.

The transcription is as follows:

“Kuni toko tachi mikoto me wo futahamira miwoya”.

On the last page of the book there is another drawing – three vertical lines in the middle of the page, surrounded by information about when the book was printed and what was the name of its author.

Conclusion:

Yoshizawa Uzen’s book has 50 pages. The book would be interesting for anyone who wants to learn more about Jindai moji.

The alphabets Yoshizawa’s book contains vary greatly. That is especially true when it comes to their visual aspect. I would argue that some of the alphabets resemble hangul, others can resemble siddtham and one alphabet looks like fairly simple curved lines. Yoshizawa’s book does not include the alphabet that was used in “Hotsuma Tsutae”, but some alphabets included in his book resemble the “Hotsuma tsutae” alphabet visually. The majority of the alphabets are abugidas and some of them consist of exactly 47 letters including the symbols for old Japanese sounds “ye” and “wu”. Uzen Yoshizawa provides us with some information on each of these alphabets but the information is very limited. For the majority of the alphabets there is some information about where in Japan the alphabet was found. In many cases the letters are transcripted with katakana.

The majority of the alphabets use the Ahiru alphabets order of letters. Two alphabets use the gojūon order of letter. One alphabet uses the Iroha order of letter. One alphabet is not transcripted.

In one case Yoshizawa Uzen does not provide the list of all letters of the alphabet; he only uses the alphabet to write one phrase without explaining what the phrase means or why he has chosen to include it in his book.

I would argue that Uzen Yoshizawa wanted his book to be somewhat surrounded in mystery. Reading it can feel the same as when trying to solve a riddle.

Summary of chapters 5-8 of this master thesis

This is a summary of: “Hotsuma tsutae”, “Hirata Atsutane and Jindai moji”, “My trip to Akiruno. Akiru moji” and “Alphabet from heavenly kingdom”.

It is currently assumed that the Japanese people did not have their own alphabet before they were introduced to the Chinese characters. The Japanese people in early periods of Japanese history tried to write the Japanese language with Chinese characters which resulted in the emergence the kanbun writing style. In order to write imperial rescripts and norito another writing style called sen’myogaki was used. Buddhist priests also developed

77 another writing style that is called okototen. Wabun would be much closer to the spoken Japanese of the Heian period then kanbun. Wabun was written with hiragana.

Before the Tokugawa period, Fujiwara no Teika’s method for interpretations of the ancient texts was used. However this method was criticised by a Tokugawa period scholar (and a Buddhist monk) called Keichu. Keichu was highly praised by the Kokugaku scholars for whom studying ancient Japanese texts was important. The Kokugaku scholars hoped to find a “true Japanese way of living” which would help contemporary Japanese people. They believed that the “true Japanese way of living” could be found by studying the ancient Japanese texts.

There is a very important connection between the Kokugaku movement and jindai moji, as several works on jindai moji refer to an ancient glorious way of living that is worth returning to. That is especially true for “Hotsuma Tsutae” which was the third work on jindai moji that was published in 1777. “Hotsuma Tsutae” is a ten thousand lines long poem written in a constracted language that the author called “Woshite”. Hotsuma tsutae is written with jindai moji, therefore it is the first work on jindai moji that actually provides the reader with some examples of these alleged ancient letters.

Hirata Atsutane, for instance, was both a famous Kokugaku scholar and wrote a work on jindai moji. Hirata believed in Japan’s superiority. He was really negative towards foreign influences on Japanese culture. For him Japan was always a superior country and he believed the ancient Japanese script was replaced with Chinese characters by Shōtoku taishi.

One of Hirata’s findings was an alphabet from the Grand Shrine of Izumo. He called it the “Ahiru/Hifumi” alphabet. Hirata recognised this alphabet as the true jindai moji. Hirata’s colleague Hirokata assumed that jindai moji might have a connection to the Ryūkyu Islands. Hirata disagreed with him. Hirata Atsutane expressed his thought on jindai moji in his work “Kanna Hifumi den”, published in 1823.

There is also another work on jindai moji called “Thoughts on the ancient letters” that was published in Tokyo in 1888. The book claims that there is an alleged ancient scroll written in jindai moji. The scroll was allegedly once stored in a place called Akiru Jinja (currently located in the city of Akiruno). Apparently it was lost to fire in December 1830. I visited Akiruno and the Akiruno city Museum, but was not able to find any more information on the so called jindai moji.

I found a book in the Akiruno city museum. It is called “Alphabet from heavenly kingdom”. The book was written by Yoshizawa Uzen and published in Edo in 1857. It provides the reader with a list of jindai moji alphabets. The list contains approximately 19 different alphabets (it is not always clear where one alphabet ends and another one begins). The alphabets are titled by the place where they were found. The majority of the alphabets use the Ahiru alphabet order of letters. However some alphabets use the Iroha order, the gojūon order.

Conclusion

One of the reasons for why Jindai moji is an interesting topic for research is because one can choose to see the jindai moji in several different ways. There are around twenty alphabets that claim to be jindai moji so it’s possible to study jindai moji as actual alphabets that can be used to write Japanese language. These alphabets however are likely far less ancient that they claim to be, therefore studying them does not give one much information about the ancient Japanese language. Interestingly jindai moji has even been used to write a constructed language (such as for example “Woshite language” from the “Hotsuma tsutae”).

One can also choose to see jindai moji simply as a fraud that was developed during the 14th century but received most attention during the Tokugawa period. In this case jindai moji would be a prism through which one can see the relationship between Japan and China during the Tokugawa period. Or perhaps to some degree it can even be seen as a part of the Kokugaku movement. That however is debatable as most texts about jindai moji mostly classify as koshi-koden which is not the same as the Norinaga school Kokugaku.

When the theory around jindai moji first appeared during the 14s century it was most likely influenced by the development of the contemporary Buddhist schools of Shinto, for example Tendai and Shingon schools both of which focus on the idea of “original enlightenment” in raw form that is represented by native Japanese gods (the kami) as opposed to what they call “acquired enlightenment” that is represented by the Buddhas.

We know of two 14th century manuscripts featuring the native Japanese letters: “Shaku Nihongi” by Urabe Kanekata (1301) and “Nihon shoki jindai kuketsu” by Inbe no Masamichi (1367). Neither of those use the actual term jindai moji, so the term itself was likely invented during the Tokugawa period. Both manuscripts focus on Shōtoku Taishi as a political figure who replaced the alleged original Japanese script with the Chinese characters. Also the famous Iroha poem is mentioned there. Inbe no Masamichi claims that the contemporary Iroha was originally written with the ancient Japanese characters.

There is no surprise that the discourse around jindai moji was always connected to ancient Japanese texts such as Kojiki, Nihon Shoki or Kujiki. In the Nihon shoki it is stated that the ancient Japanese gods performed the “reading the future” practise by throwing the shoulder bone of a deer into a fire. Kanekata claims that this practise would require some ancient alphabet to write the results and uses it as a supporting argument for his claim that Japan once had its own alphabet.

Also apart from the clear influence by the Tendai and Shingon schools, the original discourse about the ancient Japanese letters might have been influenced by the long existing tradition

79 of the nostalgic writings and the tradition of attributing desirable qualities to the past. That tradition was already somewhat developed before the 14th century as it started developing during the eleven hundreds. However the tendency to see early ages as an ideal time becomes more pronounced as we reach the Tokugawa period.

During the Tokugawa, both men, women and apparently other genders, regardless if they were of warrior, artisan or peasant descent had a possibility to get education. Several different types of school were available such as terakoya (schools that were run by the temples), hanko (schools run by the govemnent) juku and shijuku (schools run by private scholars). School attendance numbers were relatively high. However those numbers do not give much information on quality of education. According to the report by the minister of education, in 1902 (long after the Tokugawa period has ended) most students could not read the newspapers after they were done with their education. That suggests that all of the pre- Meiji texts that feature jindai moji were hardly known by the common Japanese people of the time.

Tokugawa society however did see the increase of literacy compared to previous periods in Japanese history. Also the studies of ancient Japanese text were taken “to another level” by scholars such as Keichū (who studied Man’yoshu) and Motoori Norinaga (who studied Kojiki). One can argue that Tokugawa Japan did experience a “crisis of the community” which has largely influenced those studies of ancient texts as well as the whole discourse about Jindai moji.

Finding the answer to question “What is Japan” was essential for both of the aforementioned scholars and for several other scholars of the time. Chinese worldview and Chinese characters could not resolve the identity crisis and were largely put aside by those scholars as “not authentically Japanese” and “malicious” as oppose to the “Ancient way of live” described in Kojiki and Nihon shoki and the authentically Japanese alphabet that was used in “The age of Gods” – jindai moji.

Four major works on jindai moji that were published during the Tokugawa period are: Enpōhon Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō (1679), Iroha Monben (1763), Hotsuma Tsutae (1777) and Kanna hifumi den (1823). The latter was published by a famous kokugaku scholar Hirata Atsutane. All of those works are markedly different from each other.

Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō claimed to be the extended version of the Kujiki. This 72 volume encyclopaedia briefly mentions jindai moji as a sacred alphabet found by Shōtoku Taishi in a clay urn located in a place called Awa-no-miya. According to Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō the scrolls written in Jindai moji that Shōtoku Taishi allegedly found in this clay urn, expanded his knowledge in Japanese history. The history behind the creation of Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō is just as mysterious as the text itself. It is uclear who wrote the text. One of the possible authors is Kyōgoku Kuranosuke who had already published yet another version on Kujiki before the Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō. By a Buddhist monk called Chō’on Dokai,

Kyōgoku was introduced to someone called Nakano Uneme. Nakano Uneme became Kyōgoku’s spiritual teacher and Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō was likely a product of their “teacher-student” relationship.

Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō does not only talk about jindai moji but also offers the reader some unique information about the alleged five articles constitution written by Shōtoku Taishi himself, as well as it talks about “a single creator of the world” that is honoured in no specific Shinto Shrine. As the language of the alleged constitution was obviously not ancient Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō was banned as forgery. Still the text remained widely read as the sentral idea of the alleged constitution was the so called Sankyō itchi, which stands for the unity of “the three teachings (sankyō) – Shinto, Confucianinsm and Buddhism.

Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō was followed by the Iroha Monben that offered far more explanations then the Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō did. Iroha Monben largely focuses on Kūkai (a scholar who has allegedly authored the Iroha poem). The author of Iroha Monben (Tainin) agreed with 14th century idea that the Iroha poem was a re-editing of the original poem written with jindai moji. According to Tanin the 47 dharma sounds that are used both in Japanese language and Sanskrit was originally transmitted by the Sun deity Amaterasu Ōmikami, which explains the similarity between Japanese and Sanskrit. Tainin goes on to claim that the 47 sounds are the same both for the jindai moji alphabet, contemporary Japanese language and the Sanskrit (especially the jindai moji and Sanskrit). Iroha Monben goes in great detail when explaining history of the Iroha poem. However it does not talk much about the Shōtoku Taishi. Iroha Monben is not necessarily a nativist work, but Tainin does state that India, China and Japan are superior to other countries. It is important for Tainin that the jindai alphabet was created before the Chinese characters. Here we can already see how the relationship between two countries influences the discourse around jindai moji.

Shortly after, Iroha Monben was followed by a 10 thousand lines poem written in a constructed language – the Hotsuma Tsutae (1777). The language Hotsuma Tsutae is written with is called Woshite. Hotsuma tsutae was the first work to actually offer some examples of the jindai moji, as it was written in a unique alphabet. As one might expect, this alphabet claims to be the true jindai moji. The author of the Hotsuma Tsutae who remains unknown claimed that he has found the poem written in jindai moji, and then translated it to the Chinese characters. Hotsuma Tsutae was indeed a much more serious attempt to prove that the jindai moji actually exist. It was also the most nativist work that features the discourse about jindai moji by far. The author of Hotsuma Tsutae talks of “golden times” when Japanese people had pure hearts and amakami (the emperors) taught them what is right and what is wrong without any punishments. Neither the laws, or the punishments were needed in this perfect ancient society.

Here we can already see how the works on jindai moji become closer to the Kokugaku thought, as Kokugaku scholars too who were very interested by finding an “Ancient Way of

Japan”, preferably by analysing the ancient Japanese texts. Similarities between the discourse around jindai moji and the Kokugaku movement become completely evident when the discourse catches the attention of a well-known Kokugaku scholar – Hirata Atsutane.

Hirata dedicated a lot of his time to jindai moji. He is the first one to compare different alphabets to each other, in hope to find out which would be the true jindai moji alphabet. Hirata Atsutane’s sources became more and more questionable as he meet a young man called Torakichi, who persuaded him into thinking that Torakichi could actually write the jindai moji. Hirata Atsutane’s main work on jindai moji “Kanna hifumi den” is however unrelated to Torakchi. In “Kanna hifumi den” Hirata Atsutane presents the so called Ahiru/Hifumi script that he believes is the true jindai moji. A couple decades later Yoshizawa Uzen published his book that contained 19 different jindai moji alphabets.

As we can see Tainin’s thoughts on jindai moji are markedly different from those of Hirata Atsutane’s, as well as Sendai Kuji Hongi Taiseikyō has a different agenda compared to the Hotsuma Tsutae. Overall the development of the discourse around jindai moji that emerged during the 17th-19th century seems to reflect the development of the nativist though in the Tokugawa Japan. Some of the works that touches on the subject of jindai moji, however are far more obscure then the others. On the one hand we can see that the works on jindai moji become more and more nativist as we approach the Meiji period. On the other hand the discourse around jindai moji was later separated from the Norinaga school nativism as at is far more esoteric and even metaphysical.

Today the topic of jindai moji receives the most attention by those interested in occult literature. I would argue that jindai moji has played its role in a development of the nativist though in Tokugawa Japan, yet has proven to be a bit more creative and far more occult then the Kokugaku thought in general.

My research question is: “Why did the discours about jindai moji appear during the Tokugawa period?” It seems that the discours about jindai moji appeared due to the community crisis, as well as it was likely inspired bythe linguistic studies done by several pre- Kokugaku and Kokugaku scholars. Long tradition of nostalgic writings might have also inspired both the linguistic studies done by the Kokugaku scholars and the discourse about the jindai moji. Originally (14th century) the discourse about jindai moji were likely inspired by the Tendai and Shingon schools.

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