Loyalty, Filial Piety, and Multiple “Chinas” in the Japanese Cultural Imagination, 12th – 16th Centuries Chi Zhang Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Chi Zhang All rights reserved ABSTRACT Loyalty, Filial Piety, and Multiple “Chinas” in the Japanese Cultural Imagination, 12th – 16th Centuries Chi Zhang This project explores Japan’s complex literary and cultural negotiation with China from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, focusing on the role of intermediary texts (dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) and the different modes of receiving and constructing Chinese culture depending on historical periods and scholarly lineages. As the larger process by which Chinese history and literature became part of the Japanese literary culture has long been studied on the assumption that there is direct textual continuity between Japanese texts (in literary Sinitic) and Chinese continental texts, the tracking down of citations, allusion, and references to Chinese source texts has commanded great scholarly attention. Yet this assumption obscures other, equally important histories – such as a popular understanding of Chinese culture, or a conceptual perception of Chinese culture, that was NOT based on direct textual continuity – that lies at the heart of this project. The introduction outlines three modes of receiving and constructing Chinese literary culture in pre-modern japan. One was the text-based, canonical view of Chinese history and literature, which relied almost exclusively on texts and genres that were canonized in the Nara and Heian periods state university (daigakuryō) – Confucian classics, Chinese official dynastic histories, and Chinese poetry. In contrast with it was a more popular, name-based understanding of Chinese culture that emerged from various intermediary genres (such as anecdotal literature, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) both in China and in Japan. This mode of reception and construction was not based on texts so much as on what I call “cultural signs” (particularly Chinese names, well-known anecdotes, and visual cues) and required no knowledge of the original literary Sinitic. Third was a conceptual, term-based perception, manifested in such concepts as “loyalty” and “filial piety.” Written in the same kanji characters, these terms served as common threads linking Chinese and Japanese literary writings on the one hand, but also took on new meanings and associations in the Japanese cultural imagination. Chapter 1 outlines the importation of Chinese books and manuscripts in relation to the center of scholarship and the main intellectual groups up until the twelfth century. Drawing on evidence from commentaries on the Wakan rōeishū (The Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Recitation, 1013) and from The Tales of China (Kara monogatari, late Heian period) on the themes of exile and loyalty, I discuss the rising interests in referencing anecdotal literature and compiling intermediaries (dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries) in the twelfth century that eventually contributed to the formation of a more popular, name-based understanding of Chinese history and literature. Chapter 2 investigates the Japanese medieval interpretations of Chinese official histories (“Chūsei Shiki”), which features a tension and negotiation between the canonical and the non-canonical texts and gravitates towards recurring themes, character types, and core values. In particular, I look into the themes of wisdom, virtue, loyalty, and filial piety in A Miscellany of Ten Maxims (Jikkinshō, 1252) and The Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari, ca. 1308-1311), which were largely constructed from a relatively more classical, Tang-based perspective, in despite of the fact that Chinese Song dynasty culture had already been imported to Japan along with the introduction of Chinese Chan (J. Zen) Buddhism in the thirteenth through fourteenth centuries. In Chapter 3, I examine the Taiheiki (A Chronicle of Great Peace, 1340s-1371), a unique text that acts as a nexus for many themes of this project. Analyzing the use of Chinese tales, maxims and proverbs, and poetry in relation to the themes of loyalty, wisdom, righteousness, and filial piety, I show that, unlike The Tales of the Heike, the Taiheiki revealed a thriving concern with the Song culture, which involved new editions, new commentaries, and new poetic theory. I also show that a conceptual, term-based perception of Chinese culture was taking shape. Chapter 4 explores the suddenly intensified scholarly exchange among different intellectual groups – the Zen monks, the Shintō priests, warriors, and court aristocrats – in the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries. Tracing the threads of new books and new theories in Kiyohara Nobukata’s lecture notes on the Mōgyū (Inquiry of the Youth), The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars, and the picture scroll (emaki) of the Xianyang Palace, I discuss the expansion of knowledge and audience from priests and aristocrats to influential military families and wealthy commoners in late medieval Japan, the formation of new imaginations regarding Chinese history and literature, and the final transition from a pro-Tang prospective to a Song-centered understanding of China. In conclusion, I argue for the literary and cultural reception and construction of Chinese culture as not only a large and complex source text, in a long history of Sino-Japanese intertextuality, but as a complex cultural construction that was packaged and modified, sometimes for easy consumption, to reinforce key values (such as loyalty and filial piety), and that was readily identified even by those with limited access to literary Sinitic. By illustrating the processes by which Chinese history and literature were largely filtered through and transmitted by intermediaries into medieval Japanese literary culture, this project provides a new history of the reception of Chinese culture in the Japanese literary imagination. Loyalty, Filial Piety, and Multiple “Chinas” in the Japanese Cultural Imagination, 12th – 16th Centuries Chi Zhang Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………...iii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 1: Scholarship in the 12th Century: Aristocrats and Family Learnings, Monks and Temples, and the Rise of and Reliance on Intermediaries…………….….....………......6 The State University and Its Decline – Monks, Temples, and Chinese Studies – Aristocratic Scholar Families and Family Learnings – Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Commentaries – Commentaries on The Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Recitation (Wakan rōeishū 和漢朗詠集) –Female Jealousy and Political Exile in The Tales of China (Kara monogatari 唐 物語): The Tale of Wang Zhaojun – Conclusion Chapter 2: The Popularized Classics in the 13th – 14th Centuries: Chinese Histories and Japanese Anecdotal Literature…………………………………………….…..…….......45 Chinese Official Histories and Japanese Medieval Interpretations (“Chūsei Shiki”) – Character Types, Recurring Themes, and Core Values – Wisdom (賢) and Virtue (良) in A Miscellany of Ten Maxims (Jikkinshō 十訓抄) – Loyalty and Filial Piety in The Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari 平家物語): The Tale of Su Wu – Conclusion Chapter 3: An Emerging Interest in the Song Culture in the 14th – 15th Centuries: The Zen Monks and the Taiheiki (A Chronicle of Great Peace)……………...….…………..77 The Zen Monks and the Song Culture – Chinese Tales, Chinese Maxims and Proverbs, and Chinese Poetry in the Taiheiki (太平記) – Recurring Themes and Core Values in the Taiheiki – Loyalty (忠) and Wisdom (賢) in The Warfare Between Wu and Yue – Loyalty and Wisdom in The Tale of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru – Loyalty (忠) and Righteousness (義) in The Warfare between Han and Chu – Loyalty (忠) and Filial Piety (孝) in The Tales of India and China – i Conclusion Chapter 4: The Expansion of Knowledge and Audience in the 15th – 16th Centuries: New Printed Editions, New Vernacular Commentaries, and New Imaginations..………..120 Confucian Studies, History Studies, and the Emergence of Vernacular Commentary (Shōmono 抄物) – New Editions for Commoners: The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars (Nijūshikō 二十四 孝) – New Books and New Types of Knowledge: Kiyohara Nobukata (清原宣賢) and His Lecture Notes on the Inquiry of the Youth (蒙求) – Conclusion Afterword………………………………………………………………………………………158 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………...160 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation owes its existence to many individuals and institutions. I count myself fortunate for the community I found at Columbia University, beginning first and foremost with my advisor, Haruo Shirane. If not for his unfailing support, advice, intellectual inspiration, encouragement, mentorship, and faith throughout the many years, this project would not have been possible. I am grateful to Kōno Kimiko, my advisor at Waseda University, who during my time as a visiting MA student and doctoral researcher there warmly welcomed me to her seminar and shared with me her expertise and enthusiasm for new angles of interpretation. I am also deeply indebted to Xueyan Juan, my advisor at Tsinghua University, for her advice and for sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for literature. A massive thanks is owed to my defense committee members: Jennifer Guest, David Lurie, Wei Shang, Haruo Shirane, and Tomi Suzuki. Earlier they guided me in graduate courseworks, and most recently they patiently read the