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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Jeweled Broom and the Dust of the World: Keichū, Motoori Norinaga, and Kokugaku in Early Modern Japan Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nb4j9dd Author Foulk, Emi Joanne Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Jeweled Broom and the Dust of the World: Keichū, Motoori Norinaga, and Kokugaku in Early Modern Japan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Emi Joanne Foulk 2016 © Copyright by Emi Joanne Foulk 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Jeweled Broom and the Dust of the World: Keichū, Motoori Norinaga, and Kokugaku in Early Modern Japan by Emi Joanne Foulk Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Herman Ooms, Chair This dissertation seeks to reconsider the eighteenth-century kokugaku scholar Motoori Norinaga’s (1730-1801) conceptions of language, and in doing so also reformulate the manner in which we understand early modern kokugaku and its role in Japanese history. Previous studies have interpreted kokugaku as a linguistically constituted communitarian movement that paved the way for the makings of Japanese national identity. My analysis demonstrates, however, that Norinaga¾by far the most well-known kokugaku thinker¾was more interested in pulling a fundamental ontology out from language than tying a politics of identity into it: grammatical codes, prosodic rhythms, and sounds and their attendant sensations were taken not as tools for interpersonal communication but as themselves visible and/or audible threads in the fabric of the cosmos. Norinaga’s work was thus undergirded by a positive understanding ii of language as ontologically grounded within the cosmos, a framework he borrowed implicitly from the seventeenth-century Shingon monk Keichū (1640-1701) and esoteric Buddhist (mikkyō) theories of language. Through philological investigation into ancient texts, both Norinaga and Keichū believed, the profane dust that clouded (sacred, cosmic) truth could be swept away, as if by a jeweled broom. The dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first chapter takes a historiographical look at the study of kokugaku and Norinaga’s central role therein. It also sets out the thesis that the remaining three chapters of the dissertation attempt to substantiate: that kokugaku, at least up to Norinaga’s time, ought to be considered as a form of philology, traditionally conceived. It was, in other words, an attempt to uncover cosmological truth from the language of ancient texts. In the second chapter, I present a genealogy of Norinaga’s kokugaku, tracing Norinaga’s thought back to Keichū. This chapter attempts to demonstrate that Keichū’s empirical methodology was a direct result of his esoteric Buddhist training and background and, indeed, was grounded firmly within an esoteric Buddhist doctrinal system. It then goes on to argue that Norinaga’s philology and positive valuation of language, too, is predicated on a Buddhological framework that stresses the immanence of the truth in the world known by ordinary people. The third and fourth chapters explore Norinaga’s conception of language and its role in the world, looking specifically at his studies of teniwoha and his much celebrated theory of mono no aware. In these final two chapters, I demonstrate that mono no aware and teniwoha lie at the foundation of both Norinaga’s epistemology and ontology, offering a means for knowing and apprehending the cosmos as well as a model for how that cosmos itself exists. iii The dissertation of Emi Joanne Foulk is approved. Torquil Duthie William Marotti Herman Ooms, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv For my family v CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Vita x Introduction 1 1 Historical Revisionism and the Contours of a Kokugaku Ideology 15 The Development of a Term Kokugaku in the Modern Period Glossing Kokugaku Today: Nativism Glossing Kokugaku Today: Philology Conclusion 2 “Ancient Studies was Founded by Keichū”: Kokugaku and the 54 Influence of Esoteric Buddhism Confucianism and Ancient Studies Tokugawa Buddhism and Precept Reform Jōgon, Keichū, and the Mahāvairocana Sutra Waka as Dhāranī The Land of the Kami: From Keichū to Norinaga Conclusion 3 Signposts for the Way: Motoori Norinaga’s Theory of Language 104 Medieval Teniwoha Studies and the Roots of Kokugaku Grammar Ordering the Cosmos The Mythical Language of the Kojiki Teniwoha and Kanbun kundoku The Exceptional Nature of Teniwoha Conclusion 4 The Grammar of Pathos: Norinaga’s Mono no aware and the 160 Cosmic Function of Poetry Mono no aware: The Source of All Poetry Knowing Mono no aware, Knowing the Cosmos Mediating Forms “Only Utterances with Patterning” Conclusion Conclusion 203 Appendix 206 Bibliography 214 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank, first and foremost, my doctoral advisor and committee chair Herman Ooms. It was in Herman’s Tokugawa Intellectual History class during my first quarter of graduate study at UCLA that I first encountered Motoori Norinaga, and it was likewise in his class that my interest in kokugaku first took root. Since then, Herman has helped me to navigate both primary and secondary literature surrounding the topic and has been ever willing to discuss new ideas and old problems alike. I am grateful as well to the other two certifying members of my doctoral committee, William Marotti and Torquil Duthie. Both Bill and Torquil have been wonderful teachers to me during my seven years at UCLA and have been unfailingly generous with both constructive criticism and encouragement. I would also like to thank Professors Andrea Goldman and John Carriero for serving on my doctoral committee as non-certifying members. The UCLA History Department, the UCLA International Institute, and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at UCLA all provided generous funding throughout my graduate career, allowing for research trips to Japan as well as for travel to conferences in order to present early versions of material that eventually made its way into the dissertation. The Japan Foundation funded a year of research in Japan between 2013-2014 and the KCC-Japan Education Exchange provided a grant to travel within Japan during my stay there. The American Council for Learned Societies together with the Mellon Foundation funded my final year of dissertation writing (the 2015-16 academic year) with a Dissertation Completion Fellowship. vii I have benefited greatly from the generous aid and insight of numerous professors and colleagues, both at UCLA and beyond, over the last several years. I would like to especially thank Professor Kurozumi Makoto for sponsoring my research at the University of Tokyo from 2013 to 2014, as well as Professor Tayama Reishi of Bukkyo University for engaging with me at length on Norinaga’s thought. Professor Tayama and his wife Hiroko have hosted me in Kyoto on several occasions, which I will always recall with great fondness. I am grateful to James Rhys Edwards and Nadia Kanagawa for carefully reading over several earlier chapter drafts and providing insightful feedback. Ryan Sayre has likewise been generous with his time and comments. I was able to workshop an earlier version of Chapter Three at the Japan Arts and Globalizations (JAG) works-in-progress retreat in May 2015—I thank those in my group for their helpful suggestions. Needless to say, all mistakes are my own. Finally, I want to thank my family for their unflagging support. My parents, Mariko and Griff Foulk, have always provided me with love and encouragement, for which I will be forever grateful. My dad has also been generous in providing feedback on several dissertation chapters, and I have benefitted greatly from his deep knowledge of Buddhist history and doctrine. Gene Foulk has been the best brother one could ask for, and has met with my many pathetic requests for technical assistance over the years with remarkable patience. Peter Holley has helped me stay sane throughout my time in graduate school through his companionship and good humor. My greatest expression of gratitude goes to my fiancé (and husband in two weeks!), Ethan Bushelle, who has put more time and energy into this dissertation than anyone outside myself. I want to thank him for countless hours of reading drafts, checking translations, and discussing chapters, viii as well as for daily moral support, encouragement, and love. Ethan taught me the importance of seeking knowledge for life, whether in scholarship or otherwise. I look forward to many years of collaboration to come. ix VITA Emi Foulk received a B.A. in Religion from Wesleyan University in 2005. She also received a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University in 2007 and a M.A. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011. She was a visiting research student at the University of Tokyo from 2013 to 2014. x INTRODUCTION In his landmark study on nationalism, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson posits the belief in a sacred language as one of the three defining characteristics of classical community formations—the other two being a hierarchical society vertically organized around a divine center, and a cosmological conception of time which allowed for ahistorical simultaneity between past, present, and future. According to Anderson, the “very possibility of imagining the nation” arose only after these three characteristics “lost their axiomatic grip on men’s minds.”1 While Anderson’s book has been criticized in the thirty plus years since its first publication for being too general (and perhaps for being too popular), I find his simple formula thought-provoking when considering Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730-1801), the eighteenth-century philologist whose work is the primary subject of this study. By far the most famous thinker of a loosely knit eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual movement that came to be known as kokugaku, Norinaga has been cast as a seminal figure in Japan’s progression toward nationhood.
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