Section 7 | History, Politics and International Relations | Session 1B, Panel
Chair: Markus Ruettermann (International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyôto)
Michael Kinski (Humboldt University Berlin)
Stephan Koehn ( Würzburg University)
Western academic description of how people on the Japanese archipelago used to bear their past in remembrance (up to the dawn of the Modern Age) has its own history. For instance translations, works on historiography or religious studies dealt with the Kojiki, the Nihon shoki, the Azuma kagami, the Dai Nihonshi and other histories written in Medieval and premodern times (Aston, Brownlee, Chamberlain, Florenz, Goch, Lewin, Sakamoto, Snellen). Works on the Kokin wakashû and all their successors show to a certain extent the structure in anthology with its view on time and past (Nakarai, Plutschow). These were official „editions of the past". The private ones, too, already presented the subject matter for Japan reasearch in the west; the past as it is reflected in rituals (festivals, ceremonies; Antoni, Blue mmel), in the arts of oral recitation and its written counterparts (Jinnô Shôtôki, Genpei seisuiki, Gikeiki, Gukansho, Genkôshakusho, Heike monogatari, Hôgen monogatari, Ôkagami, Taiheiki: Bohner, Brown / Ishida, Brownlee, Goch, McCullough, Robinson, Ury, Varley) as well as biographies (Eversmeyer) and chronicles in temples and villages or in scrolls and other pictorial representation (Kuniyoshi, Varley, Zoellner). Noh and other drama traditions (Scholz) functioned as media of memory. Research on the so-called Confucian and Native Schools (Brownlee, Dumoulin, Goch, Harootunian, Kemper, Nosco) certainly reflects the problem of premodern memory notedly in the context of reading and interpreting the written tradition. Much attention has been paid to the studies done on so-called „tradionalism" or „invention" in history (Antoni, Antoni ed.). These studies had no doubt left about the fact, that there often has been more or less intentional corruption of the past in order to manipulate retrospection for legitimization purposes. One more problem is social exclusion from or integration into specific memory. For instance some of the transmissions which gained importance in later times (aristocratic poetry) were untangled from house and school authority, from the dependence on handwriting etc. This paved the path to collective memory in the sense of Halbwachs. Memory in the sense of an overall tradition corresponded with an expanding circulation and publication of knowledge or information (for example by means of publishing; Kornicki) and growing literacy among co mmon people in the Kamakura, Muromachi and the Edo Periods (Rubinger).
Since human societies are more or less compelled to pass down historical knowledge (of whatever „right" or „wrong" contents), it is the studies of culture, which bring to light the various ways this is done. This panel in general aims to continue to widen the scope of sources and to demonstrate the material concretely. To begin with we look for sorts of collection, selection, and contents of memory, on an individual or collective level. Secondly we try to describe the social circumstances of memory in these samples. Thirdly we want to deepen our knowledge about the literal or graphical techniques people in Japan expressed and used the past. The fourth point is the question whether there were structural models for time, for recalling events or legends. Fifthly we look for ideological backgrounds and valuation of the past. Next we search for aspects of purpose: mourning, comfort and therapeutics, amusement, identity, cultivation, cognition and education, know-how, legitimization and so on. Last but not least, we try to verify and discuss whether there was a kind of progress or change in thinking about the past, for example, if there was - among other tendencies - a change to „hypoleptic discourse" in Assmann's sense: a move concerning the attitude towards „holy texts" from recitation (1) through interpretation (2) to critique (3).
The working group of this panel consists of researchers who recently published their findings in coherence to the subject. Joerg Quenzer will induct us into the interrelation of dream and memory in medieval biographies, Michael Kinski will analyse the connection of Edo period etiquette rule scripts with remembrance, and Stephan Koehn will throw light on recollection in premodern Literature (for example catastrophe reports about earthquake or fire). It is the intention of the organizer to cooperate with the contributors and other specialists in the field in the following years. I would like to develop with them a catalogue of sorts of sources, of aspects and of change in respect of ars memoriae in premodern Japan.