Listen, copy, read

In the book’s first essay, Tsujimoto Masashi shows how Shingaku founder Ishida Baigan emphasized lectures, the spoken word, and the listener’s subjective experience in his teaching. The importance Baigan accorded to orality and his skepticism toward achieving enlightenment solely through textual study marked a departure from the mainstream educational approaches of his predecessors. While Baigan did lecture on classical philosophical texts early in his career, appeals to scriptural authority became progressively less central as his talks came to focus on parables and examples from his audience’s daily lives. Tsujimoto’s account challenges the scholarly tendency to see post-Baigan Shingaku as tracing a trajectory of decline; he instead concludes that Baigan’s disciples, such as Tejima Toan, further developed the master’s efforts to popularize Shingaku through oral techniques.

Wakao Masaki’s contribution examines the reading habits of two wealthy farmers, Kawachiya Kashō (1636–1713) and Andō Shōeki (1703–62), showing the important role that published books played in shaping their political consciousness and cosmology. Shōeki’s familiarity with calendrical and agricultural treatises is clear from his writings, and Wakao shows how he marshalled this knowledge to theorize the responsibilities of an enlightened ruler. Both men were also avid readers of military texts, especially those based upon the Taiheiki such as Taiheiki hyōban hiden rijin-shō. The latter work’s discussions of good government were initially presented orally to the daimyo class by so-called Taiheiki yomi lecturers, but Wakao shows how the text’s mid-seventeenth century publication and its late-century spread through streetside recitation dramatically expanded its audience, giving rise to certain perceptions of government shared by elites and commoners alike.

Two of the volume’s essays address the taxonomy of popular reference materials. In the first, Michael Kinski focuses on “household encyclopedias,” primarily works identified by the titular designations setsuyōshū, ōraimono, ōzassho, and chōhōki. As Kinski notes, however, the category also embraces works known by other terms, such as takarabako, ori, and kagami. From his comparison of substantially identical works that were marketed under different titles, Kinski concludes that these designations do not constitute distinctions in genre. Kinski observes a similar blurriness in other categories of popular encyclopedia, such as setsuyōshū, which originally gathered words to facilitate composition but came to address a broad array of practical matters (including divination, etiquette, and the arts) around the turn of the eighteenth century.

The same gradual enlargement of content can also be seen in the large body of works known as ōraimono (literature of correspondence), which initially contained epistolary models but came to include other practical information. In his essay, Markus Rüttermann offers several theories to explain the etymology of the term ōraimono, concluding that the idea of dialogue is most fundamental. Rüttermann notes that while the presentation of exemplary epistolary style was originally the key feature of the genre, imparting informational content in these letters also became an important function in its own right, and thus some of the exchanges in ōraimono began to take the form of short questions followed by long answers, or even just one long answer. Rüttermann thus posits a stepwise process by which the content of ōraimono evolved to a point where epistolary features were either vestigial or completely absent.

Koizumi Yoshinaga’s essay also concerns the broad category of ōraimono, which he describes as “an elementary written medium for teaching children to read and write” (p. 91). Unlike Rüttermann, however, his focus is not on printed reference works, which could be prohibitively expensive for young learners, but rather on the handwritten tenaraibon that gave most children access to literacy. These books were created on a sheet-by-sheet basis by the students’ instructors, who would assemble materials appropriate to each student’s needs and developing abilities. Drawing upon Meiji-era retrospective surveys of late-Edo terakoya curricula as well as his own extensive collection of tenaraibon, Koizumi outlines the typical content, sequence, and pace of learning that students might undertake.

Machi Senjurō’s contribution focuses on sixteenth-century developments in the field of medical instruction that anticipate changes in approaches to learning that would take place in other fields during the early modern period. Machi offers a detailed discussion of the Ashikaga Gakkō curriculum and also examines the more elementary education undertaken by Tamaki Yoshiyasu (1552–1633). He discusses how Tamaki drew upon the mnemonic properties of verse to record medical knowledge: composing waka incorporating medical information. This technique is also evident in the work of Manase Dōsan (1507–94), a physician whose efforts to publicize medical knowledge through lectures and texts marked a transition from earlier approaches based upon secret transmission. Nevertheless, although Dōsan strove to disseminate introductory information, he also prevented the publication of texts covering more advanced subjects, particularly the unique approaches of his school.

Most of the volume’s essays concern early modern learning from the vantage point of individual learners, scholars, and publishers of commercially printed texts, but Peter Kornicki’s contribution focuses on a rare case in which the shogunate made a concerted effort to popularize the Chinese moral text Liuyi yanyi. Written in vernacular Chinese, the work posed a challenge even to erudite Sinologists, and the two scholars engaged to help disseminate the work, Ogyū Sorai and Muro Kyūsō, produced versions of the text that differed sharply in their aims and approaches. Although the shogunate made Kyūsō’s adaptation, Rikuyu engi taii (1722), available for free and exhorted domains to encourage its use, their attempt to spread the text among commoners seems to have failed, an outcome Kornicki attributes to the text’s difficulty, commoners’ lack of interest in its contents, and the text’s inability to compete with commercially produced books.

The competitive academic environment of eighteenth-century Kyoto, comparable to a European university town, is the subject of W.J. Boot’s piece, which emphasizes the importance that publishing held for scholars seeking “a congenial means to attract attention” (p. 229). At the center of his piece are two Sinologues: Emura Hokkai (1713–88) and Minagawa Kien (1734–1807). Boot traces Hokkai’s efforts to establish himself as a leading authority on Sinitic poetry, which included founding an academy devoted to it, as well as compiling anthologies and histories of Sinitic verse by Japanese poets. Boot also introduces some of Hokkai’s pedagogical principles, which emphasized the value of independent study, albeit under the guidance of a single teacher. Kien, in contrast to Hokkai, saw himself in the more traditional frame of exegete, writing numerous commentaries on the classics as well as glossaries of classical grammar. Yet, Boot argues, Kien was ultimately frustrated in his attempt to move beyond his philological approach and address the subjects of statesmanship and policy that he believed were the proper concern of Confucian scholars.

The book concludes with three essays that trace how changes introduced to printed books concerning specific skills made knowledge of those fields accessible even to complete novices. Annick Horiuchi’s essay discusses Yoshida Mitsuyoshi’s popular calculation manual Jinkōki, first printed in 1627. Analyzing multiple early editions of the work, Horiuchi describes how features such as the text’s colloquial Japanese style and its focus on a broad range of practical calculations rooted in everyday Japanese life made it popular. Horiuchi discusses Yoshida’s frustrations with publishers who printed unauthorized editions and the steps he took (including frequent revision and the use of vermillion ink as a sign of authenticity) to secure his intellectual property. According to Horiuchi, the early editions of Yoshida’s text were intended to reveal just enough knowledge to whet the appetite of the reader and encourage him to find a teacher. Beginning in the eighteenth century, however, the editions of Jinkōki adopted a new style of annotation that was not premised on the reader finding a teacher; instead the text became oriented to ordinary beginners who wished to learn for themselves.

A similar trend toward accessibility is evident in the divination manuals that are the subject of Matthias Hayek’s contribution. Whereas divination had been an important element of state interest since the early seventh century, mantic arts remained “virtually inaccessible to profane audiences” (p. 294) prior to the 1610s, when texts such as the Hoki naiden were first printed. Yet Hayek argues that these earliest printed editions are best understood as replacing the manuscripts that professional diviners had used. The content would still have been inaccessible to the uninitiated, and thus Hayek argues that a more significant change came around 1630, when commercial publishers began to add new material to these texts, supplying detailed explanations that increased the texts’ practicality and intelligibility. This trend toward improved accessibility and enhanced user-friendliness continued through the end of the seventeenth century.

Christophe Marquet charts the late seventeenth century expansion of such user-oriented commercial publications beyond scholarly and religious subjects to include recreational and practical pursuits. Focusing on painting manuals printed from 1680–1720, Marquet argues that the appearance of such books, some offering models of famous works of art, others providing topically-arranged catalogs of motifs, and a few providing systematic theorizations of artistic practice, enabled readers to acquire competence in painting techniques through self-study. In contrast to earlier models of tutelage that presumed training under an artistic professional who would provide access to exemplary works of art, users of these texts were able to learn by copying the models independently. Marquet draws upon paratextual information in the manuals to shed light on the readership of such books, concluding that amateurs, beginners, and aspiring painters were an important audience along with artisans who made use of motifs in their own design work.

This volume is a most welcome contribution, shedding light upon early modern learning practices in a variety of specific fields while the individual essays illustrate an overarching trend toward facilitation of self-directed study. There are a handful of typos, misspellings, and mistakes in Romanization, but on the whole the book is well edited and the arguments of the authors clearly presented. The translation quality of the Machi and Koizumi pieces in particular is first-rate, and the book is also very generously illustrated (with several images in color).

Matthew Fraleigh, Associate Professor of East Asian Literature and Culture, Brandeis University (fraleigh@brandeis.edu)