Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T14:45:33.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Romance of the Two Kingdoms: Okajima Kanzan’sChinese Explication of ‘The Annals of Pacification’(Taiheiki engi)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2022

Get access

Summary

Abstract

This paper examines the Taiheiki engi (1719): a translation of afourteenthcentury Japanese history into the formatof Chinese vernacular fiction by the Nagasaki-borninterpreter, Okajima Kanzan. Kanzan's translationtook place during the initial stage of Japaneseengagement with Chinese vernacular fiction. Idiscuss the ways in which Chinese literary theoryimpacted Edo-period Japanese classical scholars’conceptions of the educational value of Chinesetexts, and Kanzan's effort to reimagine culturalrelations between China and Japan. Not simply anironic defamiliarization of Japanese texts, theTaiheiki engi isimportant in its attempt to nativize Chineserhetoric about the discursive position of Chinesenarrative and place Kanzan at the front of anemergent tradition of unofficial historiography inJapan.

Keywords: Edo-period translation,Chinese fiction, Okajima Kanzan, Taiheiki engi

In the area of eighteenth-century Japanese sinology,few biographies trace dominant trends in translationand literary history more closely than that of theNagasaki-born translator, Okajima Kanzan 岡島冠山(1674-1728). As a commercial interpreter, languageinstructor, and aspirant literatus, Kanzanparticipated in the earliest wave of vernacularChinese translation in Edo-period Japan, and hisliterary activities embodied the intersection ofscholastic, moral, and commercial imperativescharacterizing early eighteenth-century Japaneseinterest in Chinese narrative. A Chinese languageinstructor at the prestigious Miscanthus Academy ofOgyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666-1728), Kanzan was privy to theprivate thoughts and public pronouncements of theperiod's most influential interpreters of China, andhe was involved by implication in a nexus of debatesabout Japan's cultural position vis-à-vis China. Asan educator, Kanzan left a remarkable legacy in hisseries of dictionaries focused upon the usage of‘contemporary Chinese language’ (Tōwa 唐話). Finally, and mostimportantly for the scope of this chapter, Kanzanwas the author of several original compositions incontemporary Chinese – an unusual venture for a manbarred by historical circumstance from ever visitingChina, and an enterprise demanding a creativereinterpretation of cultural and epistemologicalboundaries between Japan and China.

In this essay, I examine Kanzan's ambitious butultimately incomplete magnum opus, the Taiheiki engi 太平記演義 (A Chinese Explication of the ‘Annalsof Pacification’).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×