Deal W.E. Handbook To Life In Medieval And Early Modern Japan

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compiled Chinese medical treatises into 30 volumes.

Among the topics explored in the Ishimpo were dis-

eases and their origins and treatments.

From the Muromachi period, a medical pers-

pective blending Neo-Confucianism and Chinese

medicine—known as the Li-Zhu school—began to

attract the interest of Japanese medical practitioners.

Japanese interest was partly a result of the interest

taken by Japanese Zen monks in Chinese Neo-

Confucian ideas, such as vital force and principle

(Chinese: li; Japanese: ri), that were a theoretical

foundation to Li-Zhu medicine.

The Li-Zhu school derived its name from two

Yuan-dynasty (1279–1368) Chinese physicians, Li

Dongyuan and Zhu Danxi. This school viewed dis-

ease as the direct consequence of a poor lifestyle—

that is, one that disregarded Neo-Confucian moral

injunctions—and vital force imbalances. Treatment

consisted of combinations of herbal medicine,

acupuncture, and moxibustion.

Li-Zhu school medicine was founded in Japan

during the Muromachi period by the physician

Tashiro Sanki (1465–1537). After studying medicine

in China for 12 years, he returned to Japan with Li-

Zhu school medical theory and practice. He used

Li-Zhu medical procedures to treat both samurai

and commoners. It was under the direction of

Sanki’s disciple, Manase Dosan (1507–94), that Li-

Zhu school medicine became established as an

orthodox approach to medical theory and practice.

Dosan was both a physician to the imperial family

and a prominent teacher. He trained doctors in Li-

Zhu medical theory and practice at his private med-

ical school. He also wrote medical texts, including

Keitekishu (A guide to medical practice, 1574) that

viewed Chinese medicine from the perspective of

Japanese values and sensibilities. The lineage of

physicians that followed Dosan gained support from

and served high-ranking warriors and members of

the Tokugawa shogunate.

One of the great contributions made by Dosan

and his followers to the Japanese practice of Chi-

nese medicine was to establish standard procedures

for diagnosing disease. According to these proce-

dures, there were four observations that a physician

needed to make to accurately assess a patient’s dis-

ease: 1) visual observation, especially of such things

as skin color, hair condition, feces, and urine; 2) audi-

tory observation of such things as coughs and verbal

responses made to pain when the patient was

touched, and olfactory observation of patient odors;

3) observation of patient responses to physician

questions concerning such things as appetite and

emotional state; and 4) observation of pulse and

abdomen through touching the body in various ways.

The Li-Zhu school in Japan came to be called the

School of Latter-Day Medicine (Goseiho) in refer-

ence to its connections with Neo-Confucianism (a

latter-day Confucianism). It remained an important

Chinese medical system throughout the early mod-

ern period, but there was one important competing

school of Chinese medicine that developed starting

at the end of the 17th century. The School of

Ancient Medicine (Koiho), as this movement was

called, established itself as an alternative to the

School of Latter-Day Medicine. Although the Lat-

ter-Day School had transformed aspects of Chinese

medicine in accord with Japanese views and sensibil-

ities, the medical approach of the School of Ancient

Medicine resulted in a more thoroughgoing Japan-

ese transformation of Chinese medicine.

A scholarly trend in the late 17th century had a

signiﬁcant impact on the development of the School

of Ancient Medicine. Confucian scholars increas-

ingly rejected Neo-Confucian interpretations of the

Confucian classics in favor of a direct reading of the

ancient texts. This same trend occurred in medical

circles where Neo-Confucian–influenced Li-Zhu

interpretations of ancient Chinese medical texts

were dismissed and direct readings of these texts

were initiated. Thus, the School of Ancient Medi-

cine derived its name from the idea of returning

directly to the ancient sources of medical theory and

practice. To this end, the School of Ancient Medi-

cine based its medical perspective on a Chinese

medical text dating back to the Han dynasty (206

B.C.E.–220 C.E.). This text, Shang han za bing lun

(Essay on typhoid and miscellaneous diseases), was

concerned with symptoms and their treatments

based on the observations of physicians with long

experience in treating patients.

There were several prominent physicians associ-

ated with the theoretical and practical foundations

of the School of Ancient Medicine, but they did not

always agree on how to interpret ancient Chinese

medical texts or how to put theoretical understand-

H ANDBOOK TO L IFE IN M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN J APAN

234

ing into actual medical practice. Among the most

important doctors of the School of Ancient Medi-

cine were Goto Konzan (1659–1733), Yoshimasu

Todo (1702–73), and Yamawaki Toyo (1705–62).

Goto Konzan (1659–1733) viewed the cause of

disease from the perspective of vital force. He

believed that when vital force becomes congested or

congealed in the body, disease occurs. He derived

this view from the metaphysical view that just as vital

force infused the universe and maintained balance

and harmony, so did it infuse the body and create

health. Konzan treated the congestion of vital force

with moxa therapy (see below) and herbal medicine.

Yoshimasu Todo (1702–73) placed great impor-

tance on the observation of bodily symptoms in

diagnosing and treating disease. He carried out

empirical research that he believed proved the efﬁ-

cacy of medical treatments prescribed in ancient

Chinese medical texts. Todo viewed all diseases as

caused by a single poison that created different

symptoms depending on its location in the body. He

treated these poison-caused illnesses with herbal and

other medicines.

Yamawaki Toyo (1705–62) represents a bridge

between Chinese and Western medicine as practiced

in Japan. Although he administered Chinese medi-

cine as an imperial court physician, he doubted the

traditional Chinese view of the structure of the

human anatomy. According to this traditional ana-

tomical view, the human body was conceptualized,

without any empirical or visual veriﬁcation, as en-

compassing five organs and six viscera that inter-

acted with each other and with the meridians, paths

along the body through which vital force ﬂowed. In

turn, the five organs corresponded to traditional

Chinese views of the ﬁve elements: heart/ﬁre, lungs/

metal, kidneys/water, liver/wood, and spleen/earth.

The organs themselves were not a site of treatment

in traditional Chinese medicine, that is, disease was

not caused by malfunctioning organs. Rather, this

anatomical view related to the idea that disease was

caused by imbalances in and disruptions to vital

force and the ﬁve elements.

Toyo’s doubts about the traditional view of

human anatomy came about in part because of an

anatomical description in one of the Chinese classics

that asserted that the body contains nine organs. To

determine which anatomical view was correct, Toyo

received permission to dissect a human body, which

he did in 1754. In 1759, Toyo presented the results

of his observations in a publication entitled Zoshi

(Anatomical record). Although Toyo’s ﬁndings con-

tradicted the traditional view, the ﬁve organs and six

viscera theory remained orthodox. The signiﬁcance

of Toyo’s experimentation was that it set in motion

the idea of performing empirical observations in a

medical setting through dissection and other means,

a methodology that was much more akin to Western

medicine than to Chinese.

Some Forms of Treatment in Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine is concerned with the patient as a

whole person, not simply as a set of isolated, discrete

organs and body parts. For this reason, practitioners

of Chinese medicine did not think in terms of med-

ical or disease specialization, but rather in terms of

treating the whole patient and to restore health gen-

erally. Diseases were diagnosed through a reading of

symptoms (sho).

Chinese medicine treated diseases and symptoms

in a variety of ways. Medications, prepared from a

wide variety of plants, animal parts, and other nat-

ural materials such as minerals, were one such form

of treatment. They were administered on the basis

of the symptoms presented by the patient and as

observed by the physician. This was the same diag-

nosis system that Manase Dosan had systematized in

the late medieval period (see above). Appropriate

medicine was then administered on the basis of the

results of this diagnosis.

Physicians usually grew medicinal plants and

herbs themselves, and then prepared the plant mate-

rial for ingestion, often by drying the medicine into

powder form. Medications were prepared according

to different formulae used to treat speciﬁc diseases

or symptoms. Ingredients were typically mixed to-

gether to derive the desired medical result. Although

there were guides to formulas for various medica-

tions, different doctors often had their own favorite

formulas for treating a particular illness. When trav-

eling, doctors often carried medicines with them in

case they should be needed by those the physician

chanced to meet along the way.

Another common treatment was acupuncture

(hari). In this procedure, used both for treating spe-

ciﬁc diseases and as a preventative to health prob-

P HILOSOPHY, EDUCATION, AND S CIENCE

235

lems, thin silver needles were slowly inserted into

various locations on the body of the patient. In keep-

ing with the idea that a healthy body was a body in

balance, the needles were used to restore the natural

balance of the human body after disease had caused

an imbalance.

A related treatment, and one sometimes used in

conjunction with acupuncture, was moxibustion, or

moxa (kyu). Moxa was a term derived from the word

mogusa, which is the Japanese name for the artemisia

plant. This procedure requires the physician to place

small cones of moxa directly on the patient’s skin

and then to burn the cone so that the skin is heated.

This treatment was used when it was diagnosed that

a patient had a blockage of the vital force believed to

circulate throughout the body, which, if impeded,

would cause disease symptoms. Burning the moxa

was thought to remove the obstruction and allow

energy to once again flow properly in the body.

There was a variation of this treatment in which the

moxa was placed on the end of an acupuncture nee-

dle and ignited, the heat traveling down the needle

and releasing the energy in that manner.

There was also a treatment that involved ﬁnger

pressure (shiatsu) applied to speciﬁc locations on the

body. Doing so was another way to keep the patient’s

energy flowing properly through the body. It was

believed that energy flowed along specific paths

called meridians, and ﬁnger pressure was a means to

restore balance and ﬂow to the energy in a body that

had experienced the imbalancing influence of dis-

ease. Similarly, massage (amma) was also one of the

Chinese medical practitioner’s treatment set. In the

Edo period, massage therapy was often administered

by blind practitioners (also referred to as amma).

WESTERN MEDICINE

Western medicine, referred to in the late medieval

period as “Southern Barbarian” (namban) medicine,

was first introduced to Japan in the 16th century

along with other aspects of Western culture that

accompanied European missionaries. One item of

material culture that Europeans brought with them

was firearms. These soon became a part of the

weaponry available to Japanese warriors. The use of

ﬁrearms also resulted in wounds that were not efﬁ-

ciently treated by traditional Chinese medicine.

Thus, European surgical methods for removing and

treating bullet wounds were adopted. Beyond this,

however, Western medicine was limited in its appeal

to Japanese physicians. It should be noted that in

this period transmission of medical knowledge

worked both ways: Europeans were interested in

what they could learn from traditional Chinese

medicine.

After the missionaries were expelled from Japan

and the shogunate instituted the national seclusion

policy, it was only Dutch traders, among Euro-

peans, who were allowed a minimal presence in

Japan. Japanese first began in-depth consideration

of Western medical practices through medical

texts written in European languages, especially

Dutch, and through the medical knowledge of

physicians in service to the Dutch East India Com-

pany enclave on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki

harbor. It was largely from these physicians and

from Western medical books that the Japanese

learned Western medical theory and practice,

including surgical techniques, anatomy, the small-

pox vaccination, and such medical equipment as

the stethoscope.

Among the most inﬂuential of these physicians

was Caspar Schambergen (1623–1706) who arrived

in Japan in 1649. The following year, he accompa-

nied the head of the Dutch East India Company to

Edo for an audience with shogunate authorities. At

the request of the shogun, Schambergen remained

in Edo for several months to instruct shogunate

physicians in Western surgical procedures and prac-

tices. In similar fashion, Engelbert Kaempfer

(1651–1716), a German physician who arrived in

Nagasaki in 1690 to serve as a physician to the

Dutch East India Company, also traveled to Edo and

consulted with the shogunate’s doctors about West-

ern medicine.

The Swedish physician Carl Peter Thunberg

(1743–1828) was also a botanist who had studied with

the creator of the modern plant classiﬁcation system,

Carolus Linnaeus (1707–78). Upon his arrival in

Japan in 1775 as a doctor to the Dutch East India

Company, he practiced medicine and also conducted

an extensive yearlong study of Japanese ﬂora. He col-

lected some 800 botanical specimens and wrote a

book on this subject, the Flora Japonica (1784).

Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866) was a

German physician for the Dutch East India Com-

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236

pany, serving at Dejima from 1823 to 1829 and again

from 1859 to 1861. In addition to imparting his

medical expertise, he was also a student of Japanese

culture providing knowledge of Japan to Europe.

For Western medicine to gain a foothold in

Japan, it required acknowledgment of the possibility

that traditional medicine might not be the last word

in medical understanding and treatment. This did

not occur in Japan until the 18th century as a result

of the increasing inﬂuence of Western medical texts

that were ﬁrst translated into Japanese at this time.

Western medicine presented challenges to tradi-

tional Chinese medicine. For instance, Western

emphasis on understanding the anatomy of the

human body was largely ignored in traditional Chi-

nese medicine. The Chinese view was that the living

person was animated by a vital force known as ki (in

Chinese, qi). A corpse was a body devoid of vital

force. Performing dissections to understand the

structures and interrelations of internal organs,

musculature, and bones was considered an empty

exercise. However, doubt about this traditional view

grew as it became evident that traditional Chinese

anatomical charts were faulty when compared to the

evidence that an autopsy provided.

For some Japanese doctors, the discrepancy

between the traditional view and empirical evidence

became glaringly obvious in the latter half of the

18th century. In 1771, the Japanese physicians

Sugita Gempaku (1733–1817), Maeno Ryotaku

(1723–1803), and Nakagawa Jun’an (1739–86)

observed the dissection of the corpse of an executed

criminal. The three physicians were familiar with

the Dutch translation of a German anatomy book

and found that the anatomical features they

observed at the dissection closely paralleled the

anatomical charts and descriptions in the anatomy

text. For these doctors, a new way of seeing and

understanding the human body was revealed. As a

result of this experience, Sugita and others resolved

to translate the Dutch anatomy text, Ontleedkundige

Tafelen (Illustrated anatomy), originally written in

German by the physician Johann Adam Kulmus

(1689–1745), in order to raise the level of Japanese

medical knowledge. Their translation, Kaitai shinsho

(New book of anatomy, 1774), marked the first

translation into Japanese of a complete Western

medical text.

The publication of Kaitai shinsho inaugurated the

study of Dutch medicine (rampo) in Japan, as well as

other Western medical and scientiﬁc disciplines. By

the early 1800s, Japanese physicians increasingly

studied Western medicine from the physicians

assigned to the Dutch East India Company. Another

result was a new interest in translating other West-

ern medical and scientific texts into Japanese.

Notable in this regard was the Udagawa family who,

over the course of three generations, were strong

supporters of Western scientiﬁc knowledge and who

were active in the translation of Western texts.

A further consequence of this incursion of West-

ern medical notions into Japanese medicine was that

it created interest in studying affiliated areas of

Western science critical to understanding European

medical perspectives. Subjects such as biology and

chemistry were embraced by those Japanese wishing

to understand Western science and medicine. By the

end of the 18th century, original Japanese texts on

medical and scientific topics began to appear. In

1857, a Japanese medical school was founded by

Japanese doctors trained by Dutch and other Euro-

pean physicians.

Astronomy

Japanese interest in astronomy was traditionally

focused on issues of the calendar and timekeeping.

Techniques of astronomical observation were bor-

rowed from China. Contact with the 16th-century

Catholic missionaries introduced the Japanese to

the ideas of Ptolemy and Ptolemaic astronomy. Sci-

entific ideas that emerged during the Western

Enlightenment were introduced to Japan by the

Dutch. The ideas of notables such as Galileo and

Newton were disseminated in Japan by way of the

Japanese translators working with the Dutch. The

impact of these ideas on Japan, though gradual, was

nonetheless significant because they forced the

Japanese to consider their own assumptions about

the operations of the natural world. These new

astronomical ideas also had an immediate, practical

benefit. The shogunate soon realized that these

astronomical discoveries could be utilized to make

the lunar calendar then in use more accurate. This

P HILOSOPHY, EDUCATION, AND S CIENCE

237

was important in terms of maximizing agricultural

production.

As the ﬁeld of Western astronomy developed in

Japan, the government appointed official astron-

omers (temmonkata) to serve and advise the shogu-

nate. The first, Shibukawa Shunkai (or Harumi;

1639–1715), was a student of the theories of Coper-

nicus. He utilized this knowledge to design a new

calendar, the Jokyo calendar, based on a late 13th-

century Chinese calendar that was adopted as the

ofﬁcial Japanese calendar in 1684.

In 1782, Japan’s first astronomical observatory

was established in the city of Edo at Asakusa. It was

used by the official government astronomers to

study the movement of heavenly bodies. The

observatory included an astrolabe (kontengi) for

making precise calculations of the location of space

objects.

Geography

Geography as a scientific endeavor, as opposed to

descriptions of landscape and location, did not

become important in Japan until the start of the

early modern period. As with other new sciences in

Japan, geography emerged as a science as a result of

both Neo-Confucian rationalist thought and contact

with Western missionaries and traders that intro-

H ANDBOOK TO L IFE IN M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN J APAN

238

7.1 Japan’s ﬁrst astronomical observatory at Asakusa. The object on the roof of the building at left is an astrolabe.

(Illustration Grace Vibbert)

duced Western scientific ideas, especially, in this

case, regarding geography and navigation.

One of the immediate beneﬁts to the Japanese of

embracing geography as a science was in the areas of

mapmaking, land surveying, and navigation. Greater

precision in these areas gave rise to Japanese ex-

ploration of lands and seas beyond Japan’s immedi-

ate shores. Among the most important Edo-period

cartographers and explorers were Ino Tadataka,

Mogami Tokunai, Mamiya Rinzo, and Takahashi

Kageyasu.

Ino Tadataka (1745–1818) was a land surveyor

and cartographer who made surveys of Japan utiliz-

ing Western geographical methods that resulted in

the Dai Nihon enkai yochi zenzu (Atlas of coastal

waterways of greater Japan, 1821), a complete geo-

graphic survey of all of Japan that took some 16

years to produce. Mogami Tokunai (1755–1836) was

an explorer and surveyor who surveyed Ezochi

(Hokkaido), and parts of the Sakhalin and Kuril

islands. Mamiya Rinzo (1775–1844) was an explorer

and cartographer who made surveys for the shogu-

nate. In 1809, for instance, he explored the Sakhalin

region and found that a strait separated Sakhalin

from the Asian mainland.

While these geographers surveyed the Japanese

islands and surrounding areas, others fixed their

interests on regional and world geographies. Taka-

hashi Kageyasu (1785–1829), who also made maps

of Japan, produced world maps in a collection titled

Shintei bankoku zenzu (Newly revised universal

atlas) that was published in 1810. Besides maps of

Japan and the world, Japanese geographers and car-

tographers working for lords produced maps of

domain lands. These maps were ordered by the

shogunate.

Mathematics

The first system of mathematical calculation in

Japan was derived from seventh- and eighth-cen-

tury borrowings from China. Some 800 years later,

Chinese math was once again introduced to Japan

in the guise of math texts imported in the late 15th

or early 16th century. It was at this time that the

abacus (soroban), borrowed from China, came to be

used for arithmetic calculation. These Chinese

inﬂuences fostered the development of indigenous

Japanese modes of arithmetic and calculation,

including the development of Japanese-style math

texts and a differently configured abacus than its

Chinese counterpart. Prior to the introduction of

the abacus, calculations were done using the sangi

method. This was a calculation system that used

short wooden sticks aligned in various ways to rep-

resent numbers. This system was mostly discontin-

ued by the 17th century.

Yoshida Mitsuyoshi (1578–1672) wrote a math

text titled Jingoki (Treatise on eternal mathematical

truths) in 1627 that was republished in 1641 with a

new feature that was later copied by others and led

to ongoing mathematical developments in Japan.

This important innovation was the development of

unsolved math problems known as idai (bequeathed

questions). Yoshida included 12 math problems that

had no answer. These were left as problems for

others to solve. Over time, others picked up this

practice and the problems often became quite

sophisticated and complicated.

Japanese mathematics, or wasan as it came to be

called by the end of the early modern period,

referred to Edo-period methods of calculation and

arithmetic. Seki Takakazu (or Seki Kowa, ca.

1642–1708) is usually considered the founder of

Japanese mathematics and the mathematical school,

Seki-ryu, that bears his name. He is noted for his

systemization of algebraic notation (tenzan jutsu)

that led to more sophisticated math problems and

their solutions. Edo-period Japanese mathematics

was especially concerned with its application to

everyday matters as opposed to issues of proof and

demonstration central to Western mathematical

systems.

Japanese mathematicians of the 17th and 18th

centuries typically came from the warrior class. Seki,

for instance, was born into a samurai family and later

became an accountant to the shogunate. By the 19th

century, interest in mathematics extended beyond

the samurai to include those of the merchant class.

Western mathematical theory (yosan) came to

Japan by way of the Dutch. Among the areas studied

were geometry, trigonometry, and logarithms.

These areas of study gradually replaced Japanese

mathematics in terms of interest by the end of the

P HILOSOPHY, EDUCATION, AND S CIENCE

239

Edo period. Western mathematics was also coupled

with other Western sciences, such as astronomy, that

furthered their development.

READING

Philosophy

Totman 2000, 220–221: early Edo political philoso-

phy, 263–272: early modern thought; Varley 2000,

170–173, 205–220: early modern philosophy;

Maruyama 1974: early modern philosophy and its

relationship to politics; Najita 1974: Edo-period

thought; Najita and Scheiner (eds.) 1978: Edo-

period thought; Ooms 1985: early Edo-period

thought; Nosco (ed.) 1984: Neo-Confucianism in

the Edo period; Nosco 1990: Edo-period thought;

Harootunian 1988: Edo-period National Learning

philosophy

Education

Hall (ed.) 1991, 715–725: early modern education,

including discussion of women’s education; Totman

1993, 161–162, 300–303, 351–355, 429–436: educa-

tion in the early modern period; Kassel 1996, 23–33:

overview of Edo-period education; Dore 1965: edu-

cation in the early modern period; Rubinger 1982:

education in the early modern period; Lincicome

1991, 1–12: history of Japanese education; Tocco

2003, 193–218: women’s education in the early

modern period; Najita 1987: Kaitokudo private

merchant academy

Science

Bartholomew 1989: formation of Japanese science;

Morris-Suzuki 1994: early modern science and tech-

nology; Nakayama 1978, 728–758: overview of

Japanese scientific thought; Sugimoto and Swain

1989: history of Japanese science

MATHEMATICS

Mikami 1974: overview of the history of Japanese

mathematics; Fukagawa and Pedoe 1989: Japanese

temple geometry problems; Jochi 2000, 423–454:

Japanese mathematics (wasan); Smith and Mikami

1914: overview of the history of Japanese mathematics

MEDICINE

Cai and Zhen 2003, 49–73: background on Chinese

medicine; Hsia, Veith, and Geertsma, trans. 1986:

background on early Japanese medical practice;

Bowers 1965: Japanese medical history; Bowers

1970: Western physicians in the early modern

period; Bowers 1980: Western medicine in early

modern Japan; Bowman 1987: epidemics and disease

in early modern Japan; Fujikawa 1934: Japanese

medicine; Otsuka 1976: Chinese traditional medi-

cine in the early modern period; Nagayo 1991: early

modern Japanese medicine; Kuriyama 1992: 18th-

century Japanese anatomy; Tatsukawa 1993: disease

in the medieval period; Farris 1993: disease in the

early modern period; Lock 1980, 23–66: Japanese

medical beliefs and practices in the medieval and

early modern periods; Ohnuki-Tierney 1984,

145–166: religion and medicine in medieval and

early modern Japan

H ANDBOOK TO L IFE IN M EDIEVAL AND E ARLY M ODERN J APAN

240

LANGUAGE AND

LITERATURE

LANGUAGE

Historically the Japanese language developed along

two major trajectories—spoken and written. The

Japanese spoken language bears no linguistic rela-

tionship to Chinese, but it borrowed Chinese lan-

guage for writing. The Japanese used Chinese

characters for writing simply because this was the

writing system they first encountered. Given the

structure of the Japanese spoken language, however,

it was not a very good ﬁt.

Over time the Japanese writing system developed

into a complex use of Chinese characters along

with two different phonetic scripts to represent the

sounds of spoken Japanese. The two phonetic

scripts—hiragana and katakana—represented the

same sounds but were used in different contexts

reflecting, among other things, class and gender.

These scripts were developed by the Japanese based

on derivations made from Chinese characters. The

complexity of Japanese was further increased

because of the use of foreign words borrowed from

Chinese, and later on, from European languages.

Historically there were also regional dialects that

arose, in part, because of the natural barriers, such as

mountains and islands, that separated different areas

of the country. A dialect in one region was often dif-

ficult for those in another area to understand.

Dialects, too, were not usually reflected in formal

written Japanese.

Linguists sometimes divide the historical devel-

opment of Japanese into ﬁve periods.

• Old Japanese (up to the eighth century)

• Late Old Japanese (9th–11th century)

• Middle Japanese (12th–16th century)

• Early Modern Japanese (17th–18th century)

• Modern Japanese (19th century to the present)

Our interest in this volume is with Middle and

Early Modern Japanese, corresponding roughly to

the historical divisions of medieval and early mod-

ern. Because of the difficulties in trying to recreate

Japanese pronunciation from past times, this dis-

cussion focuses on written Japanese in the medieval

and early modern periods, and utilizes the contem-

porary pronunciations of the Chinese characters

and the current orthography of the phonetic

scripts.

Genetic Afﬁliation

In linguistics, genetic afﬁliation refers to the shared

relationship that certain languages have to one

another. This is determined, in part, by examining

common origins and historical development. Since

the Japanese writing system derives from the Chi-

nese writing system, it would appear that Chinese

and Japanese must have some fundamental affilia-

tion, similar, say, to the afﬁliation between German

and English. In fact, this is not the case. Although

they share some written aspects, the languages are

not afﬁliated in that they do not share similar lin-

guistic structures. Grammatical structure and syn-

tax, for instance, are different in the two languages.

Japanese follows a subject-object-verb (SOV) sen-

tence structure, while Chinese utilizes a subject-

verb-object (SVO) structure.

Japanese has no genetic afﬁliation with Chinese,

but neither does it have any clear afﬁliation with any

other language. There are a number of theories about

the origins of Japanese. Some theories suggest a

genetic afﬁliation with Korean, but others assert pos-

sible relationships to South Asian languages, to Altaic

languages of central Asia, and to Malayo-Polynesian

languages. The strongest arguments for afﬁliation are

with Korean, on the basis of very similar syntax, and

with Altaic languages, on the basis of such similarities

as the number system and verb forms.

Chinese Characters

Chinese characters were ﬁrst introduced to Japan in

the early centuries of the common era. Contacts

between Japan, China, and Korea increased signi-

ficantly in the fourth and fifth centuries, and by

the beginning of the eighth century when Japan’s

earliest extant texts were written, the Japanese had

fully developed the use of Chinese characters

(known in Japanese as kanji), though sometimes in

ways that would not have been recognized in China.

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Throughout the medieval and early modern periods,

the Japanese employed the use of Chinese characters

in several different ways depending on the linguistic

and literary requirements of a particular kind of

writing. Thus, for instance, there are examples of

Japanese literature, history, government documents

and other writings that used Chinese and Chinese

characters in varied ways. Among these variations

are: classical Chinese, hybrid forms of Chinese and

Japanese, and classical Japanese which relies little on

Chinese characters.

When the Japanese first came to use Chinese

characters to write Japanese, they did so in two ways.

First, they utilized the phonetic value of Chinese

characters. In this usage, the meaning of individual

characters was ignored and instead a Japanese sound

value was given to each character regardless of the

actual meaning of the Chinese character. For exam-

ple, the Japanese word for country is kuni. In order to

write kuni using the phonetic method, a Chinese

character with the approximate sound value of ku

would be combined with another Chinese character

with an approximate sound value of ni. Chinese

characters are monosyllabic so, in the case of a two-

syllable word like kuni, two Chinese characters were

needed. By writing the two Chinese characters rep-

resenting ku and ni together, the word kuni was pro-

duced even though the original meaning in Chinese

of the two characters was completely ignored.

Needless to say, the Japanese use of Chinese charac-

ters in this way produced, from a Chinese perspec-

tive, complete gibberish. Not surprisingly, this mode

of transcribing Japanese into written form was soon

abandoned, having also been complicated by the fact

that more than one Chinese character might be

given the same sound value as another. For instance,

in Japan’s earliest extant text, the Kojiki (Record of

ancient matters, 712), written partly in this phonetic

style, there were 88 different syllables used, but they

are represented by nearly 1,000 Chinese characters.

The second way Chinese characters were used

was based on their semantic value. In this method,

the meaning of the Chinese character was used for

writing a Japanese word with the same or a similar

meaning. However, the Chinese pronunciation was

ignored and instead the character was pronounced

using the indigenous Japanese sound value. For

example, the Chinese character for the word country

would be used but the Chinese pronunciation of that

character was ignored in favor of pronouncing the

character using the Japanese word for country (kuni)

every time the character was encountered.

The term used for describing the phonetic use of

Chinese characters is man’yogana, literally, “the syl-

labary (kana) of ten thousand leaves (man’yo),” a ref-

erence to the phonetic use of characters in the early

poetry anthology, the Man’yoshu (Collection of ten

thousand leaves, compiled ca. 759). Using Chinese

characters was inefﬁcient, however, not least because

it took many pen strokes to convey a simple sound.

Although the Japanese would continue to use Chi-

nese characters for their meaning—using both Chi-

nese- and Japanese-derived pronunciations (see

“Kanji Pronunciation” below)—it was from the pho-

netic use of characters that Japan’s syllabary writing

system developed.

Kana Syllabaries

The term syllabary (kana) refers to the systems of

writing Japanese that developed out of man’yogana.

In Japanese, the smallest linguistic unit is the sylla-

ble. Japanese has no way of breaking syllables into

smaller units of vowels and consonants. Thus, for

example, the syllable sa in Japanese cannot be

reduced to s and a. Nor, we should add, is there a

need to.

There are two syllabaries that developed in

Japanese: hiragana and katakana. They were in use

in the medieval and early modern periods, and are

used in modern Japanese. Both hiragana and

katakana were created by simplifying Chinese char-

acters into two or three brush strokes. Hiragana is

rounded and was derived from a cursive style of

writing Chinese characters. In contrast, katakana is

angular and was derived from using only part of a

Chinese character. Although both hiragana and

katakana represent all the sounds of the Japanese

language, the choice of which syllabary to use for

what kind of writing varied in different historical

periods. In the medieval and early modern periods

the Japanese wrote using various combinations

of kanji and kana. They also sometimes wrote in

Chinese.

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