2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Confucian Dress Regulations in Tokugawa Japan: Negotiating Alternative Conceptions of the Social and Political Order between the Seventeenth and Early Nineteenth Century
| Project/Area Number |
20K12835
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| Research Institution | Teikyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
リネペ アンドレ 帝京大学, 文学部, 講師 (80828012)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | primary sources / conference panel / translation / Confucian commentaries |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The present research project examines discourses on dress regulations in the history of political thought in early modern Japan. Its purpose is to identify underlying normative conceptions and to reconstruct an intellectual genealogy from the 17th to the early 19th century. Thereby, it contributes to a better understanding of normative conceptions as well as symbolic practices related to the use of dress in the political field of Tokugawa Japan. Moreover, it makes related primary sources accessible to the international research community through translations into English.
The following results were obtained during the period under review (research stage 2): (1) A complete translation of Nakai Riken’s Shini zukai (1765). The manuscript is currently being revised and prepared for publication; (2) An extensive analysis of Chinese and Japanese Confucian commentaries to passage 10.6 in Confucius’s Analects. Neo-Confucian commentaries from the Song to the early Qing period were examined in the context of Chinese primary sources and compared with those by Ogyu Sorai, Dazai Shundai, and Nakai Riken. Confucian interpretations of passage 10.6 in the Analects define a dominant conceptual framework for discourses in the mid- and late Tokugawa period. (3) Organization of a panel at the 18th German-Speaking Congress of Japanese Studies in Germany (24~26th Aug. 2022) focusing on dress regulations in premodern and modern Japan. The conference offers the opportunity to discuss results of the present research project with international specialists.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
Due to the influence of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and the countermeasures taken by the Japanese government important research activities of the original research proposal had to been postponed. This pertains, first, to the examination and acquisition of primary sources in archives throughout Japan, which was prevented by travel restrictions, health concerns, as well as limited access to archives. Especially, the examination of primary sources by the Confucian scholar, Dazai Shundai, located in two archives in the town of Iida, Nagano prefecture, has been impossible to be executed to date. Second, the organization of an international symposium in Japan, crucial for the further developing of the present project, had to been postponed indefinitely due to travel restrictions by the Japanese government permitting international scholars from entering the country.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The completion of the second stage of the original research proposal is planned for the late summer of 2022. Furthermore, the submission of the translation of Nakai Riken’s Explanations to the Plates of the Long Robe together with an introduction and extensive annotations is planned for the later half of the present year.
The objectives of the third stage of the present research project are the examination of primary sources with a focus on the late Tokugawa period (1750－1850) as well as the translation of related sources into English. Furthermore, drafting of the final manuscript based on the research results from the research stages 1~3 will be continued for a book publication.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The gradual relaxation of measures taken by the Japanese Government to control the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first month of the year 2022 are expected to show a positive influence on the research environment. Therefore, the incurring amount of funding of the fiscal year 2021 will be invested for the completion of the remaining tasks of research stage 2. The third stage of the present research project is going to be executed with the use of funding according to the original research proposal.
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