[lit-ideas] Re: On Nip Thievery [Lawrence's investigations]
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 19:22:13 +0900
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How enculturated is the notion of literature? Not literature qua
> literature, but in terms of what constitutes literature or what "literature"
> does, perhaps, mean? John? What is the Japanese perspective? Anyone else?
>
>
Wonderful questions. Not being anything like an expert, I asked my wife, who
brought us to Japan back in 1980 because she was a graduate student in
Japanese literature at Yale. Definition proved elusive, but I heard a
familiar tale. Back in the Heian Era (794-1185), the ability to write poetry
was the mark of a cultured man or woman, who was, almost by definition, an
aristocrat. In subsequent centuries various new forms emerged, beginning
most famously in the Heian Era itself with The Tale of Genji, Japan and the
world's first novel, written by Murasaki Shikibu. In modern Japanese
thinking, ancient literature also includes the earliest histories, which
include a good deal of what modern historians would call myth. The current
organizational structure of Japanese universities reflects Western models,
with bungaku (literature) assigned to the jinbunkagaku (humanities) as
opposed to shizenkagaku (natural sciences). In an alternative
classification, literature's "others" also include disciplines organized as
shakaikagaku (social sciences). In all three cases, the term kagaku, which
is now routinely translated "science" is the local translation of the German
wissenschaft. Not surprising that, since modern Japanese universities are,
like American universities, broadly modeled on 19th century German
prototypes.
I say "familiar tale" because, having once been involved in studying things
Chinese, I am familiar with the classical Chinese distinctions, which, like
the early Japanese examples cited above or more recent academic debates in
Europe and America have mainly to do with the larger question what should an
educated man (and, yes, it was usually a man, only occasionally an educated
woman) know. This question is at least as old as the invention of alphabets
and with it the veneration of texts, an intimate knowledge of which is
regarded as essential for properly elite status.
In ancient China elite knowledge was divided into two broad categories, wen
= "literary" and wu = "military" or, in other words the textual and the
martial arts. As time passed, the ascendancy of Confucianism as the official
ideology of Chinese empires led to a higher value being placed on wen than
on wu, the natural response of bureaucrats who preferred a stable political
system in which the most highly valued sort of knowledge was the expertise
in manipulating text which they themselves possessed to the chaos which
ensued when such systems broke down and wu became ascendant.
The actual content of wen (=Japanese bun) involved first the Classics and
the Histories (an intimate knowledge of which was essential to passing the
Imperial civil service exams). Modern compendia of classical Chinese
literature add lyric poetry (especially the great Tang Dynasty poets) and
Ming and Qing novels, e.g., The Dream of the Red Chamber, though whether the
latter should be regarded as wen or a jumped-up form of popular
culture/superstition was still being debated into the 20th century.
Hope this is helpful.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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