Traces of the Gods: Writing and Hirata Atsutane's Imagining of the “Illustrious Imperial Land”

Event details
Speaker : Dr Scot Hislop
               Visiting Fellow, Department of Japanese Studies, NUS
Date      : Friday, 22 August 2008
Time      : 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Venue    : AS4/03-28 (JS Meeting Room)

Abstract

From the middle of the 18th century until the end of the 19th, a debate raged among scholars of Kokugaku (National Learning) about whether there had been a writing system in Japan before the arrival of Chinese characters.  In this paper I take up Hirata Atsutane's (1776-1843) treatise on the script of the gods, Kanna Hifumi-den.  Although Atsutane is widely considered as one of the four most important kokugaku thinkers, he relies on faith-based assumptions and weak reasoning in this treatise.  He thus arrives at the patently incorrect conclusion that the Japanese gods invented a writing system so his treatise has been largely ignored.  I will show, however, by relying on the thought of Naoki Sakai, that Atsutane's treatise is an important instance of proto-nationalist discourse among kokugaku scholars, since the treatise is addressed to and interpolates a particular (rather than a universal) audience, although this audience cannot be simply or conveniently conflated with "Japan" or "Nihon".

About the speaker

Scot Hislop's research focuses on Tokugawa (1600-1868) literature and intellectual history. He has published works on Matsuo Bashô (1644-1694) and linked verse and is currently working on a manuscript on the poetry, prose, and poetics of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) as well as articles on the grammars of classical Japanese compiled by Kokugaku (National Learning) scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Scot Hislop is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore.