Ishidōmaru

[Michael Pye]

Dear List-members,

I have been thinking about the story of Ishidōmaru and his father
Shigeuji aus Karukaya and am a bit puzzled. It seems to have become
enshrined in a sekkyōbushi published in 1631, as I learn from Susan
Matisoff's article on sermon-ballads in Flowing Traces edited by
Sanford, Lafleur and Nagatomi. But I have two questions.
The story must have a history prior to this: is anything known of it?
(The reference to Honen reaches back a long way!)
Also, Shigeuji's wife, the mother of Ishidōmaru, seems not to be
named, or have I missed something?
Grateful for any information, as always,
Michael Pye




.................................................................................................................
Professor of the Study of Religions (em.), University of Marburg, Germany

[Keller Kimbrough]

Dear Michael, 

Karukaya is a wonderful, sad story.  I translated the 1631 woodblock-printed Sekkyō Karukaya playbook in my Wondrous Brutal Fictions (Columbia University Press, 2013).  Also, in an appendix to that volume I list and describe all of the known extant editions of the work.  The only older version is an illustrated and untitled manuscript dating from around the late sixteenth century.  It was formerly owned by Yokoyama Shigeru, and it is now in the possession of the Suntory Museum.  It is typeset and annotated in the Kojōruri, Sekkyōshū volume of Iwanami Shoten’s Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei series (volume 90). 

You are correct that Shigeuji’s wife is unnamed.  To my great chagrin, I called her “Akō” in Chapter 7 of my Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way (2008), but that is a mistake.  I had not yet translated Karukaya at the time that I wrote that chapter, and I must have confused her name with the name of Kūkai’s mother, who is identified in the middle part of the 1631 Sekkyō Karukaya (the “Kōya no maki” section) as Akō Gozen.  Alas, there is nothing that I can do about that now. 

Sincerely yours, 

Keller

R. Keller Kimbrough
Professor of Japanese
Chair, Dept. of Asian Languages and Civilizations
279 University of Colorado, Boulder
Boulder, CO  80309-0279
keller.k...@colorado.edu

https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/kimbrough-keller/

I'm on Microsoft Teams  CU staff, faculty, and students can chat with me here.

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[GUELBERG Niels]

Dear Michael, dear Keller!

The name of Ishidomaru's mother is Chisato no mae (千里の前), according to local tradition, which is quoted in Iimura Yonetaro's longselling guidebook Koya no shiori (高野のしをり, published between 1895 and 1937 more than 30 times).

It is hard to say  how long this story reaches back. But the story became virulent since the second approach to Koyasan (Fudosakaguchi) was developed especially for female pilgrims. That may go back to late Muromachi. In the Edo period, the second approach became the main street for climbing up to mount Koya, and the first approach (Daimonguchi, the way from the grave of Kukai's mother at the Jison'in up to the Great Gate) the street for getting down the hill.

The Karukaya Hall in Kamuro/Kaburo (学文路) is the first stop on the second approach. In Kiinokuni meisho zue you can find a picture of the hall with the grave of Ishidomaro's mother on the right (see attachment).

Niels

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差出人: pm...@googlegroups.com <pm...@googlegroups.com> が Keller Kimbrough <keller.k...@colorado.edu> の代理で送信
送信日時: 2021年3月30日 0:39
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件名: Re: [PMJS] Ishidōmaru

 

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[Michael Jamentz]

Hi Everyone,

See also Hinonishi Shinjō 日野西真定. “Kōyasan fumoto Karukayadō no hassei to kinō” 高野山麓苅萱堂の発生と機能,  Miko to megami 巫女と女神; Shirîzu Josei to Bukkyō 4 シリーズ女性と仏教４, Heibonsha, 1989.

It states:....at the Karukayadō at Nintokuji 仁徳寺 at Kamuro... at the base of Kōyasan are worshipped wooden statues of Ishidōmaru and his mother Chisato 千里 as well as that of Tamaya Yoji 玉屋与次 a tea merchant who aided the two, and a gravestone for Chisato has also been erected. The wooden statue of Chisato is dated Genroku 14 (1701), the statues of Ishidōmaru and Tamaya Yoji are from Meiwa 1 (1772), and the gravestone of Chisato is from An’ei 5 (1776).

m jamentz

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[Susan MATISOFF]

Dear  Michael, Keller and Niels,

I’d like to refer you to the fairly extensive piece about all this that I published in times now past. It is Barred from Paradise? Mount Kôya and the Karukaya Legend, a chapter in Engendering Faith, Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, ed. Barbara Ruch, 2002. That splendid volume was published by the U. of Michigan Center for Japanese studies. The name Chisato appears in relatively late versions of the tale of Karukaya. Chisato is figured as a wife, but especially as the mother of Ishidomaru. There was some admixture of legends about the mother of Kûkai, (Akô, the name Keller mentioned). There’s quite a bit more, but I won’t try to summarize.

Best to all,

Susan Matisoff

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[Barbara Ruch]

Dear Michael P, Keller, Michael J., Niels, and Susan,

How wonderful to see the Karukaya legends coming up for air and light. I thought I’d mention to Michael P., who mentioned Hōnen, that we should not forget Hōnen’s important pilgrimage to Zenkōji in Nagano. The Jōdo-shū headquarters). Even in the 1970s I could observe etoki performances on hanging scrolls of the Karukaya stories in two rival Nagano temples. The story may have had roots at esoteric Mt. Koya, but like all moving tales of religion origin, it soon blossomed elsewhere spread through Jōdo-shū etc. as well. Susan Matisoff was the real pioneer of this story, and Ikumi Kaminishi’s Explaining Pictures (2006) will give you more good information.

Barbara

Barbara Ruch

[pronounced ROOSH]

Director, IMJS: Institute for Japanese Cultural Heritage Initiatives

Professor Emerita, Japanese Literature and Culture

Columbia University

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[Mark Blum]

To Barbara et al.,

A correction here: although Zenkōji is affiliated with both Jōdoshū and Tendaishū, and it thus functions as a honzan within Jōdoshū, there is no record of Hōnen going there. Hōnen did not travel so far away from the capital, except during his exile. But there were many people in Hōnen's lineage who did visit, like Shinran, Shōkū, Ryōchū, and Ippen.

Mark Blum

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[Michael Pye]

To all gentle colleagues,
Thank you so much everybody for answering my enquiry, and with
such expertise and relevance. It's really great to have the further
references too. I'll be having a brief reference to this story in a
history of Japanese religions (which is now nearly done I'm happy to
say, given the fragility of this mortal life), so I hope I'm avoiding
howlers. The point about Zenkōji is that father and son were
associated there, post-mortem, as a version of Jizō (having been
reunited in the Pure Land). I presume this idea was developed at the
Zenkōji in Nagano, not at Moto-Zenkōji.
Best wishes all round, and thanks again.
Michael Pye

Zitat von Mark Blum <blum...@gmail.com>:

> To Barbara et al.,
> A correction here: although Zenkōji is affiliated with both Jōdoshū and

> Tendaishū, and it thus functions as a *honzan *within Jōdoshū, there is no

> record of Hōnen going there. Hōnen did not travel so far away from the
> capital, except during his exile. But there were many people in Hōnen's
> lineage who did visit, like Shinran, Shōkū, Ryōchū, and Ippen.
> Mark Blum
>
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 8:41 PM Barbara Ruch <br...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
>> Dear Michael P, Keller, Michael J., Niels, and Susan,
>>

>> How wonderful to see the *Karukaya* legends coming up for air and light.

>> I thought I’d mention to Michael P., who mentioned Hōnen, that we should
>> not forget Hōnen’s important pilgrimage to Zenkōji in Nagano. The Jōdo-shū
>> headquarters). Even in the 1970s I could observe etoki performances on
>> hanging scrolls of the Karukaya stories in two rival Nagano temples. The
>> story may have had roots at esoteric Mt. Koya, but like all moving tales of
>> religion origin, it soon blossomed elsewhere spread through Jōdo-shū etc.
>> as well. Susan Matisoff was the real pioneer of this story, and Ikumi

>> Kaminishi’s *Explaining Pictures* (2006) will give you more good

>> information.
>>
>> Barbara
>>
>>
>> Barbara Ruch
>> [pronounced ROOSH]
>> Director, IMJS: Institute for Japanese Cultural Heritage Initiatives
>> Professor Emerita, Japanese Literature and Culture
>> Columbia University
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 9:13 PM Susan MATISOFF <ma...@berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Michael, Keller and Niels,
>>>
>>> I’d like to refer you to the fairly extensive piece about all this that I

>>> published in times now past. It is *Barred from Paradise? Mount Kôya and
>>> the Karukaya Legend,* a chapter in *Engendering Faith, Women and
>>> Buddhism in Premodern Japan, ed. *Barbara Ruch, 2002. That splendid

>>> volume was published by the U. of Michigan Center for Japanese studies. The
>>> name Chisato appears in relatively late versions of the tale of Karukaya.

>>> Chisato is figured as a wife, but especially as the *mother* of

>>> Ishidomaru. There was some admixture of legends about the mother of Kûkai,
>>> (Akô, the name Keller mentioned). There’s quite a bit more, but I won’t try
>>> to summarize.
>>>
>>> Best to all,
>>>
>>> Susan Matisoff
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 29, 2021, at 5:03 PM, Michael Jamentz <meja...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Everyone,
>>>
>>> See also Hinonishi Shinjō 日野西真定. “Kōyasan fumoto Karukayadō no hassei to

>>> kinō” 高野山麓苅萱堂の発生と機能, *Miko to megami* 巫女と女神; Shirîzu Josei to Bukkyō 4

>>>> ------------------------------
>>>> *差出人:* pm...@googlegroups.com <pm...@googlegroups.com> が Keller Kimbrough
>>>> <keller.k...@colorado.edu> の代理で送信
>>>> *送信日時:* 2021年3月30日 0:39
>>>> *宛先:* 'ノット ジェフリー' via PMJS: Listserv <pm...@googlegroups.com>
>>>> *件名:* Re: [PMJS] Ishidōmaru
>>>>
>>>> Dear Michael,
>>>>
>>>> *Karukaya* is a wonderful, sad story. I translated the 1631
>>>> woodblock-printed *Sekkyō Karukaya* playbook in my *Wondrous Brutal
>>>> Fictions* (Columbia University Press, 2013). Also, in an appendix to

>>>> that volume I list and describe all of the known extant editions of the
>>>> work. The only older version is an illustrated and untitled manuscript
>>>> dating from around the late sixteenth century. It was formerly owned by
>>>> Yokoyama Shigeru, and it is now in the possession of the Suntory Museum.

>>>> It is typeset and annotated in the *Kojōruri, Sekkyōshū* volume of
>>>> Iwanami Shoten’s *Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei* series (volume 90).

>>>>
>>>> You are correct that Shigeuji’s wife is unnamed. To my great chagrin, I

>>>> called her “Akō” in Chapter 7 of my *Preachers, Poets, Women, and the
>>>> Way* (2008), but that is a mistake. I had not yet translated *Karukaya*

>>>> at the time that I wrote that chapter, and I must have confused her
>>>> name with the name of Kūkai’s mother, who is identified in the middle part

>>>> of the 1631 *Sekkyō Karukaya* (the “Kōya no maki” section) as Akō

>>>> Gozen. Alas, there is nothing that I can do about that now.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely yours,
>>>> Keller
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> R. Keller Kimbrough
>>>> Professor of Japanese
>>>> Chair, Dept. of Asian Languages and Civilizations
>>>> 279 University of Colorado, Boulder
>>>> Boulder, CO 80309-0279
>>>> keller.k...@colorado.edu
>>>> https://www.colorado.edu/faculty/kimbrough-keller/
>>>>

>>>> I'm on Microsoft Teams <https://teams.microsoft.com/> CU staff,

>>>> faculty, and students can chat with me here

>>>> <https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=kimb...@colorado.edu>.

[Luke Roberts]

Hi Everyone,
I am teaching my samurai course and am now in early Muromachi. I said that this is the era in which the imperial government kokushi 国司 lose authority and the shugo start transforming themselves into local rulers. Then I realized that I do not know much about the actual history of the the decline of imperial governors. Is there good research on this topic from the court perspective? I am partly interested in this because by the warring states period you see many regional warriors giving themselves titles such as 安房守 etc. and it has to represent a general awarenes that the original governor’s title means nothing institutionally really but still has cultural cachet. That transition is significant in a broad political culture sense I think and am curious.
Yours, Luke Roberts

[David A. Eason]

Dear Professor Roberts,

In lieu of a thorough and detailed response to your query and with apologies if you already introduced this point to your class, but my initial reaction in reading your message was to be reminded of the contents of Article 7 in the first “code of laws” issued on behalf of the Ashikaga, the so-called Kenmu Formulary (建武式目) of 1336, where, in part, it is declared that –

“Persons of ability should be selected to fill the post of military governor in the provinces. In the present… the post of military governor is like that of a provincial official appointed by the court in ancient times.”

(「諸国の守護人、殊に政務の器用を択ばるべき事。当時の如くば……　守護職は上古の吏務なり。」)


Again, I know this does not by any means constitute an answer to your broader question about institutional changes versus enduring symbolic import over time, but perhaps this source does at the very least provide some hint as to how the Ashikaga leadership thought about the relationship between the position of shugo and kokushi during their own time.


Sincerely,

David Eason

--
Dr. David Eason (デービット・イーソン)
准教授、外国語学部、関西外国語大学
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「己が分を知りて及ばざる時は速かに止むを智といふべし」

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[萬井 良大]

Dear Luke Roberts,

From the Court perspective, it might be helpful to look into the
Jōgō（成功）, etc. Not so familiar with it, that I could unfortunately not
introduce a concrete paper or book.

Also from the perspective of the Kamakura Shogunate,
『石井進著作集』一巻、岩波書店、2004年 would be helpful.

Although there has been a nominal Kokushi （Myōkokushi; 名国司） given by
the imperial court since the Heian period, the title of the warriors
during the Warring States period is not official but a complete
pretension title. It is a kind of nickname like 左衛門尉, 権兵衛.

Best Regards,

Yoshihiro Man'i

[David A. Eason]

Dear All,

Although I do agree with the general point made by Professor Man’i that many titles claimed by warriors during the Warring States period were symbolic and that, furthermore, many also appear to have been spurious and not actually granted by the court. Nevertheless, I think it would also be remiss to point out that this is not, strictly speaking, true in all cases.

Among sixteenth-century provincial families generally recognized by later historians as daimyō, certainly both the Ichijō in Tosa (土佐国の一条家) and the Kitabatake in Ise (伊勢国の北畠家) were granted and held the kokushi title of their respective provinces. Yes, both families were also of noble pedigree, i.e. kuge (公家). But there are also other examples to be found among leaders of provincial warrior families, such as the Ōuchi and Imagawa, where they brandished kokushi titles from the court that matched up with at least some of the lands within their actual territorial holdings. Again, they held these lands prior to being granted the corresponding court title rather than the other way around, but still I would hesitate to make the leap to saying these were merely nicknames along the lines seen commonly in later Edo period names.


Best,

David Eason

--
Dr. David Eason (デービット・イーソン)
准教授、外国語学部、関西外国語大学
david...@gmail.com / easo...@kansaigaidai.ac.jp
「己が分を知りて及ばざる時は速かに止むを智といふべし」

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[William Farris]

Luke:

       I can help you with your question for the Nara and Heian, and perhaps even the Kamakura Eras.  I need to ask one question, though:

       Are you referring to:

       1)  国司 as in the "Governor" 守, a single individual;

       2)  国司 as in the office, including ranks of officials and their staff;

       3) 国衙 as in the actual physical building, quite a few of which have been excavated.

Depending on your interest, the answer will vary a bit.

      I think that by the Muromachi period all three were titular or abandoned.

Wayne Farris

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[Paula R. Curtis]

Dear all,

If I may add to this very excellent question of Luke's, I would love to know what scholarship people point to when they talk about the transition of these titles into something more titular and prestigious (even if in an empty fashion) than actually enjoying any kind of legal or practical authority. This fact seems to be one that the field widely accepts and reiterates but I rarely see anything cited on how that determination has been made. In my own work I am finding many metal casters appointed to such offices throughout the medieval period and no one comments on how in-name-only such positions might be. Is there core scholarship specifically addressing this fact that scholars have simply internalized over the decades?

All the best,

Paula

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--

Paula R. Curtis

Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in History

Council on East Asian Studies

Yale University

http://prcurtis.com/

[William Farris]

Hello again:

         I think that Paula asks a really good question.  This post also relates indirectly to Luke's primary question.

         I'm reading a REALLY GOOD book right now that is relevant to our work in Japanese history and not irrelevant to the questions raised so far.

        It is James Scott's THE ART OF NOT BEING GOVERNED.  Scott is a SE Asia specialist.  It's a free eBook.

        Most of his argument is not pertinent to the questions under consideration, but in a word, he separates SE Asia, including southern China, into "paddy states" and "hill zones."  For all of SE Asian history, people have fled the tax-collecting and dangerous conditions of the "paddy state" to live in the "hill zones."

       He notes that all "paddy states" have called themselves "civilized" and hill people "barbarian" and constructed a ruling ideology to make themselves look good.

       So, to get to the point, is translating the titles of centuries before when they occur for contemporary persons, be they samurai or artisans, merely buying into what Scott calls "the bluff and bluster" of a "paddy state" that is representing itself as something it is not? In other words, in control of much more than it is in reality?

       And it matters not whether one looks at archaeological excavations or written sources, they are little help b/c they all originate from the "paddy state" with its agenda of political control.

       I know, I know, it doesn't directly answer the questions, but how does one translate "bluff and bluster"? Applies to 天皇, too!

Wayne

On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 8:28 PM Luke Roberts <luke...@history.ucsb.edu> wrote:

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[Michael Jamentz]

Hello Folks,

I think Wikipedia on 武家官位 during the Sengoku period may be of some use in this regard.

On a personal note, this is a serious problem for translators and Japanese scholars being translated into English because although the titles seem to have been empty, these were in fact what people were often called, e.g. Saitō Dōsan, Yamashiro no Kami (Governor of Yamashiro Province?).  I recently tried to translate many such names in a literal fashion for some Japanese scholars, but they were quite concerned (and rightfully so) about these men being referred to as governors. The Japanese scholars felt the English titles would simply mislead foreign readers. I have always felt that the English translation should be as faithful as possible to the original Japanese, but being literal in this case does seem very problematic. 

Best,

m jamentz

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[Travis Seifman]

Dear colleagues,

I'm afraid I have nothing much to add to this conversation except to say that I think the questions Luke and Paula have raised are really important ones. We take these things for granted that that's what happened, in some way, at some point, over the course of the Muromachi period. And I'm not questioning that it did. But where is the scholarship? What actually is the place we can point to, to quote it, to cite it? What are the fuller details, as Luke has asked?

Just adding my two cents to "bump" the topic, to re-up the key question at hand here.

Cheers,

Travis

Travis Seifman

Project Researcher

University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute (Shiryôhensanjo)

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[萬井 良大]

Dear David,

Thank you for your comment. You are certainly right. I should have
written "in most cases" to avoid misunderstanding. We can see many cases
that Dai-daimyo were officially appointed, not just the Kokushi.

Best Regards,

Yoshihiro Man'i

[Luke Roberts]

Thanks everyone so far for your thoughtful comments.  These all give us much to think about.

David Eason, I find that statement in the Kenmu Formulary very interesting as 上古 seems to imply that the imperial offices are already somehow in the past.  I also appreciate the your observation on the complexity of the authorization of provincial governor titling.  Indeed I rememember reading somewhere that various aristocrats used to sell documents “granting” such titles to regional warriors too.

Yoshihiro Man’i thanks for the reference to Ishii Susumu’s work.  It was natsukashii as he was my first teacher of 古文書学入門when I was a research student at Todai long ago. I also did not know about the 名国司in the Heian period.  That I will certainly follow up.

William,  I guess I am referring to the “governor” mostly but since I am interested in actual changes in institutional efficacy then the office and the associated buildings are important too.

Paula, yes indeed mostly what I am asking for is good Japanese research on this topic.  Even though it is mostly out of my field it is something I would like to read up on.

Finally I will add that I was also inspired by thinking about the Nanbokuchō era in which potentially (I do not know the reality) two emperors are appointing 国司 to the same offices at the same time.  What a fiasco that would be on the ground.

Best, Luke

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[David Eason]

Dear All,

My apologies for the lengthy and disjointed message that follows, but in attempting to quickly respond to Dr. Curtis’s question about relevant scholarship on this transition of titles from denoting actual duties to a purely symbolic role, I cannot think off the top of my head of a single study that addresses this issue in comprehensive fashion, but instead am only familiar with a scattered assortment of research articles addressed to parts of this larger issue. 

For instance, one such study concerning the use of court titles among local warriors is a 1994 essay by Imaoka Norikazu (今岡典和「戦国期の地域権力と官途ー毛利氏を素材として) that examines records connected to the Mōri family and their followers and concludes that, in contrast to member of the Ōuchi family who received titles directly from the court, during the sixteenth century leaders of the Mōri family took it upon themselves to self-declare titles. They then took the practice one step further and also went about granting titles to their followers by means of issuing “title-confirming letters” (官途状). This practice of having warriors appointed to what were formerly positions held by nobles, as explained by Mori Shigeaki (森茂暁「足利尊氏発給文書の研究」), seems to have originated in the early Muromachi period with Ashikaga Takauji – and, for a time, his brother Tadayoshi - sending to the court “title–recommendation letters” (官途推挙状) in order to have their followers formally granted titles such as those of various provincial governorships (he cites a number of concrete examples of kokushi titles being requested in this manner as demonstrated through extant documents). 

I realize, of course, that all this still does not answer precisely how titles such as that of kokushi came to be emptied of actual governing responsibilities and reduced to merely become markers of prestige.  Nor does it explain what happened to the institutional apparatus formerly maintained by the provincial headquarters (国衙・国府) when such a shift did occur. Perhaps on this latter point it would be helpful to consider some of the cases of warrior families who built their own administrative headquarters on the sites of former provincial headquarters such as the Imagawa at Sumpu and the Ōtomo at Funai.

Alternately, another approach to consider is tracing the tax collection and record-keeping practices carried out by local officials who had once served under kokushi but, increasingly by the fourteenth century, now reported to shugo instead. Indeed, in the recent volume Land, Power, and the Sacred: The Estate System in Medieval Japan edited by Jan Goodwin and Joan Piggott (Hawai’i, 2018), Noda Taizō briefly addresses just such a case when writing about Harima Province in the 1300s in his essay “A Focused Look at Warriors and Ōbe Estate in the Muromachi Period,” explaining:

"During the Nanbokuchō period the Ogawa family… held the court-appointed post of deputy provincial supervisor (kokuga gandai 国衙眼代). In Harima the functions of the provincial seat persisted even into the Nanbokuchō and Muromachi periods, while sources reveal the continued presence of a resident deputy to the provincial governor (komokudai 小目代) together with other closely affiliated lesser officials…  As a post equivalent to that of resident deputy, the deputy provincial supervisor initially would have been expected to handle the tasks of tax collection associated with both mundane land management and extraordinary province-wide levies (ikkoku heikin’yaku 一国平均役). However, beginning in the latter half of the 1370s, the Akamatsu family came to exercise direct control over such taxes, their exemptions, and, after 1392, even appointments to the supervisory post itself. Still, as a means to strengthen their rule over the entire province, it is little surprise that Akamatsu leaders sought to incorporate well-connected local bureaucrats with extensive knowledge of taxation like the Ogawa family into their administrative apparatus, especially as members of the Ogawa lineage presumably maintained an official land ledger (ōtabumi 太田文) that contained details concerning the dimensions and ownership history of all estates and public lands throughout the province – a powerful tool indispensable for the assessment and collection of taxes."

 

Best,

David Eason

---

Dr. David Eason (デービット・イーソン)

准教授、外国語学部、関西外国語大学

david...@gmail.com / easo...@kansaigaidai.ac.jp

「己が分を知りて及ばざる時は速かに止むを智といふべし」

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[Scheid, Bernhard]

Just a small comment on the Edo usage of nanikuni-no-kami names that Luke already knows because he reviewed the forthcoming book Religion, Power and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan (Bloomsbury, May 2021): In this collective volume, Yannick Bardy mentions the case of the Yoshida who regularly distributed these titles when they issued certificates for shrine priests. Thus they established a symbolic relationship to the court. There seem to have been some local priests who rejected these titles, however, because they felt no connection to the respective country. This shows that the usage was not quite as commonplace and remote from its courtly origins as names like Saemon or Gonbei.

 

Bernhard Scheid

.
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[Spafford, David]

Dear Luke,

I don’t have access to my books right now, but my understanding had always been that the Ashikaga continued a practice initiated by Godaigo of appointing the same person to the offices of kokushi and shugo, thus in effect merging the two positions over time and contributing to the evolution of shugo from mere constables to provincial governors. This might have introduced warriors to the actual position of “X no kami” before the position, subsumed by the shugo-ship, became purely honorific. I seem to recall that Andrew Goble discusses the Godaigo part of the story somewhere in Kenmu. Also, in Japanese, Kubota Jun’ichi describes some of these processes on a local (Kantō) level, I think. I can’t remember the title of the original article, but I think it was included in his book, Muromachi, Sengoku-ki Kōzuke no chiiki shakai.

My two cents. 

Cheers,

-David

David Spafford (he/him)
Director, Wolf Undergraduate Humanities Forum
Associate Professor & Undergraduate Chair
East Asian Languages & Civilizations
University of Pennsylvania
855 Williams Hall
255 S 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA  19104-6305
Phone: (215) 573-9613
Fax: (215) 573-9617

 

On Apr 13, 2021, at 11:40 AM, Scheid, Bernhard <Bernhar...@oeaw.ac.at> wrote:

Just a small comment on the Edo usage of nanikuni-no-kami names that Luke already knows because he reviewed the forthcoming book Religion, Power and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan (Bloomsbury, May 2021): In this collective volume, Yannick Bardy mentions the case of the Yoshida who regularly distributed these titles when they issued certificates for shrine priests. Thus they established a symbolic relationship to the court. There seem to have been some local priests who rejected these titles, however, because they felt no connection to the respective country. This shows that the usage was not quite as commonplace and remote from its courtly origins as names like Saemon or Gonbei.

 

Bernhard Scheid

 

Von: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von Luke Roberts
Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. April 2021 16:48
An: pm...@googlegroups.com
Betreff: Re: [PMJS] 国司 kokushi end of authority

 

Thanks everyone so far for your thoughtful comments.  These all give us much to think about.

David Eason, I find that statement in the Kenmu Formulary very interesting as 上古 seems to imply that the imperial offices are already somehow in the past.  I also appreciate the your observation on the complexity of the authorization of provincial governor titling.  Indeed I rememember reading somewhere that various aristocrats used to sell documents “granting” such titles to regional warriors too.

Yoshihiro Man’i thanks for the reference to Ishii Susumu’s work.  It was natsukashii as he was my first teacher of 古文書学入門when I was a research student at Todai long ago. I also did not know about the名国司in the Heian period.  That I will certainly follow up.

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[David Romney]

Hi all, 

Many of you may not know me. I’m currently at Princeton and writing my dissertation on Ise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with a particular focus on the Kitabatake family who occupied the kokushi post over Ise. I’ll echo the comment earlier which stated that there isn’t much in the way of a comprehensive scholarly work which tracks the changes in the kokushi post over time. As with many things in our field, an important Japanese scholar wrote how the kokushi  ‘system’ ‘worked’ in the 1960s. Yoshimura Shigeki’s kokushi seido tracks the establishment of the kokushi post how it functioned in Nara/Early Heian and then alludes to how it breaks down in his final two chapters. His general argument is that over time the kokushi post became an absentee post manned by powerful ‘courtier’ families in Kyoto (which includes the In and temples as time goes along), who used local strongmen/lower ranking ‘courtiers’ to physically populate the offices in the provinces and provide tax revenue. There is a great deal of scholarship in Japan that then takes an example here and there to correct/revise his arguments, but most of this scholarship is located in the pre-Kamakura periods. 

Post-Kamakura it can get somewhat muddled because the individuals who are physically located in the provinces (sometimes called zaichokanjin) attach themselves to different entities; some become jito under the bakufu, some stick to the In, some are connected to various court and temple institutions. There’s a fair amount of scholarship about how each of these institutions would interact with the local administrators but unfortunately not much in the way of a comprehensive conglomeration of all. As Kamakura passes a lot of these families get tied into the discourse of kokujin which is an expansive discourse (in both English and Japanese) in its own right; with very little attention paid to the court side of that progression. 

There are a few studies then about what the kokushi post did in the Muromachi (which was the original impetus behind the thread if I remember correctly) but they mostly focus around the Kitabatake family itself or the Ichijo. A couple of the more helpful ones would include Nakano Tatsuhiro’s ‘Muromachi zenki ni okeru Kitabatake-shi no doko’ in which he discusses how Go-Daigo appointed the Kitabatake as a kokushi over Ise in an aspirational move to assert control over the province and hopefully encourage some of the kokujin to listen to his allies instead of the bakufu (which motivation most likely continues to carry some weight through Hideyoshi’s period). Okano Tomohiko’s Sengoku kizoku: ikinokori senryaku talks about how the Koga family leaned on the Kitabatake as Ise kokushi to fight its battles against kokujin in Ise who refused to give revenue from their estates in Ise in exchange for access to court titles and rank advancements (which also would be a practice that continued through the sixteenth century).  There is also a (I would say ‘less than helpful’) study by Yoshii Koji Kenmu seikenki no kokushi to shugo, which describes a smattering of Go-Daigo’s attempts to create an organization responsive to him through appointing kokushi. 

I’m currently writing my dissertation which has a chapter about what benefits the kokushi post could grant to the Kitabatake and how they utilized court ranks to organize their house and expand their control over southern Ise, so I don’t see the kokushi post as defunct as many others perhaps... but then again I’m myopically staring at an outlier in my case. Shugo ‘hanzei’ taxes start giving an upper hand to members of the bakufu’s institution and we see a lot of the kokujin with ties to the older provincial institutions start to get subsumed by/into these magnates house organizations. But I would probably argue that the increasing number of ‘守‘ posts that we see given to shugo and other allies of the court in the sixteenth century suggests that it still does have some institutional and/or aspirational value for people other than the Kitabatake especially as the prestige and administrative authority of the Ashikaga shogunate diminishes after Onin. 

Hope there was something useful in that rough overview. Feel free to email me for more thoughts if you would like.

David Romney

PhD Candidate

Princeton University

Department of East Asian Studies

dlro...@princeton.edu

[William Farris]

Dear David:

        Thank you for your authoritative overview of the provincial governorship.

        If you don't mind, I have a few questions about the provincial governorship between 1350 and 1600:

        1)  Did these provincial governors have a staff?

        2)  Did they have a physical office to which they went or were attached?

        3)  Did they have term limits?

       4)  You mentioned rank.  Originally, provincial governors were part of the 官位相当制.  Did this still operate for them?

       5)  Were they evaluated, promoted, and subject to dismissal?

       6)  Were there provincial governors with staff throughout Japan, or were Kitabatake and GDG's gang part of the "last gasp" of the old institution?

In other words, I'm still unclear whether these late medeival provincial governors were still part of an institutional complex or merely provincial governors for whatever political cachet the title might have carried?

       Thank you!

Wayne Farris

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[Luke Roberts]

Thanks so much David for this thoughtful explanation.  I will indeed look for some of the books that you mention.  Thanks also to everyone else including recently Wayne Farris and David Spafford, David Eason, Bernhard Scheid, and Michael Jamentz for your thought-provoking comments and suggestions.  Now I have enough reading for the summer, and just from the information you all have provided I have a better sense of the matter.

Yours, Luke Roberts

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[Barbara Ruch]

Dear Karukaya devotees,  

Before Michael Pye signs off, I want to say that Mark Blum, one of our best Pure Land and Hōnen specialists is of course correct! My elderly memory was at fault when I wrote Hōnen and pilgrimage to Zenkōji. I was thinking of his many Jōdo-shū successors who did just that. My point, however, was to urge that we not get tied up on Kōya and to emphasize the close connections of Hōnen to Chion’in and thus ultimately to Nagano’s Zenkōji; and to point out that the Karukaya legends, for multiple reasons, are, even more than Kōya, very much “alive” in Nagano at Saikō-ji and Ōjōji and in all the Nagano shops. 

The most wonderful of all early Karukaya works I have ever seen (and consider the oldest in e-iri-bon form) is the Muromachi period Karukaya now owned by Suntory Museum of Art that was once owned by Yokoyama Shigeru (Akagi Bunko). Keller used some of this for his translation but switched to a fuller seventeenth-century version, as he notes, for his book. If, however, you had never seen this oldest of Karukaya, you must take a look! Magnificently naïve and amateurish yet almost brilliant in its abstract Klee-like painted illustrations.

And by the way it gives the name of Karukaya’s abandoned-at-home baby daughter (Chiyozuru) in addition to the wife’s name.

Barbara

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[Susan MATISOFF]

One more for the Karukaya/Ishidômaru devotees,

In the late ’80’s I had the great pleasure of visiting Yokoyama Shigeru’s widow, then living in a retirement home in Kamakura. After serving me a juicy fresh peach, she pulled the Karukaya manuscript out of a cupboard to hand to me. I rushed off to wash my hands first. I’ve had limited experience and opportunities with original manuscripts, and certainly the is the only one I got my hands on when it was pre-institutionialzed. That is, I think, thrillingly different from making a request at a library or museum and reverently handling a manuscript with white gloves in a reading room. I asked Mrs. Yokoyama to read me some of the story, as I knew it should be read aloud. This delighted her and me equally. I was also tickled to be able to point out one little peculiarity in the handwriting. At one, or maybe two, points, the kana の was reversed, like mirror writing. We pondered whether the writer was left-handed or what might be called dyslexic. Sometime in the intervening years the ms. was purchased by the Suntory Museum, I’ve never seen it behind glass. When you add to this the fact that the first temple I ever visited in Japan, in 1959, was Zenkôji,  you will know why I feel such an affinity for this tale.

Susan Matisoff 

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[David Romney]

Prof. Farris, 

 

Thank you for the follow-up questions. You touch on a number of things one of my chapters in my dissertation covers much better than I can here, but I can provide some shorthand answers here in hopes that it will be helpful. The Kitabatake function differently than most of the other kokushi  at the time for which ‘absentee court appointment’ tends to be a fair enough estimation. So my responses will be based off of the Kitabatake rather than the rest (though there is some overlap). The Kitabatake are also quite different from Nara/Heian kokushi so many of those institutions changed significantly before the Kitabatake ever took over in Ise.

 

1) The ‘staff’ that the Kitabatake had was very different from the original district officials (gunshi) and similar organs of the Nara/Heian. The Kitabatake had several branch families which they appointed over the various fortifications that they held for much of the Nanbokucho conflict (1336-1392). The branches served as local ‘staff’ in terms of tax collection and troop requisition. They treated people within their house organization as ‘bugyonin’ in a kind of older non-Ashikaga related sense of the word. This allowed them to expand their bugyonin registers over time to include influential locals in and around the Ise shrines. They used their title as kokushi  (and a healthy amount of coercive force) to extract taxes, labor, and troops for most of the fifteenth century (as they did not acquire the shugo post of Ise until 1471) even after the court and Ashikaga gave up trying to collect national taxes which they used for the vicennial rebuilding of the Ise Shrines (among other things) in the first half of the fifteenth century.   

 

2) They occupied fortifications in the mountains between Yoshino and the Ise shrines and used those fortifications as their bases of operations. Letters, bugyo requests, land grants would pass through wherever the senior ranking member of the Kitabatake house was located at the time. The older physical administrative structures of the kokushi from before the Kitabatake were not of great importance to them. 

 

3&4) My answer for these two is somewhat linked in that there do not appear to be any term limits forced on the Kitabatake, but the title of kokushi tended to be given to a relatively young and prospective future ‘head’ of the house as a means by which further rank advancement could be obtained. After it was transferred to a young son, the senior member would officially ‘retire’ but write accompanying missives whenever a request went out from the active kokushi. There were stipulations in the Engishiki (that the Kitabatake appear to be responding to) which stated that a kokushi with years (number could vary) of experience in their post could be granted a position as a sangi in the Grand Council of State without obtaining the 3rd rank. This would make them officially a ‘kuge’  and capable of issuing documents through their own mandokoro. This ends up being important to them in the maintenance of their own house, as multiple branches within the house had access to court ranks and being a senior member with the best… ‘resume’ of sorts was crucially important. The Kitabatake are rather unusual for their time because they did indeed frequently reach the level of ‘kuge’ despite being a ‘military’ focused family. The kokushi title was a means for them to make the hurdle over that barrier that only the Ashikaga really had done contemporaneously. 

 

5) There doesn’t appear to be any serious system of appraisal for the Kitabatake. But it’s not too much of a stretch to say that after Ashikaga Yoshimochi’s death in 1428, there are not many powerful groups in Japan that were more friendly with the court than the Kitabatake. The Kitabatake stay in the good graces of the court until their fall to Nobunaga. The kokushi title appears to be granted when and to whom the Kitabatake wanted in exchange for military support and financial aid. 

 

6) The last question is the most difficult to adequately respond to other than to say... it’s a case-by-case sort of deal. I don’t suggest to have a complete grasp of all of the different examples of kokushi  in the period. Some ‘courtiers’ still had ties to locals (some of who had weak ties to old kokushi/gunshi institutions) that enabled them to bring in income from their estates and lands that they held titles over. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a lot of those (relatively few existed in the first place) connections broke down. There are a number of good studies in English and Japanese that talk about the relative decline of the court and rise of the shugo over provincial lands and to a considerable extent those studies can be applied here. 

 

The Kitabatake are not a Nara/Heian-style kokushi by any means... they are ‘restoring’ something to a state that it never really existed in before. The conditions in the province didn’t allow for that to happen, and it probably wasn’t their aim in the first place. Their battles (physical and ideological) with the Ashikaga in the fourteenth century created the need for a position which existed outside the shogunate which could ostensibly do the things that they wanted to do. Political cache was certainly part of the aim, but it also formulated a kind of authority which (at least in their neck of the woods) enabled them to create a role for a kokushi as a primary administrator over a given geographic area. They didn’t cling to the title as their only means of authority, however. The post enabled them to acquire more and more prestige while still having rights to pull taxes, etc. but, they treated it and the shugo post (which they eventually acquired) as two possible venues to reach out to different groups (kokujin, jigenin, Ise shrine priests, etc.) throughout Ise for assistance through different lines of authority. 

 

Is it a “last gasp”? I’m not so sure. In some ways it’s a contemporary reimagining of the post which had some utility for them. It might have created space for others to see similar utility in such a title. The Kitabatake way of acquiring higher rank and avoiding sole-dependence upon Ashikaga lines of authority is what a number of important daimyo at the end of the period end up shooting for. Nobunaga’s own son ended up being the final ‘head’ of the Kitabatake line and Ise kokushi. Nobunaga is well-known for his aversion to bakufu titles. Nobunaga opted for court titles which he collected and retired from in a not dissimilar way to the Kitabatake. Some similarities are there… as are some differences. 

 

———

 

Thank you for everyone’s interest. I hope I don’t come off as too authoritative. My work is certainly still a work-in-progress (with bright-yellow construction tape/warning signs surrounding it). And there are more than a few holes when one describes 900 years of institutional history on an online forum. I hope to have it in better shape in the months and years ahead. I’m glad if my comments were of some interest to some. 

[William Farris]

Dear David (if I may):

          Thank you for your detailed and nuanced email about the Kitabatake and "their kind of 国司".

          Would it be fair to say:

          1)  For most, the title 国司 was an "absentee court appointment"?

          2)  The Kitabatake, and some others, however, used the title of 国司 to further their own political ends:  local tax collection, troop conscription, and as an access to court prestige and high rank, which allowed them to circumvent the Ashikaga shogun.

          3) Since the staff are familial, and not graded and ranked as in the Nara and Heian periods, since the physical offices were unrelated to the old (or even newer) 国衙, and since there were no real official term limits, it seems that you are describing, as you write, a "contemporary reimagining of an old office with political value."  It's a repurposing of an old title with political value both locally and in the capital.

          There's no need to reply to my email, since I'm sure that you are very busy, unless my understanding is incorrect.

           My only quibble with your description is that the gunji 郡司 of the period 680 to 900 were not staff of the provincial governor.  They held an independent office that between 680 and 900 was more powerful than the aristocratic 国司 who were limited to 4 years and came in from outside the province.  District magistrates had many perquisites, including lifetime appointments, a grant of land, and the right to pass their position down to their offspring.  But that's another discussion!

          The quibble aside, I have benefited greatly from your taking the time to clarify these points for me and for others on the list. I appreciate your help greatly and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Wayne

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[tho...@khist.uzh.ch]

Dear Colleagues,

 

On a very different topic, I would like to point your attention to an exhibition of early Japanese ceramics currently taking place in Geneva, Switzerland.  The exhibition, Chrysanthemums, Dragons, and Samurai: Japanese Ceramics from the Collection of the Ariana Museum of Art will run until January 9, 2022.  It is surely not the best time to travel, bur perhaps things will improve toward the end of the exhibition? 

http://institutions.ville-geneve.ch/en/ariana/visit/exhibitions/current/chrysanthemums-dragons-and-samurai/

A comprehensive publication with the same title has also been published and is available at various internet sites, such as Amazon.fr  

https://www.amazon.fr/Chrysanthèmes-dragons-samouraïs-céramique-japonaise/dp/2825712302/ref=sr_1_10?__mk_fr_FR=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&dchild=1&keywords=Chrysanthèmes%2C+Ariana&qid=1618139485&sr=8-10

See also:

http://institutions.ville-geneve.ch/en/ariana/resources/publications/chrysanthemums-dragons-and-samurai/

 

The Musée Ariana is the only museum in Switzerland – and one of the key examples in Europe – that is devoted to ceramics.  Housing a total of over 27,000 objects, the museum contains objects that span over a millennium of ceramic production and stem from diverse locations, such as Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.  The Ariana collection of East Asian ceramics is the largest in Switzerland with more than 770 Japanese and over 2,670 Chinese examples.  The Japanese collection stands out for its large group of early ceramics from the 17^th and 18^thcenturies, its superb collection of Satsuma ceramics, and objects made for 19^th century world expositions.   An encyclopaedic breadth of techniques is represented in the collection and the objects tell us of the knowledge transfer and the global networking of ceramics over the last centuries.  In addition to the above numbers, the museum also has outstanding examples of 20th-century ceramics from across the globe, including a collection of works by Sueharu Fukami.

 

In 2016, a collaboration was started between the museum, the Section for East Asian Art History of the University of Zurich and the National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku) to exhaustively survey the Japanese collection. The Japanese side dispatched leading ceramic researchers Kōji Ōhashi (Saga Prefectural Museum of Ceramic Art), Professor Yoshirō Watanabe (Kagoshima University), Professor Masaaki Arakawa (Gakushuin University), and Dr. Miki Sakuraba (Kanda University of Foreign Studies; at the time, an institutional researcher at Rekihaku) to provide their expert knowledge. The survey was also conducted with the help of students and faculty of the University of Zurich, complete with university courses carried out in the Ariana museum storage.

 

The ongoing exhibition is noteworthy as a large-scale exhibition of Japanese ceramics that provide a comprehensive view of the development of techniques and decorative styles of Japanese ceramics across its history, including many early examples from the Imari, Kakiemon, Nabeshima, Satsuma, and Kutani kilns, as well as the monumental objects made for 19^th-century world expositions in Vienna and Paris. Select parts of the museum's diverse collection of Japanese ceramics have been exhibited in the past, but the entirety of the collection has never been introduced to the public. 

 

The exhibition catalog is a substantial bilingual publication written in English and French, and features images and close descriptions of the important objects in the collection as well as accompanying essays by specialists. It is our hope that the exhibition and the accompanying publication will help to highlight Switzerland's rich collection of Japanese ceramics, which has received little attention in the past, and that it will draw attention to overlooked aspects of Japanese ceramic history.

 

Best regards,

Hans Thomsen

University of Zurich

 

Hans Bjarne Thomsen
Professor and Chair
Section for East Asian Art
University of Zurich
Rämistrasse 73
CH-8006 Zurich
Switzerland
tho...@khist.uzh.ch