Revised Bungo List and Kanbun

[Stephen Miller]

Greetings again:

I am sending along a revised list of universities that teach bungo.
Unfortunately, there have been no four-year college additions.

Could I please ask those who know of regular kanbun courses at their university
to send me information about it? At this point, I am only positive about the
University of Hawaii, Princeton, and USC, but I'm sure there are many others.

May I also ask that you send me the name and e-mail address of the person or
persons who is/are teaching either bungo or kanbun at your school? Even though
I know many of you, it would be good if you could still send me this to me so
that I have a comprehensive list from which to work in the future. (My previous
list got lost in a computer crash.)

Thank you very much!

Bungo:

University of Hawaii,
University of California Los Angeles,
University of California Berkeley,
University of California Davis,
University of California Irvine,
University of Southern California,
Stanford University,
University of Oregon,
University of Washington,
University of Arizona,
Arizona State University,
Brigham Young University,
University of Montana,
University of Colorado Boulder,
University of Kansas Lawrence,
University of Texas Austin,
University of Minnesota Minneapolis,
University of Wisconsin Madison,
University of Chicago,
Indiana University,
University of Illinois,
Washington University St. Louis,
University of Michigan,
Ohio State University,
University of Pittsburgh,
University of Pennsylvania,
University of Massachusetts Amherst,
Yale University,
Columbia University,
Harvard University,
Princeton University,
University of Virginia
Duke University (irregularly),
Cornell University,
University of British Columbia,
University of Alberta,
University of Toronto,
McGill University

Best,
Stephen Miller

Assistant Professor
Japanese Language and Literature
440 Herter Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: 413-545-4953
Fax: 413-545-4975

[ry...@msu.edu]

Dear Professor Miller,
Thank you for the list. I teach at Michigan State University, and we have started offering classical Japanese since the fall term of 2008, and it is only because Dr. Elizabeth Oyler at the University of Illinois is kindly sharing her courses with us through the CIC agreement.  And our students love the fact that they get to study classical Japanese in an interactive video conferencing room.
Regards,
Catherine Ryu

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[Ramirez-Christensen, E]

Hi, Steve,

We don't have regular kanbun classes at the University of Michigan; the Japanese Buddhist professor, Micah Auerbach, and the medieval history prof, Hitomi Tonomura, teach the rudiments of kanbun when doing Independent Reading with their graduate students. It's obvious that we need someone to do kanbun properly as a regular course, but it's hard to find that consensus in a department like ours, where you have so many competing interests across disciplines and geographic regions.

As for bungo, I try to teach it every other year, at least for a term, as a foundational course for my premodern seminars.

Thank you for making these useful surveys, and more power to the premodern!

Best,
Esperanza
________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Miller [smi...@asianlan.umass.edu]
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 3:00 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] Revised Bungo List and Kanbun

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On mardi 17 févr. 09, at 16:14, Ramirez-Christensen, E wrote:

> As for bungo, I try to teach it every other year, at least for a
> term, as a foundational course for my premodern seminars.

Are there introductions to bungo/kanbun in the English language
available either as books or as downloads ?

In French, I am aware of Prof. Pigeot's book on bungo. She wrote it a
few years after I took her class. I think she even released a revised
edition. And then, there is Prof. Robert's kanbun brochure that I have
been quoting extensively lately, not for sale and only available from
the department (although I am currently working on its LaTeXization so
that more people are able to access it).

Jean-Christophe Helary

[Ramirez-Christensen, E]

Hi, Jean Christophe,

The latest bungo textbook in English/Japanese is the one authored by Haruo Shirane; it includes a useful introduction to the main characteristics, history, and uses of classical Japanese, several tables, extensive explanations of grammatical patterns, and generous examples of each; please look for reviews of the book for a more complete description. Timothy Wicksted also produced a bungo reference work recently which is equally useful for looking up verb types, congugations of the various parts of speech, and the usages of particles and verbal postpositions. You will surely find useful bibliographies of other bungo sources in English in their bibliographies.

I myself used a Japanese nyuugaku shiken textbook for kobun for many years to teach the language because of its brevity; I supplemented the sentence examples with selections of waka and the students could get the basic grammar in one term and then begin to read koten prose texts in the second semester. My aim was to move to reading asap, relying on the literature to deepen and refine students' grasp of the classical language.

I vaguely recall seeing an old textbook or reference in Engish for kanbun, but maybe it was for Literary Chinese--this was many years ago. When I first learned kanbun, it was in Japan, and we used a Japanese textbook that read like something used in high school kokubun classes. Later, in the U.S., I did Classical (Literary) Chinese, and the syntactic inversions I had learned in the Japanese classroom evaporated; the language gained in clarity and elegance.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Sincerely,
Esperanza
________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Christophe Helary [fus...@mx6.tiki.ne.jp]
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 2:20 AM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] Re: Revised Bungo List and Kanbun

[Peter Hendriks]

Dear All,

Re kanbun textbooks:

Crawcour, Sydney. 1965. An Introduction to Kanbun. Michigan Center for Japanese Studies.

might be of use (if hard to find).

Peter Hendriks

[Sharon Domier]

Easier than you would imagine, since the U of Michigan digitized it and made it freely available :)

(Thank you Michigan Center for Japanese Studies)

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cjs/images/akz7043.0001.001.pdf

There is a nice pathfinder on Kanbun resources created by the University of Washington East Asian Studies Library for UW students that would be helpful to others. 

http://www.lib.washington.edu/east-asia/japan/kambun.html

Best wishes,

Sharon Domier

[Daniel Sullivan]

You can actually download that from the “out-of-print books online” link (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan) here:

 

http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/electronic.html

 

Daniel Sullivan

 

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Hendriks
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 8:58 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] Re: Revised Bungo List and Kanbun

 

Dear All,

[Robert Borgen]

Crawcour's book, An Introduction to Kambun (note the romanization) is indeed useful, although its Japanese title, Kanbun Kundoku-hō Josetsu, more accurately describes its content than does the English version, since Crawcour takes all his examples from the Chinese classics (see my earlier comments) and explains the customary why of reading them out in Japanese.  It's more of a reference book than a language textbook in the usual sense.

A second, more textbook-like work is Akira Komai and Thomas H. Rohlich's An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun (University of Nagoya Press, 1988).  According to the introduction, "the Japanese kanbun treated in this text is the written representation of the Japanese language in the kundoku style, not classical Chinese" (p. xiii).  Its examples appear to be all Japanese in nationality, although some are more Chinese than others in their language.  Included are relatively long excerpts from major works such as Nihon Gaishi, supplemented by short example sentences, some of which, one suspects, the late Prof. Komai wrote himself ("There is no pleasure greater than drinking sake").  It too is now out of print and probably hard to find.

Robert Borgen

[Tom Rohlich]

Hello,

I was having trouble getting my comments posted (forgot to update to my
new email address), and I thank Robert Borgen for bring the kanbun text
to the attention of the group. Here is what I had to say.

Over twenty years ago (1988) the late Professor Akira Komai and I
published a book called "An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun" that was
intended as an "introductory textbook for the foreign student who has
already acquired a fair command of modern Japanese and a basic knowledge
of classical Japanese grammar." It was intended mainly to familiarize
students with the mechanics of kanbun kundoku style, and the exercises
emphasize students practicing to write kakikudashibun. It was meant to
be used in the classroom with a trained instructor, so (unfortunately it
turns out) we did not create an answer key so that it could be used for
self-instructional purposes.

The book is no longer in print; some years ago, I can't remember exactly
when but perhaps ten years ago, I tried to contact the holder of the
copyright (Nanzan University, Nanzan University Academic Publication
Series) to see if the book could be made into something that could be
accessible to all without cost on the internet. But I was never able to
make contact with the person or persons who could give that permission,
and that is where I left it.

I've followed with great interest the thread on what exactly kanbun is,
but since I haven't had an opportunity to teach kanbun since we
developed the book, and don't use it in my current research, my interest
is largely 'academic' in the other sense of the word. Clearly the
definition we gave to 'kanbun' in this textbook was too simple; the
thread has delved much more deeply into this question.

I wish it could be made available like the Crawcour book from Michigan.

Here's the information on the book.

_An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun_.
by Akira Komai and Thomas H. Rohlich
Nanzan University Academic Publication Series
copyright: Nanzan Univesrity
The University of Nagoya Press, Nagoya.
1988. ISBN: 4-930689-90-2

Best,
Tom Rohlich

Thomas H. Rohlich
Professor of Japanese
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
Office Phone: (413) 585-3441
Office Fax: (413) 585-3415


>>> Robert Borgen <rbo...@ucdavis.edu> 02/18/09 7:38 AM >>>