日本漢學專題研究/Research on Japanese Sinology
The study of Chinese learning in Japan has undergone four major political reforms, giving rise to cultural self-awareness and shaping five significant transformations.
- Ancient Period – The Taika Reform: Japanese academic culture was profoundly influenced by Tang China. From Prince Shōtoku through the Heian period, Japan adopted Tang-style scholastic commentaries and school systems.
- Medieval Period – The Ōnin War: This was a turning point in the formation of Japanese culture. With the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of commoner culture, scholastic traditions shifted. Annotated readings of the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books fostered the emergence of Song learning.
- Early Modern Period – Tokugawa Shogunate: Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism was established as the official doctrine, leading to the flourishing of Confucian studies. Thinkers such as Itō Jinsai and Ogyū Sorai advocated “Ancient Learning,” while scholars like Nakamura Tekisai interpreted Chinese classics in the Japanese vernacular.
- Modern Period – Meiji Restoration: The drive for “civilization and enlightenment” encouraged the fusion of Eastern and Western philosophies, integrating Chinese and Japanese scholarship, and gave rise to the ideology of Japanese cultural renewal.
- The Late Meiji Period – The 1890s: Scholars such as Kano Naoki and Naitō Konan, inspired by the cultural self-awareness rooted in the revival of Japan’s classical learning, and drawing on Qing evidential scholarship as a medium, opened new fields of inquiry. Their efforts advanced Japanese sinology in step with global sinological trends and led to the formation of the Kyoto School of Chinese Studies, regarded as a renaissance of modern Japanese sinology.
Building upon these academic transformations, this course will focus on a series of specialized topics to explore the process of “reception and transformation” (shuyō to henyō) in Japanese sinology—namely, how Chinese learning was adopted, reinterpreted, and transformed into a body of scholarship with distinctive Japanese characteristics.
