It is now commonly recognized that we are in the third stage of Edo scholarship. In the first stage, which started soon after the end of the Edo era, there was a pronounced critical tendency in scholarly examinations of Edo culture, painting it as backwards and riddled with dehumanizing customs and manners. In the second stage, predictably, the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme: scholars started to praise Edo Japan as blessed with a kind of liberating culture. Now such rather pejorative hysteria at both extremes seems to have come to an end and we are advancing into a new dimension of Edo study, which tries to view Edo more objectively and without imposing value judgments derived from the present era one way or the other. This new wave of Edo scholarship will certainly be enhanced by this thorough, conscientious, and innovative work by Emanuel Pastreich. In this book, the author successfully presents a new angle from which to sort out Edo literature and culture and its correlation with the reception of Chinese, a feat accomplished especially by making the mundane side of Edo life visible to us in a new way.
The book examines large volumes of Edo translations of Chinese novels and studies of Chinese language, and the author's acute observation and analysis of mundane literature and culture helps to fill up the invisible gap in the lineage of the Japanese novel running from the Tale of Genji to Meiji literature. The author's excavations in this book shed considerable light on the hitherto unrevealed level of literary detail, and he makes a convincing case that these details are “effective, humorous and concrete” (p. 242).
The material covers a wide variety of vernacular novelists, including Okajima Kanzan 岡島冠山, Oka Hakku 岡白駒, and Sawada Issai 沢田一斎, as well as Kyokutei Bakin 曲亭馬琴. As the author effectively shows, “the sheer variety of topics” taken up by these writers indicates “the vitality of the genre” and the opportunities “to present previously invisible aspects of Japanese society” (p. 234).
The author also includes incisive accounts of many renowned scholars known primarily for their rather lofty writings, such as Hayashi Razan 林羅山, Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠, and Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁斎 and his son and disciples. Pastreich makes the mundane side of these Confucian scholars visible to us, which definitely opens up a new horizon for readers of Edo literature. The research is impressively thorough and makes a convincing case that the “reception of Chinese vernacular narrative in Japan is inseparable from the reevaluation of indigenous literature in the eighteenth century” (p. 34).
The book also examines the pleasure quarters and their literature. Pastreich insightfully writes: “the pleasure quarters formed an internalized other within society that offered an intriguing parallel with the presence of Chinese culture within Japanese culture” (p. 105). He introduces Youxianku 遊仙窟 (Visit to the Grotto of the Immortal) from the Tang dynasty as a prototype of this kind of literature, as well as Banqiao zaji 板橋雑記 (seventeenth century), which inspired Narushima Ryūhoku 成島柳北, author of Ryūkyō shinshi 柳橋新誌. Innovative observations are also presented regarding the early works of sharebon written in Chinese, as well as Watō Chinkai 和唐珍解, a bilingual sharebon work.
The author's achievements are not limited to excavation, but extend to insightful analysis of the quality of gazoku 雅俗 (coexistence of the exalted and the mundane). Quoting Shirakashi Chūgai 白樫仲凱, Pastreich characterizes this quality thus: “the vulgar with a single transformation can lead to the refined; the refined with a single transformation can lead to the way” (p. 106).
At the same time, this is actually quite a fun book. It provides readers with the pleasure of access to some of the inside stories found in the introduction of the novels and anecdotes. Reading the book sometimes even gives us the pleasant sensation of sitting among the Edoites and eavesdropping on their conversations. Certainly they “were commoners who captured the common imagination” (p. 228).
In the last chapter, the author does not forget to address the modern condition of Japanese culture and language, and zealously discusses the reception of English as well as the reception of Chinese. As Stephan Tanaka puts it, “Even as non-Western countries must deal with their own past—their own ‘parent’—they must also grapple with the West and non-West.”Footnote 19 By adding this extra layer to the consideration of the reception of Chinese culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan, the book broadens its purview and serves as inspiration for readers regarding not only East Asian literature and culture but also the question of translation per se in the context of world literature. In this sense, this book should be recommended even to advanced and graduate students whose majors are outside of East Asia studies. For those who specialize in East Asian literature or history, I am sure the book will suggest a variety of research topics for both advanced undergrads and graduate students, while providing them with a solid and thorough knowledge of the response of Japanese readers to vernacular Chinese literature.
