Anthology of Kokugaku Scholars: 1690–1898: 184 (Cornell East Asia) - Softcover

Bentley, John R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1939161843 ISBN 13: 9781939161840

Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series, 2019

Synopsis

Kokugaku "national study" is an academic field of study that spans a number of disciplines, including philology, poetry, literature, linguistics, history, religion, and philosophy. It began as a movement to recapture a sense of Japanese uniqueness, by focusing on Japanese poetic and linguistic elements found in the earliest surviving texts. As the movement grew, there was an attempt to separate native religious elements from Buddhist elements. This expanded to a vigorous attempt to weed out Confucian (and by extension anything "Chinese") elements from native elements. This began as an investigation into the earliest anthology, Man'yoshu, which some Kokugaku scholars argued preserved a pristine picture of the "true heart" of the ancients. Kokugaku matured under the tutelage of Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, and expanded to include literary, linguistic, and historical analysis. With the death of Norinaga the philosophy of the movement fractured, and under Hirata native religious elements were amplified, with an advance toward nationalism. This anthology contains 26 essays by 13 influential Kokugaku scholars, covering roughly two centuries of thought, from 1690 down to the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The volume is arranged according to four subjects: poetry, literature, scholarship, and religion/Japan (as a state).

About this title

About the Author:

John R. Bentley is professor of Japanese at Northern Illinois University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1939161843
• ISBN 13: 9781939161840
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 612