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What Is the Dai Nihon Shi?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Herschel Webb
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Extract

It has often been claimed that the Dai Nihon shi is one of the towering monuments of traditional Japanese historiography, and it is indeed a work of rare scope: a general history of Japan in 397 kan, or chapters, dealing primarily with the affairs of the imperial dynasty from its legendary founding in 660 B.C. to the healing of Japan's only extended dynastic schism in 1392. The entire text is in literary Chinese, and the pattern of organization is that of the Chinese dynastic histories. The Dai Nihon shi was conceived by Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1701), the second daimyo of the Mito han, and compiled by the Confucian retainers of Mitsukuni and his successors. Two large sections of chronological Main Annals and Biographies (approximately half of the finished book) were completed by 1715, but the rest remained unfinished at the time of the Meiji Restoration.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , February 1960 , pp. 135 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1960

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References

1 The title means “History of Japan.” The most easily available edition is that published by Dai Nihon Yūben-kai, 17 vols., (Tokyo, 1928–29) (hereafter referred to as DNHS). Two of the best secondary studies in Japanese are Katō Shigeru, “Dai Nihon shi to Shina shigaku,” [“The Dai Nihon shi and Chinese Historiography,”] in Hompō shigaku-shi ronsō [Essays on the History of Japanese Historiography], 2 vols. (Tokyo, 1939), pp. 865–907Google Scholar; and Kiyoshi, Hiraizumiet al., Dai Nihon shi no kenkyū [Studies in the Dai Nihon Shi] (Tokyo, 1957)Google Scholar (hereafter referred to as DNHSKK). The most useful study in any language is Chou I-liang, “Dai Nihon shi chih shih-hsüeh” [“The Historiography of die Dai Nihon Shi”] Shih-hsüeh nien-piao, II, 11, (Sept. 1935), 165–207Google Scholar. For a western-language appraisal, see Hammitzsch, Horst, “Die Mito Schule,” Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, Mitteilungen, vol. 31B (1939)Google Scholar. An excellent brief description by W. G. Beasley was prepared for the International Conference on “New Approaches to Asian History,” London, July 2–6, 1956, and exists in mimeographed form among the papers distributed to delegates at that conference, under the tide “Japanese Historical Writing of the Tokugawa Period.”

2 The standard source on the compilation is Tsutomu, Kurita, Sui-Han shūshi jiryaku [Abridged Account of the Historiographical Work, of the Mito Han] (Mito, 1909)Google Scholar, compiled from documents kept by the project.

8 Sui-Han shūshi jiryaku, p. 13, quoted from an inscription written for his own memorial stone in 1691.Google Scholar

4 DNHS, I, jo (Preface), 1–2: The entire Preface is translated in Tsunoda, Ryusaku, Bary, Wm. Theodore de, and Keene, Donald (comp.), Sources of the Japanese Tradition, (New York, 1958), pp. 372–373.Google Scholar

5 It has been translated in Watson, Burton, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Grand Historian of China (New York, 1958). pp. 187–190;Google Scholar

6 See the discussion in Hiraizumi, “Dai Nihon shi gaisetsu” [“Introductory Remarks on the Dai Nihon Shi”] in DNHSKK, especially pp. 3–5.

7 Watson, , Ssu-ma Ch'ien, p. 189Google Scholar. Ch'ien, Ssu-ma here quotes from Analects, XV, 19.Google Scholar

8 Asaka's “Appraisals” have been published separately as “Dai Nihon shi ronsan,” in Mito gaku taikkei [Selected Works of the Mito School], 8 vols. (Tokyo, 1942–1943), vol. 6.Google Scholar

9 Sui-Han shūshi jiryaku, p. 37.

10 It was written in 1897 and hence cannot be taken as a reliable guide to the Mito School's political ideas during the Tokugawa period. Sui-Han shūshi jiryaku, p. 222.

11 This refers to the emperor's all-important function of exemplifying the behavior expected of his subjects. He was not, of course, expected to “teach” agriculture and useful arts in any ordinary way, but by maintaining gardens and looms within the palace he symbolized the importance to the country of useful pursuits.

12 DNHS, IX, 1–2.

13 Sui-Han shūshi jiryaku, p. 8.

14 Those mentioned by Chou in “Dai Nihon shi chih shih-hsueh,” 174–175, are all citations in the Essays section, and I know of no citations of oral traditions other than those which Chou mentions.

15 DNHS, vol. 17.

16 Space prohibits development of these and other aspects of the political thought of the Mito School, many of which must be sought in Mito works other than the Dai Nihon shi. They are discussed in the author's The Thought and Work of the Early Mito School (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1958).Google Scholar

17 Mito gaku taikei, VII, 193. From “Ronsan bakugo,” a collection of private notes by Miyake concerning the Dai Nihon shi.