Contemporary Japanese Sinology

Abstract

In this essay, to make the best use of the limited space available, I concentrate on elements that have not yet received much attention in English, particularly the aspects that scholars outside Japan have found bewildering and the ones that I have knowledge of myself. 1 Thus after sketching in a cursory way the earlier stages of Japanese sinology, I focus on the last forty years. I also look primarily at the study of history, largely leaving to the side the study of literature, philosophy, and the social sciences. Readers who want to know more about earlier stages of Japanese Sinology can turn to many informative and insightful works on the subject.

It is likely that Sinological traditions everywhere have been tied to geopolitics. Certainly in the case of Japan, the changing relations between Japan and China has been central to how Japanese study of China has developed. The study of Chinese texts—the classics, histories, poetry, other literature—has a long history in Japan, going back many centuries. Commonly called Kangaku 漢學, it continued to flourish through the Edo period when contact with China was at a minimal level. With major changes in the organization of education and research in Japan beginning in the late nineteenth century, including the establishment of the imperial universities, scholars in Japan took new approaches to the study of China. These involved spending time in China, conducting field research, communicating with scholars in China, and collecting sources of many kinds. From 1949 to the early 1970s Japanese scholars had few opportunities to visit China, but today Japanese scholars travel back and forth to China for many reasons. It would take a book to do full justice to the history of Japanese scholarship on China, even if limited to the last century. In this essay, to make the best use of the limited space available, I concentrate on elements that have not yet received much attention in English, particularly the aspects that scholars outside Japan have found bewildering and the ones that I have knowledge of myself.¹ Thus after sketching in a cursory way the earlier stages of Japanese sinology, I focus on the last forty years. I also look primarily at the study of history, largely leaving to the side the study of literature, philosophy, and the social sciences. Readers who want to know more about earlier stages of Japanese Sinology can turn to many informative and insightful works on the subject.²

“Sinology” is usually translated into Japanese as Chūgoku gaku 中国学, which literally means “China studies” and encompasses a wide range of fields such as literature, history, philosophy, philology, and anthropology. As Japanese universities in general draw clear disciplinary lines between the study of literature, history, and philosophy in organizing departments, programs, and courses, few Japanese scholars of China identify themselves as “Sinologists” (Chūgoku gakusha 中国学者).³ They may find it jarring to hear themselves referred to as “Sinologists,” “Orientalists,” or “East Asianists” in Anglophone academic contexts. Sinologists outside of Japan may experience similar confusion when it comes to understanding the academic scene in Japan. To help bridge this gap, after the brief overview of the history of Japanese Sinology since the early twentieth century, this essay discusses the institutional context of the article-based nature of Japanese Sinology and introduces practical ways to find relevant Japanese scholarship.

Since the establishment of Western-style universities in Japan, the study of Chinese history has been part of an academic discipline called “Oriental History” (Tōyōshi 東洋史)” or “Asian History” (Ajiashi アジア史).” This new disciplinary framework placed Chinese history into the much broader field of world history, while emphasizing that Japanese history occupies its own place in world history.⁴ Over the course of the last century, politics have changed but the framework itself has survived. Rather than a “Chinese history program/course” (Chūgokushi gakka 中国史学科), most major universities in Japan have an “Oriental/Asian history program” (Tōyōshi gakka/kōsu 東洋史学科/コース or Ajiashi gakka/kōsu アジア史学科/コース), staffed by several researchers specializing in Chinese, Korean, Central/South Asian, or Middle Eastern history.

Research Goals, Source Acquisition, and International Academic Exchanges

At the earliest stage of its history, Japanese Sinology quite consciously sought to establish itself as one of the centers of Asian study in international academia. Considering their precise reading of Classical Chinese originating from the Kangaku tradition to be distinct advantage, Japanese Sinologists fervently sought to explore Chinese history as a part of Oriental history with connections to Central and North Asian history. Historical interplays, negotiations, and mutual understandings between Europe and China (Tōzai kōshō shi 東西交渉史) was one of the major research themes, in correspondence to the relevant discussions in European Sinology. With China and the “Chinese people” regarded as a component of Asian/Oriental history, the “Asian race” (Ajia jinshu アジア人種), including Mongolians, Tibetans, Tungus, and other non-Chinese people and their history, equally attracted scholarly attention and led to the emergence of the persistent tradition of Central and North Asian studies in Japan.⁵

With the demise of the Great Qing, the historical evolution of Chinese political culture, administrative systems, and economic environment attracted enormous attention as an essential key to understanding the ongoing political and social chaos in the Republic of China. Naitō Konan's “Tang–Song transition (Tō Sō henkaku ron 唐宋変革論) hypothesis found a watershed moment in the Song era (960–1276) in the political and economic history of China, which paved the way to the evolution of “Chinese society” up until the twentieth century. Consequently, the study of the Song would become one of the mainstreams of Japanese Sinology in the twentieth century.

The general tone of Japanese Sinology at the time was to view China as a civilization that had essential and abiding characteristics that shaped the nature of Chinese people and their society. While Japanese Sinologists recognized well the dizzying cultural and social diversity, the straightforward understanding of “Chinese civilization” was legitimized by the overall enthusiasm in Japanese society and government to contextualize China in Asian history, with Japan occupying an established position as another eminent civilization. Japanese Sinology carried enormous influence in society and even among policymakers during the first half of the twentieth century, and Sinologists were required to publicize progovernment discussion on Chinese civilization, especially in the 1930s, to academically legitimate Japanese aggression in China.⁶

The expansion of Japanese political influence in China enabled Japanese Sinologists to conduct field trips in search of firsthand sources, such as stele inscriptions, religious scriptures, unpublished manuscripts, and miscellaneous art objects. After the prolonged national isolation policy (sakoku 鎖国) during the Edo era (1603–1868), when the Kangaku scholars had absolutely no way to travel to China, Japanese Sinologists ventured out on field trips to China in the late nineteenth century. Usually trips were organized privately or by universities, occasionally with funding from companies and the government. At the same time, individual scholars and universities proactively purchased books, rubbings of inscriptions, and art objects in China through personal connections and booksellers. Especially after the establishment of Manchukuo, the Empire of Japan's puppet state, many manuscripts, religious scriptures, and miscellaneous cultural relics were seized by Japanese authorities, and Japanese Sinologists obtained access to them.⁷ Many of the collections of Chinese books at Japanese universities and museums began to take shape during the first decades of the twentieth century. Stimulated by the findings on their trips, Japanese Sinologists began exploring much wider ranges of sources than before. For example, epigraphic study emerged as a major element in Japanese Sinology. The South Manchuria Railway Company (Minami Manshū tetsudō 南満州鉄道), which spearheaded the Japanese invasion in China, had a research department (Mantetsu chōsabu 満鉄調査部) that sponsored archival and field research in China. It famously conducted several large-scale surveys of customary practices, agriculture, and natural resources in both North and South China. Compiled by aspiring researchers in the fields of economics, sociology, and history, publication of the detailed survey reports gave rise to postwar socioeconomic studies of historical and contemporary China.⁸

In addition to gathering sources in China, scholars traveled to Europe to learn cutting-edge European Sinology and, more importantly, to show off the achievements of Japanese Sinology to Western academia. During the early twentieth century, representative figures in the Oriental history programs at University of Tokyo and Kyoto University were routinely dispatched at government expense to France and Germany for several years.⁹ More frequently, Japanese Sinologists had opportunities to live in China for several years. In addition to conducting field trips, they frequently exchanged opinions with Chinese scholars, mostly in Beijing and Shanghai, though the political situation between the two nations could make encounters tense. Nevertheless, these scholarly networks lasted until the Japanese invasion of China intensified in the 1930s. Through the first two decades of the twentieth century, Japanese Sinologists expressed ambivalent attitudes toward their Chinese counterparts. While holding deep admiration for Chinese culture, they in general despised contemporary Chinese politics and society, which in their eyes were showing clear signs of decline. Thus, they thought, by exploring Chinese history from “novel” perspectives based in the methodology of modern historiography, Japanese Sinology was stepping ahead of conventional Chinese historiography.¹⁰

Before the beginning of the Pacific war, Western Sinologists were often invited by Japanese institutions like the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and the Toyo Bunko. Far more frequently than Western scholars, however, Chinese scholars visited and stayed in Japan. Shortly before the Xinhai Revolution (1911–12), Wang Guowei 王国維 (1877–1927) sought political asylum in Japan. Chinese scholars who spent time in Japan in these years often donated Chinese books to nascent Japanese universities, which became the foundation of universities’ Chinese book collections.

For example, before coming to Tokyo, Qian Xun 錢恂 (1853–1927), a late Qing diplomat to Japan, had a traditional education and had compiled a Catalogue of Existing Books at the Tianyi Ge Library (Tiantige jiancun shumu 天一閣見存書目, printed in 1889), a collection catalogue of the esteemed library in Ningbo, Zhejiang, by request of Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1838–1894), another scholar-diplomat of the late Qing. Being in charge of supervising Chinese students officially dispatched to Japan by the Qing government, Qian Xun naturally established close relations with Japanese scholars and officials in Tokyo, including Okuma Shigenobu 大隈重信 (1838–1922), the founder of Waseda University.¹¹ Before leaving for China, Qian donated to Waseda more than four thousand Chinese books that he personally had purchased in China and Japan. They were accepted with much gratitude by the university, then lacking any considerable body of Chinese books.¹² Thus besides the flow of Chinese books by purchase and confiscation, personal donation by Chinese intellectuals before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–45) played a nonnegligible role in the formation of Chinese book collections in Japan, especially those at private universities like Waseda.

After the Japanese defeat in World War II, Japanese Sinology needed to reflect on its progovernment projects during the wars, and many Sinologists were purged from their positions in universities and academic institutions. At the same time, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the subsequent establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 had an enormous impact on Japanese academia as a whole. Historical materialism gained widespread support. Mostly graduates of the University of Tokyo and members of the Historical Science Society of Japan (Rekishigaku kenkyūkai 歴史学研究会, abbreviated as Rekiken 歴研, discussed below), the advocates of historical materialism attempted to apply its theoretical framework to Chinese history and refute the theory of Asiatic stagnation (Ajiateki teitaisei ron アジア的停滞性論), which defines historical China or Asian societies in general as unable to progress in the development stages due to their “Asiatic” mode of production. From then on, the new generation of Japanese Sinologists took great interest in exploring the internal factors in the development of Chinese society in history and their significance in the “basic principle of world history.” Over the course of nearly three decades, to put it very simply, discussions evolved around the periodization of Chinese history according to the stages of historical development. Although the discussions wound down by the early 1980s¹³ without reaching a consensus, the decades-long debates on the mode of production, existence of “community” in historical Chinese society, and relations between social classes resulted in detailed studies of land ownership, agricultural development, economic fluctuations, local administration, taxation systems, bureaucratic organs, and local elites in Chinese history and paved the way for the development of post-1980s Japanese scholarship on Chinese history.¹⁴ Notably, Ming–Qing studies, which had not attracted much scholarly attention before 1945, became a major field of Japanese Sinology during the 1950s to 1970s, laying the groundwork for the further evolution of post-1980s Ming and Qing studies.

From 1949 until the 1980s, Japanese Sinologists had almost no opportunities to travel to China, let alone conduct field research there. In stark contrast to the prewar era, academic exchanges between the two nations were dormant. Except for senior scholars who began their careers in China before 1945, the majority of Japanese Sinologists during the 1950s to 1970s had not set foot on Chinese soil. This political barrier caused considerable difficulty for the fields of modern and contemporary Chinese society, religion, customs, and their history. Nonetheless, the field surveys that had been conducted by the Mantetsu Research Department in the 1930s resulted in continued discussions of the customary practices and social order in northern Chinese villages beyond 1945.¹⁵ The publication of the prewar survey reports in the 1950s had significant impact on researchers of Chinese society and its history in international academia and paved the way to the second emergence of field research by Japanese Sinologists beginning in the 1980s.¹⁶

The restoration of relations between China and Japan in 1972 ushered in the new era of Japanese Sinology. The new generation of Sinologists studied at Chinese universities and resumed direct personal academic exchanges. Excavation of wooden and bamboo tablets from the Qin and Han eras stimulated Japanese Sinology as newly published collections of the tablets arrived in Japan. After the mid-1980s, individual Japanese Sinologists (such as Kudō Moto'o 工藤元男, Nagata Hidemasa 永田英正, and Ōba Osamu 大庭脩) participated in international research projects on ancient history based on the tablets excavated in China. The emergence of the new firsthand sources enabled Sinologists to tackle novel topics such as daily life, religious practices, military service, legal execution, and monetary economy in various layers of ancient Chinese society.¹⁷

Publication of epigraphic collections also changed the academic landscape of Japanese Sinology. For researchers focusing on the fifth to fourteenth centuries, that is, from the era of Five Barbarians to Mongol rule, epigraphic sources compensate for the scarcity of written sources and were eagerly used to explore social transitions, cultural changes, and economic fluctuations from the perspectives of non-literati (i.e., commoners, non-Chinese people, and non-literati local elites). Particularly since the 1980s, as Japanese Sinologists began to conduct field trips again, they found that many unstudied steles still standing were to be found in China. Together with Chinese scholars, they fervently worked on the new epigraphic sources.

Study of Central and North Asian history continued in Japan after 1945, and a new generation of scholars of the non-Chinese states arose. Drawing on stele inscriptions and non-Chinese (Persian, Mongolian, and Arabic etc.) and conventional Classical Chinese sources, scholars like Sugiyama Masaaki publicized new findings on social transitions under the non-Chinese regimes (the Northern Dynasties, Liao, Jin, and Yuan), the role of the non-Chinese populace in the transitions, non-Chinese political traditions that set up the primal ruling principles of the states, and non-Chinese elements in administrative and military systems. Perceiving Chinese history in much broader contexts attracted scholarly attention once again, and a group of researchers came to advocate the new analytic framework “Eastern Eurasia.”¹⁸ Also, to contextualize the rise of the “five barbarians” in the history of China and Central Asia, Japanese Sinologists have revisited and reinterpreted the “reservoir theory” of Owen Lattimore.¹⁹ In a similar academic context, the tradition of Manchu language and historical study in Japan brought about the rise of the “Great Qing Empire Study” (Daishin teikoku shi kenkyū 大清帝国史研究), which also sheds light on the “Central Eurasian” elements of the Qing's political structure.²⁰ Archival work in Manchu documents held in China and Taiwan became routine for many Japanese researchers of the Qing.²¹

In the meantime, building on pre-1970s scholarship, conventional research projects on the socioeconomic and institutional history of the Tang to Republican eras continued unabated.²² To circumvent the highly theoretical discussion on periodization, class relations, and mode of production, a group of Japanese Sinologists came to focus on specific localities.²³ Such case study-based social history would evolve into a new wave of Chinese social history that pays more attention to social order, mentality, customary practices, and everyday politics.²⁴ With the increasing opportunities to conduct field trips, Japanese Sinologists such as Hamajima Atsutoshi have been exploring the evolution of local societies in South China together with Chinese counterparts who later constituted a research group (or tradition) of social historians broadly called the “South China School” (Huanan ban 華南班 or Huanan xuepai 華南學派).²⁵

Until the 1970s, compared with the scholarship on premodern Chinese history, modern Chinese history had been neglected. This was arguably due to postwar Japanese Sinology's overall tendency to shy away from discussing contemporary Chinese society and politics, for political reasons.²⁶ Since then, with the rise of China as a superpower, the academic atmosphere has changed drastically. Modern Chinese history emerged as a key to understanding contemporary China, and it is one of the most popular branches of Japanese Sinology today. A flurry of publication of literary collections, diaries, various official documents, new papers, trial records, diplomatic documents, missionary reports, memoirs, and statistical data from the late Qing to the Republican eras has enabled researchers to cast light on social history, transitions in the judicial system, national and regional economies, diplomatic relations, and political and intellectual histories.²⁷ Field trips and archival works in Mainland China, the US, the UK, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other countries neighboring China are crucially important in the evolution of modern Chinese historical research. Japanese doctoral candidates routinely spend several years in Mainland China or Taiwan to establish networks, engage in archival work, and conduct field trips.

As the international relations between Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, US, and Japanese Sinologists have deepened since the 1980s, the most remarkable change in Japanese Sinology has been the drastic increase of non-Japanese nationals in Japanese universities. Mostly from mainland China, Taiwan, and Korea, the international students in both undergraduate and graduate schools have become an integral part of education and research projects. With their diverse cultural backgrounds, language ability, and academic and social connections with their home countries, the international students and researchers in Japanese universities have brought new perspectives and opportunities to Japanese Sinology over the past three decades. Whereas there were many Chinese and Korean students at Japanese universities before 1945, the number of international students today is unprecedented in history and embodies the new era of Japanese Sinology. Chinese scholars, such as Liu Jie 劉傑, now hold posts at several major universities in Japan.

The Article-Based Nature of Japanese Chinese History Study and Its Background

Japanese Sinology is article-based because of the overarching importance of academic journals as an arena for academic interchange and mutual recognition. Since the late nineteenth century, the major national universities that became the leaders of Japanese Sinology have published prominent journals. One such journal, Journal of Historical Study (Shigaku zasshi 史学雑誌), published by the Historical Society of Japan (Shigaku kai 史学会) based at the University of Tokyo, has been the platform for the most important debates in the field for generations. It accepts articles from all the three historiography disciplines in Japan–Japanese history (Nihonshi 日本史), Western history (Seiyōshi 西洋史), and Oriental history. Getting published in the Journal of Historical Study helps authors attract the attention of historians across Japan. Given the reputation of the journal, it is not coincidental that the majority of the heated debates on Chinese history broke out in it. Although only a small number of scholars debate openly in such journals today, young scholars are still under pressure to publish an article in such influential journals to make a name for themselves.

The article-based nature of Japanese Sinology in some sense derives from its “community-based nature.” The number of academic societies in Japan is much larger than one would expect given the size of the country. A Japanese historian of China usually belongs to multiple societies—in most cases, that of the university with which the person is affiliated, a transregional academic community such as Shigaku kai or the Historical Science Society of Japan (see below), and societies for the person's own specific research field (also see below). Societies hold annual meetings that offer their members the opportunity to travel, socialize, gather information, and organize research teams to apply for research grants. The leading academic societies have exerted considerable influence beyond the national universities at which they are based and have functioned as the nuclei of academic life in Japan. In addition to Shigaku kai, the Society of Oriental Researchers (Tōyōshi kenkyūkai 東洋史研究会), based at Kyoto University, has been another vibrant community of Japanese Sinologists and publishes one of the most esteemed journals, the Journal of Oriental Researches (Tōyōshi kenkyū 東洋史研究). Other former imperial universities also have their own societies for Chinese history or Oriental study, such as the Historical Association of Hokkaido University (Hokudai shigaku kai 北大史学会), which publishes the Journal of the Historical Association of Hokkaido University (Hokudai shigaku 北大史学), the Society for the Study of Chinese Literature, History, and Philosophy (Chūgoku bun shi tetsu gakkai 中国文史哲学会), Tohoku University, which publishes Chinese and Oriental Study (Shūkan tōyōgaku 集刊東洋学), the Society for the Study of Oriental History Nagoya University (Nagoya daigaku tōyōshi kenkyūkai 名古屋大学東洋史研究会), Nagoya University, which publishes the Report of the Society for the Study of Oriental History Nagoya University (Nagoya daigaku tōyōshi kenkyūkai hōkoku 名古屋大学東洋史研究会報告), the Society for Historical Study at Hiroshima University (Hiroshima daigaku shigaku kenkyūkai 広島大学史学研究会), Hiroshima University, which publishes The Review of the Study of History (Shigaku kenkyū 史学研究), and The Historical Society of Kyushu (Kyūshū shigakukai 九州史学会), Kyushu University, which publishes The Oriental Studies (Kyūshū daigaku tōyōshi ronshū 九州大学東洋史論集). Smaller than the aforementioned nationwide societies in the number of members, these academic societies function as the regional core of Japanese Sinology. Below these regional communities, almost all the Chinese or Oriental history programs in universities in Japan have their own society that publishes a journal annually and organizes the grass-root academic communities in Japan.

In addition to the university-based academic societies, there are several country-wide communities of scholars. One of the representative communities, the Historical Science Society of Japan (Rekishigaku kenkyūkai, a.k.a Rekiken) was founded in 1932 and became the bastion of the new generation of Japanese Sinologists after World War II. At the 1949 annual meeting, it declared that its members would pursue the “basic principle of world history” (sekaishi no kihon hōsoku 世界史の基本法則) that aimed to interpret Chinese and Asian history in the context of historical materialism. In its monthly Journal of Historical Studies (Rekishigaku kenkyū 歴史学研究), the Rekiken scholars publicized their views on periodization, land ownership, taxation systems, administrative organs, commercial development, and political elite status in Chinese history.²⁸ With its members made up of researchers of Japanese, “Oriental,” and “Western” histories, Rekiken is the largest academic organization in the field of history in Japan and remains very influential. It offers special features bimonthly in the Journal of Historical Studies and asks members working on the topic to contribute articles for the special features.

Founded in 1947 to promote Oriental studies (Tōhōgaku 東方学), the Toho Gakkai (Tōhōgakkai 東方学会) has two branches, in Tokyo and Kyoto, and holds annual meetings in both cities. Its journal, Eastern Studies (Tōhōgaku 東方学) is one of the top-tier journals in the field of Sinology. It has district committees based at major universities in each region, which strengthens its position among Japanese Sinologists. Every volume of Eastern Studies publishes the record of a round-table discussion on an esteemed Japanese Asianist, which offers valuable material for exploring the history of Japanese Sinology. The Toho Gakkai Award (Tōhōgakkai shō 東方学会賞), the annual award granted to the author of an article published that year in Eastern Studies, is one of Japan's most prestigious academic awards especially for researchers at the early stage of their academic careers. The Oriental Library (Tōyō bunko 東洋文庫), Japan's largest Asian-study library, was established in 1917 by Iwasaki Hisaya 岩崎久弥 (1865–1955), the former president of the Mitsubishi company, based on the collection of George Morrison (1862–1920), the Australian journalist and political advisor to the government of the Republic of China. The library publishes another prominent journal, the Journal of the Research Department of Toyo Bunko (Tōyō gakuhō 東洋学報), four times a year.

Publishing an article in the journal of a society enables the contributor to indicate membership in the community as well as to receive feedback from other members. Importantly, academic communities exist dedicated to specific historical periods and topics and their members take promoting the field very seriously. In principle, each dynastic period has its own academic society, such as the Japan Society for Qin and Han History (Nihon Shin Kan shi gakkai 日本秦漢史学会), the Society for the Study of the Five Barbarians (Goko no kai 五胡の会), the Society for Tang History (Tōdaishi kenkyūkai 唐代史研究会), the Society for Song History (Sōdaishi kenkyūkai 宋代史研究会), the Society for Liao, Jin, and Xixia History (Ryō Kin Seika shi kenkyūkai 遼金西夏史研究会), the Society for Ming History (Mindaishi kenkyūkai 明代史研究会), and the Society of Modern and Contemporary China Studies (Chūgoku gendaishi kenkyūkai 中国現代史研究会).²⁹ The majority of these societies occasionally publish a collection of articles discussing a specific theme, written by contributors selected by the editorial board from among the members. In general, a Sinologist based in Japan is supposed to participate in and make a presentation at an annual meeting as a customary obligation upon the request of the meeting organizers. Such presentations frequently evolve into an article published in a collection.

Collections of articles are also published as a product of the Japanese Society of the Promotion of Science (JSPS) research projects. Every year many Sinologists apply for JSPS grants, the most prominent research grant in Japanese Humanities. To acquire a grant over five million yen (approximately equivalent to 37,000 to 38,000 US dollars), the applicant must organize a research team of up to several dozen colleagues. At the end of a project, the research team normally publicizes their findings in the form of an article collection. While such collections have tended to be private publications distributed only among researchers in the field (and thus very hard to acquire outside of Japanese academia), the JSPS has recently preferred that research teams plan to publish their article collections with a commercial publisher. For example, Bensei Shuppan 勉誠出版, a publisher based in Tokyo, has published such article collections for broad readership under the series named Intriguing Asia (Ajia yūgaku アジア遊学).³⁰

The article-based nature of Japanese Sinology also stems from the Japanese university system. It is important to note that “tenure track” is a novel notion to Japanese universities, especially in the humanities. Until recently, once one obtained a position at a university, one was usually automatically tenured. For promotion, research achievements are evaluated by the departmental committee, but the evaluation criteria tend not to assign importance to publication of a book. That is to say, there was no great incentive to publish a monograph among Japanese Sinologists. In the meantime, financial deterioration of the Japanese universities resulted in the abolition of many tenured positions in Sinology (especially those in premodern Chinese history). Before the 1990s, each department in a university in Japan had faculty members working in humanities, including Sinology, for liberal arts education, resulting in hundreds of Japanese Sinologists holding tenured positions with their financial stability. Since the collapse of the “Bubble Economy” in the early 1990s, the majority of such positions ceased to exist with the retirement of the incumbent. Even if a position was not abolished, the once-tenured position was frequently replaced with a limited-term position (usually a three-year term) as a cost-saving measure. Today, after acquiring a PhD, even a researcher with a promising research record most likely ends up “job-hopping” while trying to keep publishing until finding a tenured position, hopefully before turning forty. With good reason, publishing articles rather than monographs is a natural choice for these desperate scholars.

At the same time, however, since 2000 publishing a book has become a key to obtaining a position in the Japanese job market because the tenure-track system is steadily taking root in Japanese universities. Decades ago, when researchers were supposed to acquire a PhD degree at the end of their career, publicizing one's achievements in the form of a monograph was also rare, if not unknown. Consequently, it is almost as though the younger the researcher is in Japan, the more likely he or she is to have published a book. Nonetheless, those books tend to be a collection of published articles, rather than a monograph. In the early stage of an academic career, scholars can rarely find the time to sit down to work on a monograph.

It is during doctoral studies that the principle of “publish or perish” is most fully applied. From the beginning of their academic careers, doctoral students in Japan are supposed to publish articles not only to acquire fellowships (in most cases from the JSPS) but also to be qualified to submit a dissertation. Most Oriental history programs in Japan require that a PhD candidate publish a certain number of articles (usually three or so) in academic journals (generally including at least one peer-reviewed journal) for their dissertation to be accepted by the committee. Doctoral candidates in Japanese universities do not think about monographs as they are swamped in writing articles and earning living expenses.³¹ And after somehow obtaining a degree, the individual still has to publish articles to survive in academia. Only those with independent wealth who live as private scholars can contemplate writing a monograph.

Keeping Abreast of Japanese Sinological Scholarship

The article-based nature of Japanese Sinology makes it crucially important to understand how to search for and obtain articles in Japanese. The most extensive search engine is “CiNii Articles,” a bibliographic database service mostly for Japanese and English articles published by academic societies based in Japan, established and maintained by the National Institute of Informatics (Kokuritsu Jōhōgaku Kenkyūjo 国立情報学研究所) since 2005. In principle, bibliographic information about all academic articles published in Japanese journals are registered in this database.³² However, it must be noted that there is a certain time lag between publication and registration. And more importantly, “CiNii Articles” aims to publicize bibliographical information, not to provide PDFs. Similarly, “The Classified Catalogue of Publications on Oriental Studies” (Tōyōgaku bunken ruimoku kensaku 東洋学文献類目検索) the extensive online catalogue of articles and books of the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University (Kyōto daigaku jimbun kagaku kenkyūjo 京都大学人文科学研究所), does not have a link to digitalized data.³³ Meanwhile, “Japan Science Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic” (abbreviated as “J-STAGE”), an online journal platform run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (Kagaku gijutsu sinkō kikō 科学技術振興機構), digitalizes the articles published in the journals of the affiliated academic societies.³⁴ For example, except for those published in the recent several months, the articles in the Journal of Historical Study of Japan (Shigaku zasshi) can be downloaded from this website. Also, the Institutional Repositories Database (IRDB) covers almost all the institutional repositories in Japan and the majority of recent articles in the journals published by academic societies based at universities can be downloaded through this database.³⁵ Note that some major Japanese Sinological journals, such as the Journal of Oriental Researches (Tōyōshi kenkyū), can only be obtained through IRDB, for those academic societies are not necessarily affiliated with “J-STAGE.”³⁶

“CiNii dissertations” is the online repository of dissertations presented to and accepted by universities and research institutions in Japan since 2013.³⁷ Note that many PhD degree holders in Japan withhold online publication of their dissertations to publish them as a book. For this reason, usually only a summary and evaluation of the dissertation committee can be found on “CiNii dissertations.” As for dissertations presented before 2013, they can be searched on “National Diet Library Digital Collections” (Kokuritsu Kokkai toshokan dejitaru korekushon 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション)³⁸ or in the institutional repository of the university to which the dissertation was submitted.

Titles, annual and final reports, and the affiliation of the participants in the research projects funded by the JSPS are searchable on “JSPS Research Projects Database” (Kagaku kenkyūhi josei jigyō database 科学研究費助成事業データベース).³⁹ The reports are also searchable on the “National Diet Library Digital Collections” and occasionally in the institutional repositories of the universities with which the participants are affiliated. Individual researchers who have acquired JSPS grants are registered in a JSPS search engine and can be sorted by their major, research interests, and projects that they launched and participated in.⁴⁰

There is no specific search engine for Japanese books on Sinology. Books Kinokuniya (Kinokuniya shoten 紀伊國屋書店) offers the most extensive online list of the books for commercial purposes.⁴¹ Publishers specializing in academic publication also have their own websites in which a catalogue of their publications are available: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店 (www.kinokuniya.co.jp/), The University of Nagoya Press (Nagoya daigaku shuppankai 名古屋大学出版会, www.unp.or.jp/), Kyoto University Press (Kyōto daigaku shuppankai 京都大学出版会, www.kyoto-up.or.jp/), University of Tokyo Press (Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai 東京大学出版会, www.utp.or.jp/), Yamakawa Shuppansha 山川出版社 (www.yamakawa.co.jp/), Dōhōsha 同朋舎 (https://dohosha.thebase.in/), Kōdansha 講談社 (www.kodansha.co.jp/), Tōhō Shoten 東方書店 (www.toho-shoten.co.jp/), and Kyūko sho'in (www.kyuko.asia/).

Every June, the Historical Society of Japan (Shigaku kai) publishes a special issue of the Journal of Historical Study of Japan (Shigaku zasshi), entitled “Retrospect and Prospect” (Kaiko to tenbō 回顧と展望) to reflect on historical study in Japan in the previous year. Chinese history is divided by chronological order (“Yin, Zhou, and Spring and Autumn eras,” “Warring States, Qin and Han,” “Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties,” “Sui and Tang,” “Five Dynasties, Song, and Yuan,” “Ming and Qing,” “Modern and Contemporary China,” and “Taiwan”) and the reviewer appointed to each era picks up important works related to it (in the reviewer's eyes) and published in the previous year. This is the only comprehensive annual review of Japanese Sinology from which one can understand its overall trend and evolution over the years. For a much longer perspective, approximately every two or three decades, Iwanami Shoten publishes Iwanami History of the World (Iwanami kōza sekai rekishi 岩波講座世界歴史), a series of books covering the history of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, which contains twenty-four volumes. Each chapter in each volume is authored by a researcher representing the field at the time, and by reading the entire series one can obtain a comprehensive perspective on the major discussions, research trends, and prospective of Japanese historical studies, including Sinology, of that era. The first and second series were published during 1969–71 and 1997–2000, and the third series is being published currently, starting in 2021.⁴²

Since the 1980s, Japanese Sinology has faced ever-diversifying challenges. The rise of China as a superpower inevitably made Japanese Sinologists rethink why they work on Chinese history, and the ever-growing influence of Sinophone and Anglophone academia has also made them wonder why they work on Chinese history in Japan and write about it in Japanese. Thus language use became an issue among Japanese Sinologists for the first time in history. Publishing in Chinese and English is becoming not uncommon in order to participate more directly in international scholarly discourse. The emergence of interdisciplinary fields, such as medical and environmental history, further complicates the self-perception and identity of Japanese Sinologists.⁴³ Dialogue with non-Japanese Sinologists is one way for Japanese Sinology to survive this transitional era, and I hope this article will contribute to such dialogues in the near future.