Summary of Discussions: The State of the Field in Early Modern Japanese Studies

要旨

At some point during the Hei era (1704-1710), a low-ranking samurai (ashigaru) of Kaga domain, Yamada Jiremon, edited a collection of materials that various people had been collecting since the mid-seventeenth century.The materials focused largely on the formative years of Kaga domain.In accord with common practice, Yamada gave his work the self-deprecatory title, Mitsubo kikigaki, loosely translated as "Three Jars of Jottings on Hearsay."In part, the inspiration for his choice of title may have been his sensitivity to the unoriginal nature of his work.He was, after all, collecting, editing and transmitting materials that others had researched or that they had written based on their own personal experience.This essay, based on discussions at the conference on the state of early modern Japanese studies has some of this same character.I wish to stress that this is a summary of the discussions, and eschews any effort to summarize the ten papers that formed the basis for them.Nonetheless, a number of the themes noted here also appeared in some form in the essays themselves.Furthermore, the title of Yamada's collection suggests a metaphor for the major tasks of the conference: 1) to review recent trends in the scholarship, 2) to discuss methodological and theoretical problems of the field at this time and * I have attempted to draw examples and illustrations from all of the fields represented at the conference and in the essays EMJ has published since, but I have made no effort to discuss each in relationship to the various points that constitute this summary.I would especially like to thank Patricia Graham for her comments on the manuscript version of this essay.I have also benefited from an extended discussion with her regarding a number of

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