[Special Feature: 125 Years of Integrated Education] Tomoyuki Tanaka: The "Fascination" of Integrated Education—Chinese Classics Research Starting from the Rosaku-ten

2023/10/06

When I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, my mother bought me the Iwanami Shonen Bunko edition of "Journey to the West," which sparked my love for the work. I begged for the "most detailed version" at a bookstore in Yokohama Sogo and obtained the best translation at the time (published by Heibonsha), which I devoured. In 1990, I took the entrance exam for Keio Futsubu School and enrolled. This was when I first learned about the existence of the Rosaku-ten (Labor Exhibition).

On my first day of school, the distributed "Futsubu-kai Journal" (Issue 38) contained essays by seniors regarding the Rosaku-ten. One that struck me particularly hard was by a senior named Takehisa Ogino, who became interested in Mongolian and attempted to translate a grammar book written in Chinese. To do so, he learned Chinese from scratch and translated it character by character while constantly consulting a dictionary. I was struck by the passion radiating from his writing.

I decided I would do research on "Journey to the West." I had the idea, but didn't know what to do, so I asked my father, who researched Buddhist art. He told me about a book called "Great Tang Records on the Western Regions." It seemed like a difficult book, but it apparently described the various countries visited by the historical Xuanzang. I wrote a proposal to compare those descriptions with "Journey to the West," but when I went to the social studies Rosaku-ten briefing, I was rejected. "It's impossible if you can't read the historical sources yourself. You'll just end up copying someone else's book," I was told with a smile. I was frustrated, but it was true. Without those words, I would have led a different life. I feel a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Toshihiko Kotani.

Having no choice, I moved to the Japanese department and settled on a style of summarizing the plot of the work over two years, interspersed with things I had researched and thought about. I started as soon as the music club camp ended, and summarizing this work was more enjoyable than I had imagined. To summarize, one must first read the work itself as if licking it clean. You distinguish between elements to drop and elements to keep, and summarize it so that the fascination you felt is conveyed. While immersing yourself in the work, you must also maintain an objective eye. It was perhaps similar to mapmaking. If you write everything in, it doesn't become a map, but everything that should be written must be included without omission.

In "Journey to the West," Xuanzang's party crosses a river exactly halfway between Tang and India in Chapter 49 of the 100 chapters. Since the story breaks there, the Heibonsha edition contained up to Chapter 49 in the first volume. Since I was summarizing up to Chapter 50 in my first year, the first volume alone was slightly insufficient. I thought the original work should have crossed the river in Chapter 50 for a better break, but then I realized at the end of my first summer at Keio Futsubu School that it might have been set at the halfway point to reaching India in Chapter 98. Continuing in the summer of my second year, while reading the scene in Chapter 77 where Shakyamuni Buddha himself appears to subdue a powerful demon, I looked up when the Buddha had last left India, and it was Chapter 7, when he came to punish Sun Wukong for rampaging in the celestial realm. I realized this must be an intentional use of the number "7"—.

This discovery was simple but seemed to have an impact. When I sent part of the "thesis" I wrote in my third year to Professor Miyoko Nakano of Hokkaido University, who was translating "Journey to the West" for Iwanami Bunko at the time, she introduced it in an NHK Educational TV lecture and later mentioned it in her papers and books. I was deeply moved.

On the other hand, I felt a bit uneasy. What I really wanted to clarify was the root of the work's fascination, not those so-called structural gimmicks. I wanted to show what lay behind the gimmicks—. I worried about it, but eventually realized: the fascination of a work is like a spark generated when the reader's sensitivity comes into contact with the work, and it is incredibly important, but research is not a photograph of the spark. However, there are elements of a work that can only be seen by those who have struck a spark, and connections of facts that are obvious once pointed out but difficult to notice (or evaluate even if noticed). Pointing out such links is also a means of talking about the fascination of the work.

When I went to graduate school, I left Keio. I changed my research subject to "Jin Ping Mei" and have been working on a new translation for the past nine years (3 volumes total; first and second volumes already published by Toeisha). Since graduate school, I have been breathing the air of national universities, but I am living out the phrase "Rosaku-ten for life" that we were told at Keio Futsubu School. Translation is the act of re-summarizing the original text so that it can be understood (....) in a different language, so my daily work is not much different from my summer vacations during my Keio Futsubu School days. In terms of a map, the scale has simply changed from 1:20 to 1:1 (!). The motivation to convey the fascination of the work still supports my long-term translation work today.

I cannot forget when Mr. Eiichi Arai took me to the Old Library in Mita during my Keio Futsubu School days. It was the day I first smelled the scent of the materials I interact with daily now. This summer, I reunited at Koshien with Mr. Takeshi Akuzawa (the current principal) of Keio Senior High School, who encouraged me to go to the Faculty of Letters when I was lost, and that connection led to me writing this manuscript. My senior from Keio Senior High School, Masahiro Kuriyama, who was also in the brass band seats that day, worked hard to ensure my translation was featured in the newspaper. The teachers and fellow students at Keio had the broad-mindedness to accept me as I was, even though I am more of a lone wolf type. And I believe that what underlies that generous atmosphere is precisely the "fascination" of integrated education nurtured by tradition.