The Lunyu Shu: The Appearance and Public Exhibition of a 6th-Century Chinese Manuscript

2020/11/23

From October 7 to 13, the 32nd Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) Rare Books Exhibition was held at the Maruzen Nihonbashi Main Store 4th Floor Gallery in Marunouchi, Tokyo. The theme this time was "Reading in Ancient and Medieval Japan," focusing on how Japanese people before the Muromachi period studied Chinese classics brought from China. Placed at the very beginning of the one hundred exhibited items was Volume 6 of the Lunyu Shu (Commentary on the Analects), transcribed in China during the 6th or 7th century, which I will introduce here. Regarding this manuscript, Keio University issued a press release on September 10 of this year titled "Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) Makes Public the Oldest Extant Manuscript of the Analects," and subsequent reports were made by the Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and NHK. Therefore, some may have already visited the Maruzen exhibition venue to see the actual item, but from my position as the exhibition supervisor, I would like to briefly explain the overview, historical value, and the circumstances of its public release once more.

The Lunyu Shu is a work in which Huang Kan (488–545) of the Liang dynasty re-annotated the Lunyu Jijie (Collected Explanations of the Analects) by He Yan of the Wei dynasty; its formal title is the Lunyu Yishu. The character "Shu" in the title means to further annotate an existing commentary. Because the Analects, which records the words and deeds of Confucius, consists of fragmentary descriptions, commentaries have been necessary to understand its content since ancient times. Countless commentaries have been written in China, but He Yan's Jijie was the most widely read representative of the "Old Commentaries" (commentaries established from the Han to Tang dynasties) until Zhu Xi's Lunyu Jizhu (Collected Commentaries on the Analects) appeared in the Song dynasty. However, because the Jijie also had deficiencies in interpretation, many Shu (commentaries on He Yan's commentary) were created, and among them, Huang Kan's Yishu received the highest evaluation.

The Lunyu Yishu was, of course, brought to Japan. Its name appears in the Nihonkoku Genzaisho Mokuroku, a catalog of Chinese books in the Imperial Court compiled in the early Heian period (late 9th century), and more than 30 old manuscripts from the Nanboku-cho to Muromachi periods (14th to 16th centuries) exist in Japan today. However, contrary to this state of preservation in Japan, the Yishu disappeared from China shortly after the start of the Song dynasty (the reasons for its disappearance are omitted here due to space constraints).

The Lunyu Shu manuscript released this time is recognized as having been transcribed during the period from the Chinese Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Sui Dynasty, based on its calligraphy, format, and paper. It consists of a single handscroll made by joining twenty sheets of hemp paper and contains two chapters, "Zi Han" and "Xiang Dang," out of the twenty chapters of the Analects. When was this manuscript brought to Japan? A clue to estimating the period is the two types of "seam seals" stamped across the joins of the paper to prevent misordering. One is a seal used by the Fujiwara clan in the early Heian period (early 9th century) with the character "Fuji." The other, though the text is unclear, predates the "Fuji" seal. Therefore, it can be inferred that this manuscript was brought to Japan during the Nara period or earlier (7th to 8th centuries).

Now, where does the value of this manuscript lie? In my personal view, it can be summarized in the following three points. First is its antiquity as a "densei" (handed-down) book. "Densei" means it has been passed down from person to person. While older manuscripts of the Analects exist in China and North Korea as excavated items, no other handed-down item is this old. Great value is recognized in the very fact that it is a physical manuscript from before the Sui Dynasty. Furthermore, although this manuscript contains only one-tenth of the whole, it includes all the original text of the Analects and the Jijie commentary within that portion. Therefore, it can be called the oldest manuscript of the Yishu, the oldest manuscript of the Jijie, and the oldest manuscript of the Analects, excluding excavated items.

Second, it possesses a text that is extremely close to the original Lunyu Yishu. As mentioned earlier, many manuscripts of the Yishu from the Nanboku-cho and Muromachi periods exist in Japan. Comparing those manuscripts with this one reveals several textual differences. This suggests that nearly 1,000 years passed between the time Huang Kan wrote the Yishu and the Nanboku-cho/Muromachi periods in Japan, and during the process of transcription, impurities such as post-Yishu commentaries (which are helpful for interpretation but were not in the original Yishu) were slightly interpolated. On the other hand, this manuscript was written only a few decades after the Yishu was established, and it is thought to possess a text extremely close to Huang Kan's original. Through a comparison of the two, the original form of the Yishu will become clear, and it will undoubtedly provide clues to tracing the development of Analects commentary.

Third, it maintains its original form in terms of format as well. In this manuscript, the texts of the original scripture (Jing), the commentary (Zhu), and the sub-commentary (Shu) are mixed, but the characters are all written in the same size. They are distinguished by adding red side-dots to the scripture, red hook-dots to the upper right of the starting point for the commentary, and a red symbol like "三" to the right side of the starting point for the sub-commentary. In later periods, such as in Muromachi period manuscripts, the format was modified to write the scripture in large characters, the commentary in large characters indented one space, and the sub-commentary in small characters. This format allows one to distinguish the three at a glance and was a measure taken for the convenience of readers in later generations. While the timing of this format change is unknown, the original format of the Yishu has been clarified by the appearance of this manuscript.

Finally, let me touch upon the circumstances that led to the public release of this book. It was in March 2016 that we received word from an antiquarian bookstore in Tokyo that they had acquired an old manuscript of the Lunyu Yishu. The book was successfully housed in the Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) in February of the following year, but the road to that point was not necessarily smooth. I believe the fact that we were somehow able to reach the point of acquisition was the result of three elements happening to come together. First, the library (the director at the time was Professor Kanji Akagi of the Faculty of Law) recognized this book as a precious cultural property and made the bold decision to purchase it. Second, the owner of the antiquarian bookstore, an alumnus of the Juku (who asked to remain anonymous), sold it at an exceptionally low price based on his personal conviction that such a book should be housed in a public research institution. Third, a collaborative research system centered on Professor Tomohiko Sumiyoshi of the Institute of Oriental Classics (Shido Bunko) and Professor Kazufumi Tanemura of the Faculty of Business and Commerce had been established within Keio. If even one of these had been missing, this book would not have been released as the centerpiece of this book exhibition. I wish to rejoice in this triple stroke of good fortune.