The Reception and Reworking of Empress Renxiao’s Book of Exhortations

Abstract

The early modern period in Japan (approximately the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century) was an era during which a lively publishing culture flourished, and books produced then enjoyed an avid readership. Texts introduced from China and Korea also came to be re-printed in Japan, first in old moveable-type editions (kokatsuji-ban 古活字版) and later in woodblock-printed editions (seihan 整版) with glosses added. A notable standout among all this mass of publications is the morality book Dai-Min Jinkō kōgō kanzensho 大明仁孝皇后勧善書 (The Ming Empress Renxiao’s Book of Exhortations, hereafter called Book of Exhortations), which was originally published in China in 1407, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). This twenty-volume Chinese work opens with a collection of edifying passages (kagen 嘉言) selected from Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist scriptures; these are then followed by a number of illustrative stories featuring various characters, adventures, and experiences. Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫1 was the first scholar to write about the appreciation of Book of Exhortations in Japan. Since then, Hwang Soyeon 黃昭淵 and Hanada Fujio 花田富二夫 have also published comprehensive discussions relating to Book of Exhortations. Hwang pointed out that the original Chinese version of Book of Exhortations influenced the development of ghost stories in Japan, as can be seen in Otogi-bōko 伽婢子 (1666). However, he states that it is doubtful whether the Japanese reproductions of Book of Exhortations had such a direct impact themselves: The Reception and Reworking of Empress Renxiao’s Book of Exhortations: Chinese Works in Japan as Mediated through Printed Buddhist Texts