Chūyūki Kambun Workshop, Summer 2009
The Project for Premodern Japan Studies at the University of Southern California is hosting an invitation-only reading and translation workshop focused on the Chūyūki, a key Heian-period courtier diary.
The workshop will begin on July 20, 2009. It will be led by two faculty veterans of the Kambun Workshops at USC and Cornell University, Professor Joan Piggott of the USC History Department and Professor Sanae Yoshida of the University of Tokyo’s Historiographical Institute. Participants will read, translate, and annotate sections of the Chūyūki journal kept by the leading court minister, Fujiwara no Munetada (1062-1141). Entries in the Chūyūki journal span the years between 1087 and 1138. We are eager to translate selections from this important journal into English because Munetada’s record is one of the most informative of the journals kept by a Heian-era elite. The annotated translation that results will be made available on our Kambun Workshop website in 2010. It will then be prepared for publication in monographic form, just as another product of earlier workshops, our Teishinkōki: The Year 939 in the Journal of the Regent Fujiwara no Tadahira, has recently been published in the Cornell East Asia Series.
A group of researchers began reading and translating sections of the Chūyūki during the summer of 2000 at Cornell University. Subsequently another section of the journal was translated and annotated by members of the Chūyūki Reading Group at USC between 2006 and 2008. Those draft translations will be the starting point this summer—we want to reread and check them during the first days of the workshop. Then we will move on to read, translate, and annotate additional sections, focusing on the birth of the monarch Toba Tennō, in 1103. Therein readers learn of the rites that accompanied a royal birth, including banquets and gift-giving. We will follow the pattern set during recent Kambun Workshops: first we read the original Sino-Japanese (kambun) text. Then we transcribe it into modern Japanese. Then we translate and annotate the text in English. All three stages are important for the final product, which can be profitably studied by those interested in various facets of Heian Japan's history and culture.
Unlike our Teishinkōki project which translated a full year of entries, our annotated Chūyūki translation will contain selections chosen for thematic interest by Professor Yoshida, editor of the authoritative Dai Nihon Kokiroku volumes of the Chūyūki for the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. Members of the workshop will also add research essays to the monographic publication.
