Connections Made Through the Book Road

The Japan Foundation Awards, established in 1973, have successfully reached their 50th anniversary, and, as a recipient of an award in 2015, I would like to extend my enthusiastic congratulations from Hangzhou, China.

In 1980, the Japan Foundation set up the Ohira School in Beijing to foster Japanese-language teachers in China. I attended the school in its fourth year, and took native Japanese-language classes for a year. That was the beginning of my connection with the Foundation, and it opened a window to the world for me.

One: The Wall of Language

Languages have a strange duality. From an internal perspective, they are a medium of communication that works effectively so that people can understand one another and give and receive knowledge. From an external perspective, they are a great obstacle to mutual understanding and information sharing.

To borrow an episode from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament: humanity, which originally spoke the same language, exhibited great power and attempted to build the Tower of Babel, which would reach Heaven. But God, feeling the danger of this, made humans speak different languages. The humans, who could no longer understand each other, gradually became divided, and the building of the Tower of Babel was abandoned.

Putting aside myths and legends, there is no doubt that “speaking the same language” is a beautiful dream that humanity has desired in all ages and countries. It is widely known that way back at the end of the 19th century, L. L. Zamenhof from Poland embraced that lofty ideal and created Esperanto. More recently, at the end of the 20th century, Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerrière combined “global” and “English” to get “Globish,” i.e., he developed a global language.

It is more realistic to learn multiple languages than a precarious artificial language. The thinking is that unimpeded linguistic exchange will reduce, to a certain extent, political, economic, and cultural friction.

Thus, the Foundation has succeeded in consistently providing strong support for international Japanese-language education and realizing its main goal of establishing international exchange, and, as someone who has benefitted from that success, I commend the Foundation.

Two: Connections with the Japan Foundation

The Beijing Center for Japanese Studies, which I might call the evolved form of the Ohira School, was established in 1985, and I enrolled in its first year intake of graduate students. I was thrilled to see leading scholars in various fields, including Ishida Ichiro, Minamoto Ryoen, Ikeda On, Togawa Yoshio, Uehara Shoichi, Tsuji Nobuo, Yoshida Hiroo, Hayashi Shiro, and others, and to attend their live lectures—even now, I remember it clearly, as if it were yesterday.

As I chose the Japanese culture course, I attended lectures on the history of Japanese thought and Japanese art history, but I also sometimes sat in on classes and lectures on Japanese literature and Japanese society. It was a dreamlike two years, full of freshness and stimulation. I listened to Professor Uehara Shoichi’s class on Buphist imagery and investigated “hossu” (a horsehair fly-whisk traditionally carried by a priest) and “shubi” (a fly-whisk with a deer’s tail attached), which are commonly mixed up in dictionaries and other reference books, summarizing this in a report. When I handed this in as homework, Professor Uehara offered me reference materials and encouraged me to turn the report into a paper, regardless of the fact that this was a modest “discovery.” After many revisions, in 1987 this was published in Ars Buphica (Mainichi Shimbun Publishing, Inc.) No. 175, titled “Shubi Zakko”. For me, studying for my master’s, this was a memorable experience, as it meant I had moved from being a learner of the Japanese language to a researcher of Japanese history and culture. At the Center, I really felt that many researchers of Japan with a deep understanding of international exchange and high levels of discernment supported the Japan Foundation, and that this was the source of the Foundation’s power.

They say that one connection leads to many, and sure enough in 1986 I followed Professor Ishida Ichiro to study in Japan. Then, with support from Professor Ishida Ichiro and University President Shen Shanhong, I founded the Japanese Culture Research Institute at Hanzhou University (now Zhejiang University) in 1989, and took my first steps down the road toward becoming a fully-fledged researcher.

My connection with the Japan Foundation also continued after this. I will bring up just one event that left a deep impression.

In September 1991, we welcomed Prof. Donald Keene, a global leader of research on Japanese literature, to give an intensive course on Japanese literature at Hanzhou University, as part of the Japan Foundation’s program to support Japanese research overseas. The content was wide-ranging, covering literature from the Meiji period, diary literature, and the history of research on Japanese literature in Europe and America, and the sight of the blond-haired blue-eyed American speaking freely about Japanese literature in fluent Japanese with standard Chinese caused a stir in Hangzhou. More than a decade later, in 2003, the valuable lecture transcripts were published as Nihon Bungaku wa Sekai no Kakehashi [Japanese Literature is a Global Bridge] (Tachibana Publishing, Inc.). This, too, was surely the outcome of international exchange resulting from our connection with the Japan Foundation.

Three: The Road of Books

When I look back at my journey as a researcher, there were several transitions. My research perspective shifted from the history of ancient Japan to the history of Chinese-Japanese cultural exchange, then to the history of civilization in East Asia. Prince Shotoku's Transcendence of Space-Time (Taishukan Publishing Co., Ltd., 1994) and the Tendai no Ruden---Chigi kara Saicho e [Transmission of the Tendai School - from Chigi to Saicho] (jointly authored, Yamakawa Shuppansha Ltd., 1997) fell into the category of ancient Japanese history, while The Image of Japanese Envoys in the Tang Dynasty: A Tang Empire of Mixed-Blood Peoples (Kodansha Ltd., 1998) and Onme no Shizuku Nuguhabaya---Ganjin Wajou Shinden [I Would Wipe the Tears From Your Eyes: A New Biography of Ganjin] (Rural Culture Association Japan, 2002) focused on the history of Chinese-Japanese cultural exchange. In the 21st century, I aped the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam to my viewpoint, broadening my field to the history of cultural exchange in East Asia.

One reason that I was awarded a Japan Foundation Award in 2015 was said to be my proposal of the “Book Road.” The Book Road’s assertion is that cultural exchange between the various countries of East Asia took place mainly through spiritual civilization, symbolized by books, rather than material civilization through goods such as silk. My proposal of this academic concept was also closely connected to the Japan Foundation’s project supporting international exchange.

As is clear if you read works such as The Spread and Influence of Chinese Classical Books in Japan (Hanzhou University Press, 1990) and A Treatise on the History of Chinese Classical Books between China and Japan (Hanzhou University Press, 1992), published as the products of the Foundation's support projects, for around 10 years before I proposed the Book Road to the academic community in 1997, I was engaged in a solitary search exploration centered on book exchange (unusual in conventional research on Japan). The fact that the Foundation was generous in its understanding and support of this was especially valuable.

In August 2018, the University of California, Berkeley, in the US hosted an international symposium, “From the Silk Road to the Book Road(s)”; I gave a keynote speech titled “The Book Road of the 8th Century.” While speaking about the Book Road to researchers from around the world, the image of people from different East Asian countries traveling up and down a road of books for over a thousand years kept appearing in my mind, and I could not help but believe that this would become a road of international exchange further linking the East and West.

I had intended to congratulate you on the 50th anniversary of the Japan Foundation Awards, but somehow I have ended up giving a long talk about my personal history and thoughts. So let me conclude by wishing that the lofty ideal of the founders of your Foundation of international exchange will expand into an even wider area, and be passed down to even more organizations and individuals.

Wang Yong

(Original text in Japanese)

The Japan Foundation Awards (2015)