Mathieu Felt's Meanings of Antiquity is a masterful study of the reception of the two earliest extant books of Japanese imperial myths, the Kojiki (Account of Ancient Matters) and Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan). The book traces how the mythological discourses produced around these two texts from the early ninth to the late eighteenth century were central to the creation of origin stories and the establishment of cultural, religious, and political legitimacy in premodern Japan. Its five chapters represent five distinct historical stages of this process, with each period treating mythological discourse in distinct ways and in different contexts. Because the Nihon shoki in particular was such a central text, we may read Felt's study as a cultural history of Japan told through the lens of how mythological discourse developed throughout the ages, up to the emergence of the modern discipline of mythology in Japan.I was particularly impressed by Felt's argument in chapter 1, in which he discusses how the exegetical process of the Nihon shoki court lectures in the ninth and tenth centuries unified the narratives of Nihon shoki and Kojiki into a single mythical tradition. Felt demonstrates that this unification in fact occurred in two quite distinct stages, the first of which created a closed canon focused on the orthodox interpretation of a single mythical narrative, whereas the second opened the canon to other texts to create a universal mythical tradition and a comprehensive origin story for the Japanese state. Then in chapter 2, Felt demonstrates that although very few people read the actual text of Nihon shoki in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, its myths often appeared in denarrativized contexts as discrete episodes; the Nihon shoki thus came to be treated as a repository of historical anecdotes. This is a fascinating argument and an interesting case study of how mythical episodes may be detached from their original texts to be redeployed and repurposed in entirely different contexts.Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the reimagining of mythology, first within the framework of the medieval three-world imaginary (India, China, Japan) in the thirteenth to fifteenth century, and then within the framework of Song Confucianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One aspect of Felt's argument that I had never quite appreciated or understood before was the degree to which commentary on the Nihon shoki relates to the development of the Shintō religion—in particular to the schools of Yoshida Shintō in the medieval period and Suika Shintō in the early modern period.Chapter 5 deals with the eighteenth-century empirical tradition of commentary. There are several studies in English on nativist learning and mythology during this period (which Felt cites in his study), but almost all of them treat the eighteenth century in teleological terms as a precursor to modernity and tend to misread the writings of the period as gesturing toward some kind of national community. Felt's study is like a breath of fresh air in this respect—he reads the texts in terms of the actual concerns of their time, and as informed by and reacting against the earlier writings he has discussed in previous chapters.The book demonstrates a staggering degree of expertise. Because the myths of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki are the basis of the imperial lineage's legitimacy, they have been the object of extensive exegesis throughout the centuries, and many of the commentaries are no less challenging to read than the texts themselves. Felt is one of a small handful of scholars in the English-speaking scholarly world who is able to read both the original texts and their commentaries with confidence and authority.The book is also painstakingly researched. Felt is deeply familiar with Japanese scholarship, and his citations and translations make clear that he has read all the commentaries and premodern scholarship himself—there are no signs of the typical secondhand citation that is so prevalent in much English-language scholarship on premodern Japan. He has also taken care to situate his book within the English-language academy: He cites and engages with English-language scholarship carefully and generously. In sum, Meanings of Antiquity makes a field-building contribution not only to the study of early Japanese literature and mythology, but also to the field of Japanese intellectual and cultural history, spanning from the ninth to the eighteenth century.Meanings of Antiquity makes considerable demands on its reader—it is not a book that can be skimmed easily—but the effort is deeply rewarding. It will without doubt become the standard study of the reception of Japanese myth for decades to come.
Torquil Duthie (Thu,) studied this question.