Kinoshita Iwao

Kinoshita Iwao in Kashii (1976)

Essay Kinoshitas in YAMATO No. 3, 1929

Kojiki: Issue in the series Kokushi taikei 1936 (left); Issued by the Berlin Japan Institute and the Japanese-German Cultural Institute 1940; romanized text 1940 (right)

Kinoshita Iwao ( Japanese 木 下 祝 夫 ; * March 7, 1894 in Kashii, Kasuya District, Fukuoka Prefecture , Japan ; † October 23, 1980 ibid) was a Japanese Shinto priest who began developing in Berlin in the 1920s at a young age the oldest Japanese written source, the Kojiki ("recording of old incidents"), was commissioned and completed this task after many setbacks in old age.

Youth, studies

Kinoshita Iwao comes from a former samurai family who for generations provided priests for the Kashii Shrine ( Kashii-gū ) east of Fukuoka , one of the outstanding shrines of Kyushu from the early days of the Japanese Empire. Iwao was the fourth son of the priest Yoshishige. Nothing is known about the early school years. From 1909 he attended the Asakura Prefectural Middle School . Two years later he switched to Shūyūkan, an elite school that emerged from the former school of the Fukuoka clan ( Fukuoka-han ). Here he received his diploma at the end of March 1914.

From April 1914 to July 1918 he studied Japanese literature at Kokugakuin University . Immediately after graduation, he began studying at Nihon University and in July 1921 earned the degree of Bachelor of Law ( hōgakushi ). Although this university offered him a three-year research stay in England, he went back to Kokugakuin University and completed a research course, which he completed in March 1922 with a thesis on "Law and Virtue". Here, too, he attracted attention and was sent to Germany to study philosophy.

Study abroad in Berlin

The science boycott imposed by the Entente after the First World War was soon undermined mainly by Japanese doctors and natural scientists. Japanese donors such as the pharmaceutical entrepreneur Hoshi Hajime, the stock broker Mochizuki Gunshirō and collections initiated by the medical doctor Irisawa Tatsukichi helped the financially collapsed German basic research through difficult times. During the 1920s, young Japanese returned to Germany to study. Many enrolled in political science, law and economics, a considerable number studied chemistry, physics, mathematics and, last but not least, medicine.

In the summer of 1922, the Kinoshita, which was awarded a scholarship, headed west and, after a short stay in Paris, moved to Berlin . After having acquired sufficient language skills and admission to the university, he enrolled in October 1923 under matriculation number 2372. Kinoshita heard lectures from the sinologist Otto Franke , the historian Hermann Oncken , the founder of Gestalt psychology Wolfgang Köhler , the pioneer of humanities education Eduard Spranger , the sociologist Alfred Vierkandt and others. He also had close contacts with Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller , head of the East Asian department of the Völkerkundemuseum, the Japanologist Martin Ramming , the sinologist Erich Haenisch , Friedrich Karl Georg Rumpf , Clemens Scharschmidt , the Russian Japanologist Alexander Chanoch , who later became the nestor of German Turkology Annemarie von Gabain and, last but not least, the elderly philosopher and Nobel Prize winner for literature Rudolf Christoph Eucken in Jena . After the winter semester of 1927, Kinoshita received his leaving certificate, but stayed at the university as a guest student because of new tasks. During all his years in Berlin he lived with a family Zachert, whose son Herbert would later make a name for himself as a Japanologist.

German-Japanese activities

Kinoshita took part in the activities of the Japanologists and Friends of Japan, which at the time, at the suggestion of the ambassador in Tokyo Wilhelm Solf and the Nobel laureate and chemist Fritz Haber, after some back and forth and not least under the active influence of the philosopher Kanokogi Kazunobu , who was specially sent from Japan in 1926 founded an "Institute for the mutual knowledge of intellectual life and public institutions in Germany and Japan" ( Japaninstitut Berlin ). The head of the institute was the Japanese scientist Friedrich Max Trautz on the German side and Kanokogi on the Japanese side until 1929. With the Japanese-German Cultural Institute ( Nichi-doku bunka kyōkai ) founded in Tokyo in 1927 , this was the first bilateral company of its kind.

Kinoshita was also active in the "German-Japanese Working Group" that the broadcast-conscious Kanokogi founded in 1928 for the purpose of "joint research into the cultural, political and economic problems of Japan and the dissemination of correct ideas about Japan (sic) in the German public". When Kanokogi undertook a reorganization in 1929 before his return to Japan, Kinoshita and the diplomat Wilhelm Haas were appointed as assessors for the Politics section. In the same year, Kinoshita published an article about the "Ur-Shintō" in the journal YAMATO, which was published by the working group, in which he referred to sources, myths and deities, places of worship, oracles and divination and the like. a. m. comes in.

Birth of the Kojiki project

Both the statutes of the Japan Institute and those of the working group, which was renamed "Berlin German-Japanese Society " in 1929, name the translation of important cultural documents of Japan among their primary tasks. The Kojiki , which was written down in writing at the beginning of the 8th century, was the key text in the Japanese construction of identity. As a graduate of Kokugakuin University, which with its "Research Center for Japanese Classics" ( Kōten Kōkyūjo ) was at the forefront of Japanese Shinto research, Kinoshita was the most qualified candidate for this task.

In 1976 Kinoshita counted as initiators the ambassador Solf, Müller from the Völkerkundemuseum, the director of the Museum of East Asian Art Otto Kümmel , further Otto Franke, Clemens Scharschmidt from the Seminar for Oriental Languages, Ernst Lüdtke, Trautz, Ramming, the ambassador at the time Nagaoka Harukazu , Kanokogi as well the physician Shimazono Junjirō.

Basil Hall Chamberlain had already published The Kojiki - Records of Ancient Matters in 1882 , and in the Historical Sources of the Shinto Religion published by Karl Florenz in 1919 we find a German translation of the first three books. A full translation was now due. But as the foreword to the 1940 edition shows, the plan soon swelled into a seven-volume project:

• Vol. 1 introductory volume on Shinto research and especially on the history of Shinto .
• Vol. 2 Text of the Kojiki (reproduction of the copy in the "Research Center for Japanese Classics" ( Kōtenkōkyūjo ) of the Kokugakuin University)
• Vol. 3 Romanized text of Kojiki (at the request of the German side in the transcription system developed by James Curtis Hepburn )
• Vol. 4 German translation of the Kojiki
• Vol. 5 Notes on Kojiki
• Vol. 6 registers
• Vol. 7 General index for 1. the Kojiki copy of the Kōten Kōkyūjo , 2. the Kokun-Kojiki published by Nagase Masaki (1765–1835) in the old reading style and 3. the commentary Kojiki-den written by Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) .

Kinoshita had already finished the first manuscripts in 1927. De Gruyter's estimate gives the impressive sum of 46,000 marks. The Kanokogi provided with a pressure test then succeeded in Japan in winning the support of Prince Takamatsu (1905-1987), the younger brother of Tenno .

This gave the project a completely new status for the Japanese side. In Tokyo, three researchers took up the text. There was Wilhelm Gundert , a cousin of Hermann Hesse , who had headed the Japanese-German Cultural Institute as the German director since 1927. Furthermore, the ethicist and philosopher Tomoeda Takahiko (1876–1957), who has been Gundert's side as Japanese director since 1929, and the historian Kuroita Katsumi (1874–1946), who started publishing a canon of national literature, the “Compendium of National History ”( Kokushi taikei ), and was preparing a revised edition. The result of this review was devastating. The problems went far beyond errors in interpretation and translation. Kuroita made it clear that there were all kinds of manuscripts and edo-period printed editions, but that a reliable, critically compiled version of the text was still missing. In the summer of 1929, Kinoshita returned to Japan after 6 years in Germany at Kuroita's insistence.

Revising and printing

Under the wing of Kuroita and with the financial support of the prince and other sponsors, Kinoshita first created a critically examined, binding version of the Kojiki based on the traditional manuscripts and old prints . This was reviewed from 1933 together with the ancient historian Maruyama Jirō (1899-1972) and added in 1936 as the seventh volume in Kuroita's "Compendium of National History " ( Kokushi taikei ). Despite his best efforts, Kinoshita is not mentioned in this print.

In November and December 1940, the first two of the planned five volumes appeared, jointly published by the Japanese-German Cultural Institute in Tokyo and the Berlin Japan Institute with an edition of 500 copies. Kinoshita had once again looked through the text published by Kuroita in 1936 and calls this version the "original text". However, in contrast to the old manuscripts written exclusively with Chinese characters, this is an interpretation prepared with readings, etc. The second volume contains the text in transliterated form. At the time, Berlin had actually wanted the text to be romanized in the internationally popular Hepburnian form. In order to do justice to the old Japanese sounds, however, Kinoshita used a modified form of the Nippon-shiki transcription system at the instigation of the linguist Kindaichi Kyōsuke , professor at Kokugakuin University since 1922 . In November 1941, Prince Takamatsu gave a reception in honor of Kinoshita. His diary ( Takamatsu-no-miya nikki ) recorded among the illustrious crowd of guests as the German participant Herbert Zachert, who had just been appointed to the Japanese-German Cultural Institute Tokyo by the Matsumoto High School. Kanokogi is also there. He has another appointment as Japanese head of the Berlin Japan Institute in his pocket, but cannot start the trip because of the chaos of the war. The third volume, the German translation, was now ready for printing. Kinoshita was making good progress, but since April 1942, American air raids hit Japanese cities more and more. Two years later, the already completed typesetting and Kinoshita's manuscripts went up in flames.

Return to Kashii and publication of the German translation

Kinoshita experienced the end of the war in the service of an Ise Shinto organization ( Jingūhōsaikai ). When this was dissolved in 1946, activities followed in the Tōgō Shrine , then in the memorial hall belonging to the Meiji Shrine ( Meiji Kinenkan ) and finally at the Nissei Tsūshinsha news agency . In 1951, the revocation of Kinoshita's teaching license imposed by the American occupation authorities in October 1945 was lifted. In May 1953, the Daitō-Bunka University in Tokyo hired him as a lecturer in German.

In October 1959, Kinoshita finally became a priest at Kashii Shrine. During the 1960s he also worked as a professor of German at the Kyūshū Sangyō University in Fukuoka. Now living in secure circumstances, he resumed his work on the translation.

In 1976 the first complete German translation of the Kojiki was finally published . In the same year the Japanese Translator Society ( Nihon honyakka kyōkai ) awarded its translator award for the 13th time. It went in equal shares to Kinoshitas Kojiki and the renowned American Japanologist Edward Seidensticker for his The Tale of Genji . Kinoshita's Alma Mater, the Kokugakuin University, awarded him an honorary doctorate a little later.

At the end of 1982, based on Kinoshita's translation, a Hungarian version of Lajos Kazár (1924–1998), a linguist in search of the roots of Japanese and Japanese , appeared in Sidney .

Fonts

• Kinoshita, Iwao: Kozikï - Oldest Japanese Empire History. I. Volume original text. Japanese-German Cultural Institute in Tôkyô and Japan Institute in Berlin, 1940.
• Kinoshita, Iwao: Kozikï - Oldest Japanese Empire History. Volume II of the Rômazi text. Japanese-German Cultural Institute in Tôkyô and Japan Institute in Berlin, 1940.
• Kinoshita, Iwao: Kozikï - the oldest Japanese empire history. III. Volume German translation. Fukuoka: Kashiigū Hōsaikai, 1976.

literature

• Araki, Kōtarō: Nichidoku bunka no kōryū . Tōkyō: Nichidoku Bunka Kyōkai, 1941 ( 荒木 光 太郎 『日 独 文化 の 交流』 東京: 日 獨 文化 協會 ).
• Bieber, Hans Joachim: The beginnings of German-Japanese cultural institutes in Berlin and Tokyo before 1933. In: Takemitsu Morikawa: Japanese intellectuals in the field of tension between Occidentalism and Orientalism. Kassel Univ. Press, 2008, 121-178.
• Friese, Eberhard: The Japan Institute in Berlin (1926–1945). In: Walravens (1989). See also messages from OAG 139-142 (1986-87).

• Hack, Annette: The Japanese-German Cultural Institute in Tokyo at the time of National Socialism. From Wilhelm Gundert to Walter Donat. In: NOAG 157-58, 77-100, 1995.
• Masui, Kunio: Kinoshita Iwao no dokuyaku Kojiki-kō . In: Kokugakuin Daigaku Kiyō, 35, 1997, 237–266 ( 益 井 邦夫 「木 下 祝 夫 の 独 訳『 古 古 事 記 』考」。 『國 學院 大學 紀要』 ).
• Yake Tatsuyuki / Ōba, Takuya / Takeda, Kōki: Kashii-gū gūji Kinoshita Iwao to Kojiki kenkyū - sono kyūzō koten-seki shōkai wo kanete . In: Bunken Tankyū, 39, 2001, 1–36 ( 矢 毛 達 之 、 大 庭 卓 也 、 武 田弘毅 共 著 「香 椎 宮 宮 司 木 下 下 祝 夫 と『 古 事 記 』研究 ー そ の 旧 蔵 古典」 兼 介 介 介 古典 」兼 介 介 介 古典」 兼 紹 介 介 古典 」兼 紹 介 介 古典」 兼 介 介探究 』 ).
• Klaus Antoni : Kojiki. Record of old events . Verlag der Welteligionen im Insel Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-458-70036-4 .
• Günther Haasch (Ed.): The German-Japanese Societies from 1888 to 1996. Colloquium, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89166-192-4 .
• Michel, Wolfgang: Kinoshita Iwao (1894–1980) - a picture of life . OAG-Nachrichten 6, 2020, 50-64 ISSN  1343-408X
• Spang, Christian W. / Wippich, Rolf-Harald (eds.): Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945 - War, Diplomacy, and Public Opinion. London / New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Szpilman, Christopher WA: Kanokogi Kazunobu: Pioneer of Platonic Fascism and Imperial Pan-Asianism. In: Monumenta Nipponica, 68 (2), 2013, 233-280.
• Walravens, Hartmut (ed.): You understand our hearts well - Fritz Rumpf (1888–1949) in the field of tension in German-Japanese cultural relations. Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1989.

Web links

• The Kojiki in German-Japanese cultural exchange (exhibition panels, prefectural library Nara, 2013)

Notes, individual references

1. ↑ Michel (2020)
2. ↑ Michel (2020)
3. ↑ Spang / Wippich (2006)
4. ↑ Michel (2020)
5. ↑ Araki (1941); Friese (1989); Hack (1995); Spang / Wippich (2006); Bieber (2008); Szpilman (2013)
6. ↑ Bieber (2008); Haasch (1996)
7. ↑ Haasch (1996)
8. ↑ Michel (2020)
9. ↑ Kinoshita (1976), foreword
10. ↑ Kinoshita (1940), Vol. I, foreword
11. ↑ Michel (2020)
12. ↑ Kinoshita (1940), Vol. I, foreword by Kuroita
13. ↑ Kinoshita (1940), Vol. I, foreword; Yake / Ōba / Takeda (2001); Araki (1941)
14. ↑ Kinoshita (1940), Vol. I, foreword
15. ↑ Araki (1941)
16. ↑ For an evaluation of this approach, see Antoni (2012), 452–456
17. ↑ Kinoshita (1940)
18. ↑ Kinoshita (1976), foreword
19. ↑ Michel (2020)
20. ↑ Michel (2020)
21. ↑ Yake / Ōba / Takeda (2001)
22. ↑ Michel (2020)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Kinoshita is the family name, Iwao the first name.