Kajōkō Shōku: Rōshi Dōtokukyō” no kenkyū: Keichō kokatsujiban o kiso to shita honbun keitō no kōsatsu [Research on the Heshanggong Commentary of “Laozi Daodejing”: Study of the Textual Foundations of the Old Printed Editions from the Keichō Era] 河上公章句『老子道徳經』の研究―慶長古活字版を基礎と した本文系統の考索 by Yamashiro Yoshiharu 山城喜憲 (review)

Book Reviews 137 Kajōkō Shōku “Rōshi Dōtokukyō” no kenkyū: Keichō kokatsujiban o kiso to shita honbun keitō no kōsatsu [Research on the Heshanggong Commentary of “Laozi Daodejing”: Study of the Textual Foundations of the Old Printed Editions from the Keichō Era] 河上公章句『老子道徳經』の研究―慶長古活字版を基礎と した本文系統の考索 YAMASHIRO YOSHIHARU 山城喜憲. Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin 汲古書院, 2006. 956 pages. ISBN 9784762927607. ¥25,000. Professor YAMASHIRO Yoshiharu’s magisterial survey of the textual tradition of the Heshanggong commentary adds a fresh perspective to the broad body of Sino-Japanese scholarship published over the past two decades. It is well known that despite its role in the development of religious Daoism, the Heshanggong commentary has not been widely studied in the West, and Alan K.L. Chan’s Two Visions of the Way remains the sole initiative; only one outdated translation of this work by Eduard Erkes has been published so far in English.25 Profiting from his previous research, published in the Shidōbunko ronshū 斯道文庫論集 between 1992 and 2006, Yamashiro’s study examines the Japanese printed editions of the Heshanggong commentary through meticulous textual analysis. This rich volume is divided into four distinct parts, each preceded by its own introduction and conspectus, closing with two text editions: one critical collation of the thirty-one examined works, and a final reproduction of the Keichō Era (1596–1615) printed edition or Keichō kokatsujibon 慶長古活 字版, which the author believes represents a superior text, “surpassing the Song edition of the Sibucongkan 四部叢刊 printing” (p. 6). The first part is mainly dedicated to examining the previous studies on the textual tradition, those of Takeuchi Yoshio 武内義雄, Naitō Motoharu 內藤幹治, Shima Kunio 島邦 男, Fujiwara Takao 藤原高男, Wang Ka 王卡, and specially Zheng Chenghai 鄭成海, whose recently republished critical edition is mainly based on the Sibucongkan text, a nineteenth century copy of a Song text that, from internal evidence, can be traced back to the reign of Emperor Xiaozong 孝宗 of Song.26 After a brief study of the importance and difficulty of the Heshanggong, this part ends with a short description of the thirty-one editions used by the author, most of them Japanese. What follows is intended to demonstrate that all previous assumptions on the textual priority of the Song editions are misguided, and that the Japanese printed editions offer a more faithful testimony to the original text. I will evaluate this assumption shortly. Part two, 25 There is, however, a Dutch translation by B.J. Mansvelt Beck, Laozi. Daodejing (Utrecht: Servire, 2002). 26 See Alan K.L. Chan, Two Visions of the Way (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), p. 231, note 3, for the identification. 138 Journal of Chinese Religions which is the main body of this study, begins by examining the tradition and reception of the Heshanggong in China and Japan, during the Tang 唐, Six Dynasties 六朝, and Song 宋 periods, concentrating in the different phases of acceptance and the creation of the editions under study. Professor Yamashiro focuses on the discrepancies and variations between the Japanese testimonia, listing every paradigmatic form attested in these texts and attempting to explain the causes: misprints, external contamination, etc. The second chapter of this part concentrates on particular differences between the Keichō text (regarded as the constitutio textus), the Yōmei bunkozō 陽明文庫藏 from the end of Muromachi era 室町時代 (c. 1570), and two Chinese editions, the Sibucongkan and the Shidetang 世德堂 from 1532. The author mainly focuses on auxiliary sinograms, such as 也 ye, 之也 zhiye, and 者也 zheye, a peculiarity of the Japanese printed editions absent in Song and Tang received texts (the Tang editions found in Dunhuang usually omit all the auxiliary sinograms at the end of a sentence). The same procedure is repeated with the remaining editions, offering a meticulous and methodologically sophisticated analysis of each remarkable variant. Part three constitutes a detailed exposition and comparision of eight Japanese editions and some commentaries, with their respective affiliations. After the notes and bibliography follows a critical text collating the studied editions, and eight comparative tables showing the statistical differences between them, taking as reference both the Keichō and the Sibucongkan. From this analysis Yamashiro draws the conclusion that three main textual families existed: the Tang, the Japanese testimonia—these two closely related and representing a purer textual branch—and the remaining and corrupted Song editions. Finally...