Seventieth Anniversary Message

This issue, 63:2, completes the first volume published under the semiannual schedule to which Monumenta Nipponica reverted in 2008. Since the journal began publication in 1938, the issue also marks the seventieth anniversary of MN’s founding (the lag in volume number is the result of several years’ hiatus during and immediately after the Pacific War). Appropriately for such an anniversary, the articles all serve in some way to commemorate the journal’s origins and ongoing commitments.

Over the years MN has published many analyses and translations of sources related to Shinto and Kokugaku. The first of these was Heinrich Dumoulin’s annotated translation into German of Kamo no Mabuchi’s Kokuikô, which appeared in MN 2:1 (1939), pp. 165–92. It is fitting, seventy years on, to be able to offer the first fully annotated English translation of the same text in Peter Flueckiger’s “Reflections on the Meaning of Our Country.” Continuing MN’s long tradition of making translations of important Japanese texts available in Western languages (today solely in English), Peter Flueckiger’s presentation of Kokuikô and Anna Beerens’s rendering of the section on the Ôoku, the women’s quarters of Edo castle, from Kyûji shimonroku, a series of mid-Meiji transcriptions of interviews with former bakufu officials, constitute the 367th and 368th such translations to be carried by the journal. (For a full list of the translations of Japanese and related texts that have appeared in MN since 1938, see the online Index of Translations on the MN website.) As for the other two articles, William O. Gardner’s study of the literary critic Ôkuma Nobuyuki gives particular attention to a work Ôkuma wrote in 1937, thereby coincidentally shedding light on the intellectual and social environment in which the Sophia University staff made the decision to embark on publication of an international journal devoted to research on Japanese culture. Lynne Miyake’s article on manga versions of The Tale of Genji adds to the large body of analyses of classical literary texts that have been a staple feature of MN over the decades; it also is a new departure—the journal’s first piece in the burgeoning field of manga studies.

Lynne Miyake’s and Anna Beerens’s articles are timely in another sense as well. This year is not solely MN’s seventieth anniversary; it also has been designated the one thousandth anniversary of the writing of The Tale of Genji. Although neither author nor editor initially conceived of Miyake’s article in connection with this event, we are happy to be able to contribute through it to the current general celebration of the tale. Anna Beerens’s translation of the section from Kyûji shimonroku on the Ôoku has proved equally fortuituous. As followers of the NHK Sunday evening historical drama will know, this year’s wildly popular production has centered on Atsuhime, or Tenshôin, the consort of the thirteenth Tokugawa shogun. The historical Tenshôin figures prominently in the account of the Ôoku by women who served in it during her time, and viewers will readily recognize how important a source of information on life in Edo castle Kyûji shimonroku has been for dramatists and producers as well as researchers.

As MN begins its eighth decade, we look forward to carrying on both the traditions and the timely innovations that the articles in this issue so richly represent.