| dc.description.abstract | The word setsuyōshū refers first and foremost to a kind of dictionary that was in use from late in the Muromachi-period (1336-1573) until the beginning of the twentieth century. Although many setsuyōshū remained as mere dictionaries, in the early modern period (1600-1868) additional content that was not related to the dictionary was added to many of them. Because of this additional content, many refer to setsuyōshū as “household encyclopedias”. Setsuyōshū were popular books, but so far they have been largely neglected by scholars, especially by non-Japanese. As the first of its kind, this study is an attempt to fill that gap.
One of the few who has researched setsuyōshū and written about them in English is Yokoyama Toshio, who interpreted setsuyōshū as books that “civilized Japan”. In this study I challenge such an interpretation, and argue that we need to address simpler and more important questions before we pose abstract questions about the books’ impact on society. How did the setsuyōshū change over time, and what remained unchanged? Who produced the setsuyōshū and under what circumstances? What were the publishers’ motivations for producing setsuyōshū? Where did the information in setsuyōshū come from and what were the relationships between setsuyōshū and other books? Who were the readers of setsuyōshū and how did they read them?
The approach used in this study to address such questions is two-fold: viewing setsuyōshū through the concept of genre on the one hand, and through what I call the bookhistorical communication circuit on the other. Through the concept of genre I am examining the setsuyōshū themselves and how they developed over time, while through the lens of the book-historical communication circuit I am looking at many of the different actors connected to setsuyōshū such as publishers, publishing guilds, and readers. This holistic approach to setsuyōshū reveals many insights and provides some surprising answers to the questions posed above. | en_US |