Series Books on Research for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity 物語與日本哲學 (Monogatari and Japanese Philosophy - Folkloric turn in Philosophy)

What is monogatari? In Chinese, it is usually translated as gùshi or xùshì. In Japanese, to tell (katari) is pronounced the same as to deceive. In this sense, katari is not essentially a statement of fact, but it can be something fictional. In other words, a monogatari is not the same as a story or an event. In Monogatari no Tetsugaku, Noe Keiichi points out that monogatari has two meanings. It can be "that which is narrated, a story," or it can be "the act or practice of narrating.” The first edition of the book had a subtitle "Yanagita Kunio and the Development of History," but this subtitle has been deleted in the paperback edition. Noe’s research theme is philosophy, not folklore or cultural anthropology. He has no intention to develop a theory of Yanagita. However, there seems to be an important relationship between Noe's philosophy of monogatari and Yanagita 's notion of monogatari. In the first chapter of Monogatari no Tetsugaku, Noe mentions Yanagita 's Tono Monogatari, which is strictly speaking not Yanagita 's own work, but rather a recollection of oral history in Tono, Iwate Prefecture. For example, Yanagita cites the story of a local man called Sasaki. A young man encountered a “mountain woman” when he was hunting in the mountains and shot her to death. He cut off a strand of the girl's hair to leave as evidence, but while taking a nap on his way down the mountain, a tall "mountain man" recaptured it. Although he has proof of the existence of neither the "mountain man" nor the "mountain woman," the story is passed down in the form of a tale. Also, at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Noe was in Tokyo, but his house in Sendai was severely damaged. In the aftermath of the disaster, Noe tried to re-read Yanagita. The 1896 Sanriku Tsunami caused extensive damage to the Tohoku coast. Yanagita visited the tsunami affected in 1920. In Karakuwa Town and other areas, the scars of the tsunami were still visible, but he was heartbroken to see that nobody cared about the monuments written in Chinese. Literature was supposed to have immense power, but forgotten literature is powerless. While Yanagita fears that oral literature would lose its power due to the boom in modern printing, nowadays we can witness a tremendous pressure on the printing industry and a danger that oral literature will disappear. This is because we are gathering information via the internet and social network, rather than listening to or telling monogatari. Inspired by Noe's Monogatari no Tetsugaku, I decided to write a book titled Monogatari and Japanese Philosophy. In Japan, monogatari is generally thought to be related only to "literature" (e.g., Taketori Monogatari, The Tale of Genji, The Tale of the Heike") or "folklore" (e.g., Tono Monogatari). I would like to show how monogatari turns from literature and folklore to philosophy.
 

(Written by Cheung Ching Yuen, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2023)