Mokkan and the Written Cultures of 7th-Century Japan

Mokkan are strips of wood inscribed with ink recovered from archaeological sites, the vast majority of which date to Japan’s early historic period (seventh and eighth centuries). Beginning when mokkan were first recovered from the Heijō Palace site in Nara in 1961, the inscriptions on these wood strips have significantly enriched our understanding of many aspects of Japan’s early history, from the day-to-day functioning of the ritsuryō bureaucracy to the relationships between the center and outlying provinces, to contemporary approaches to transcribing the Japanese language using Sinographs. Because of the large numbers of mokkan recovered from the Heijō Palace site, where they were often deposited together as part of fill soil or in refuse pits, there has been a tendency to view mokkan as an independent body of written material that might serve as an important corrective to the extant documentary record. While this approach may work for large-scale deposits recovered from eighth-century sites like the Heijō palace, this understanding of mokkan is not appropriate for seventh-century deposits, which are generally much smaller. In this presentation, I argue that seventh-century mokkan should be treated first as archaeological artifacts before they are given any status as part of the history of written culture in Japan. In particular, this presentation will highlight the distinctiveness of the written culture of the Ōmi region in the late seventh century as compared to seventh-century palace sites in Naniwa and Asuka in order to demonstrate that despite efforts at centralization in this period, written practice continued to be a highly localized phenomenon.

The lecture will be given by Prof. Marjorie Burge, Assistant Professor of Japanese, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Kyushu University in Japan on January 21 at 2 PM Japan Standard Time (at 10:00 PM on Thursday, January 20 Mountain Time).  

 

 

Dial-In Information

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/3ymp93xx

Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 10:00pm

Virtual Event
Event Type

Lecture/Presentation, Virtual

Interests

Arts & Culture, Education, International & Global Affairs

Audience

Students, Faculty, Alumni, General Public, Staff

College, School & Unit

Arts & Sciences

Tags

Japanese, alc

Group
Asian Languages and Civilizations
Add to Calendar
GoogleiCalOutlook

Recent Activity