2024 USC Kambun Workshop
The Project for Premodern Japan Studies at the University of Southern California announces this summer’s Kambun Workshop, June 17 to July 12.
Image: Nihon kiryaku, National Archives of Japan
The 2024 Kambun Workshop will be held in two parts. The first session will be an introduction to historical Kambun. The second session will be focussed on the translation of a court chronicle, the Nihon kiryaku. We will particularly look at the daily life of the court and its officials.
Participants are welcome to apply to both or either of the sessions. The primary language of the Workshop will be English. Applicants must be fluent in Japanese, however, and they must have completed basic coursework in classical Japanese.
Both sessions will be held through Zoom, Monday through Friday, 3:30-5:30 PDT.
Kambun Introduction Course
Dates: June 17-28
Instructor: Dr. Sachiko Kawai
The goal of this course is to acquire skills to read and analyze Kambun (Sino-Japanese scripts used in premodern Japan). Although a difficult premodern script, Kambun is still important. It is impossible to thoroughly understand Japanese language, culture, and society without mastering it. To make sure that participants feel comfortable reading kambun texts, we will go through basic grammatical rules and expressions with concrete examples, do exercises, and exchange questions in pairs and as a class.
After consolidating our foundational skills, we will analyze printed Kambun texts organized by certain themes—significant events, historical figures, gender roles, religious ideas, and material goods—in order to advance our knowledge about premodern Japanese history, culture, and society. The main textbook for the course will be Karikome Hitoshi’s Nihonshi wo manabu tame no komonjo, kokiroku kundokuhō 日本史を学ぶための古文書・古記録訓読法 (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2015).
This thematic approach will prepare participants to explore kambun texts according to research interests. Students will also be ready to read selections from the Heian chronicle Nihon kiryaku in the following two weeks.
Kambun Reading and Translation: Selections from the Nihon kiryaku
Dates: July 1-12
Instructors: Dr. Emily Warren and Prof. Joan Piggott
For this year’s Kambun Workshop, participants will read Nihon kiryaku, a court chronicle with entries from the earliest age until 1036. For mid-Heian scholars, the text is a valuable reference for major events at court and around the capital, particularly from the mid-ninth century onwards.
The short entries, many of which were abstracted from other court chronicles, are packed with useful vocabulary required to understand the annual calendar and officialdom. For the Workshop, we will focus on the reign of Go-Ichijō with special attention paid to disruptions, the royal police, and the ceremonies that ordered the realm.
Through the workshopping process, participants will learn about the core dictionaries and reference texts for the field as well as effective annotation and collaboration strategies. The workshop will produce English translations and kundoku readings. Participants will also create a communal glossary of translated terms.
Outside of Workshop hours, participants are expected to translate their entries, write annotations and glossary entries, and then revise their presented work. After editing their translations and annotations, the work will be published online through the USC Project for Premodern Japan Studies.
Contact: Dr. Emily Warren (ewarren at usc dot edu)