Even a sardine's head becomes holy: the role of household encyclopedias in sustaining civilisation in pre-industrial Japan

Abstract

The experience of a stable but not stagnant Japan from the late 17th century to the late 19th century may provide us with valuable knowledge for considering a future global civilisation. Whether sustainable coexistence between diverse elements in a close community works well or not largely depends on the quality of the intermediaries mediating between those elements. This paper focuses on the pivotal intermediary of that time, two genres of popular household encyclopedias, setsuyoshii and ozassho: the former providing instruction in ""elegant"" forms of written communication, and the latter in ''unoffending'' behaviour towards the numerous gods in heaven and earth. Close examination of the wear and tear in extant copies of these books reveals what the users' common concerns were. At the same time, anecdotes revealing former generations' attitudes towards those books help us understand the enormous flexibility of interpretation that the texts allowed, preventing any growth of dogruatism. Supported by the lasting popularity of courtly behaviour towards others - including non-humans - such guides contributed to the civility of the population. However, people eventually developed a sense of humour with which they could laugh at themselves for behaving timidly in accordance with the instructions those books offered. The concluding part of this paper discusses the quality of the intermediary roles of such guides in terms of the traditional East Asian notion of civilisation, and presents an image of a past polytheistic society in which humans and their environment, including heaveuly bodies and insects, shared one world.