明代における法帖の刊行と蘇州文氏一族

Abstract

After the Mid-Ming period and by the time of the Jia-jing 嘉靖 and Wang-li 萬暦 era, the Jiangnan 江南 region, particularly Suzhou 蘇州 had become representative of all of China both economically and culturally. In the Jiangnan region, the Wen clan 文氏 of Suzhou, led by the celebrated painter Wen Zheng-ming 文徴明, became famed as a literati family of intellectuals, having produced many offspring who might be termed literati. This study focuses on the Wen clan in regard to the socio-cultural issues of the "formation of the family, " and the "culture of publishing, " and the following two points have been considered. The first point that has been considered is the publication of fatie 法帖, calligraphic albums in which samples of model calligraphy were collected, which have not been addressed in the context of the history of publishing during the Ming, but these calligraphic albums can surely be interpreted as an important aspect of the culture of publishing as can be seen by the fact that literati families printed them, assigned monetary value to them, and circulated them among various people. The form of publication changed from a bureaucratic one centered on the Princely Establishments 王府 to one determined by private individuals. The period of this transformation was the Jia-jing era during which many albums were published, almost all of which involved Wen Zheng-ming and his sons Wen Peng 文彭 and Wen Jia 文嘉. What might be called a "calligraphic album publishing network" was formed under the leadership of the Wen clan not only in Suzhou, but also various parts of Jiangnan such as Wuxi 無錫, Shanghai 上海, and Jiaxing 嘉興. Among their publications was the Tiyunguantie 停雲館帖, which was to have great influence on later efforts. Thereafter, there was explosive growth of such publications during the Wang-li era in the region centered on Jiangnan. The second point that l have addressed is the fact in a society where passing the bureaucratic examinations had become an imperative, activities associated with the formation of a clan, such as compiling a genealogy 族譜, establishing an ancestral shrine 祠堂, or securing common property were common, but the Wen clan of Suzhou clearly displayed none of these activities. However, the Wen clan, as noted in the first point above, had great influence on the culture of publication in the era through their serial publishing of calligraphic albums, and they participated in numerous important cultural activities. In short, by virtue of such activities, they accumulated what may be called "cultural capital, " and as a result the equation of the Wen clan being literati was implanted not only in the consciousness of the Wen themselves but in the minds of those outside the clan as well. Their position as a literati family was thus established and maintained. As regards the society of Jiangnan after the mid-Ming period, previous studies have focused almost exclusively on passing the examinations in terms of the formation of the clan, but these sorts of cultural activities, such as the publishing of calligraphic albums, can be understood as functioning sufficiently in a similar role.