In 18th-century Japan a few hundred individuals, mostly living in the main towns, such as Kyoto, Osaka and Edo, are considered literati (bunjin). In studying this group as an intellectual and social phenomenon one studies an important part of the history of 18th-century Japanese culture and city life. Also, their literati activities and attitudes are an interesting example of acculturation. For whatever our literati may be, they certainly are a collection of consciously sinophile people, writing Chinese, painting in a variety of Chinese styles, drinking their tea the Chinese way, and otherwise assimilating and disseminating Chinese influences, at the same time changing this heritage in all sorts of subtle ways.
In the present historiography of Japanese literati, fragmented across several different disciplines, there seems to be some sort of consensus on the definition of these individuals, indeed, they are spoken of as a "movement" or "group". The problem is, however, that this definition is based on their self-image, which is not adequately distinguished from reality. One should not set out from a definition of what a literatus is, least of all his own definition, but establish by prosopographical means who actually belonged to these intellectual circles, and thus show the reality behind the self-image and the (Japanese and western) stereotypes. Actually, it seems quite possible that we have to do with a rather diffuse intellectual circuit. The fact that they have been seen as a single, distinctive group could very well mean that their impact on society has been underestimated.
My research will also help to distinguish clearly between the literati's self-image of Weltflucht and the social-economic realities. They played at being Chinese gentlemen and attempted to banish from their carefully constructed self-image the vulgar realities of money, income and power. Those who study them have been taken in by the sincerity of their play-acting. The literati themselves of course regarded their play-acting with a suspension of disbelief. They wrote their own mythology, in their self-referent poetry and prose wherein eccentricity was praised. This mythology happened to fit in with the western mythology of the artist who stands outside society, and thus was accepted almost without restrictions into modern scholarship on eighteenth-century Japan's literati. But these same literati were inexorably confronted with the problems of having to accommodate to their surroundings.
The literati's self-image is contained in their works and has already been studied in several different ways. This material, however, is at present scattered widely across disciplines, and has to be brought together and checked against the sources. Accordingly, this is an interdisciplinary exercise, but it is also an intercultural one, as we have to do with Chinese texts by Japanese authors, and their Chinese examples. The necessary foil, the reality of the literati's lives, remains mostly unknown, and here something of a pioneer effort is needed. This effort again involves prosopography, or collective life history. From archival sources and ego-documents I will extract information on the actual life style of the literati, and confront this with the research on their self-image. Thus, we can show them as part of their socio-economic environment and do away with the stereotyped image which now monopolises most scholarship into this important element of 18th-century Japanese society.

Sources
There is sufficient source material available to enable one to use prosopographical techniques, even if some questions that are stock-in-trade in the prosopography of European societies may be difficult to answer. With a set of well-framed questions there will be no problems in finding adequate sources for compiling a collective biography of the literati. Of course, their self-image can be, and has been, documented from the large number of texts and objects which form the literati's heritage. Obviously, the source material can be listed in many different ways. Here I have chosen to distinguish between three categories:
1. Textual material written in Chinese and Japanese by the individuals in our sample. This includes poetry and prose composition, from fiction down to ego-documents such as diaries, memoirs, letters, and some archival sources. 2. Non-textual material produced by the individuals in our sample; this includes artefacts of many kinds. Of course, there is an overlap with the first category: written texts can themselves be artefacts, if original autographs; artefacts can double as written sources (calligraphy is a case in point). To this category we might add artefacts produced by others not included in our sample, which have been collected by the individuals in our sample (a minor source, as usually we can only speak of them as collectionneurs in a general sense, without knowledge of the minutiae of their actual collections). 3. Texts by (near) contemporaries not included in our sample, which provide information on individuals within our sample. This category also includes archival sources.
The written material has to be culled from published and unpublished Japanese sources. The non-textual material is partly scattered across a large number of publications, Japanese and non-Japanese, and is partly unpublished. A selection of the most important published written sources is included below, in the first part of the bibliography.

Methods
The main methods to be used are prosopography and content analysis. Prosopography because to be able to say something about a collective, one has to research the collective, and not merely individual members. Only then pronouncements can have a more general validity (De Jong, quoted in Boomsma 1997). Content analysis because the mental universe (perceptions, world view, values and so on) is not very amenable to prosopographical analysis and has to be reconstructed by other means (Carney 1973). Please note that "method" is used here in a fairly loose sense: one might say that there is no single prosopographical method, but that prosopography is a varying combination of methods borrowed from several disciplines (strictly speaking, the main methodological ingredient of prosopography is multivariate analysis).
Modern prosopography originated in the field of Altertumswissenschaft and it is still the ancient world on which most titles bearing the word "prosopography" are being published (cf. Fossey 1991). But many of these titles belong rather in the field of biographical dictionaries, fasti and so on, while the analytical element is dealt with in separate publications. And also in other respects, the work of Altertumswissenschaftler may not be representative examples of the prosopography as it developed in twentieth-century historical scholarship (see the searing criticism by Carney 1973). In this project, I rather intend to follow the tradition of Charles Beard and of Lewis Namier, as it was represented at Leiden by D.J. Roorda, who first introduced me to the prosopographical method almost twenty-five years ago. Since then, prosopography has seen a remarkable flowering. Rich recently characterized the prosopographical approach as "highly productive" (Boyd (ed) 1999), and this is easily illustrated from a wide range of important publications by the likes of Lawrence Stone, Peter Burke, Neithard Bulst, Jean-Philippe Genet, H‚l ne Millet, and in the Netherlands Joop de Jong and other members of the Werkgroep Elites (for recent bibliographic overviews, see Goudriaan et al. (edd) 1995, De Jong 1996 and Boomsma 1997).
In the recent work, prosopography is considered to be "collective biography spiced with analysis" (in the succinct definition by P.J. Rich in Boyd (ed) 1999 s.v.). One also finds descriptive names like "collective life histories", or "multiple career (line) analysis", "(quantitative) Personenforschung" or "biographie s‚rielle". Lawrence Stone, in what is still the most important article on the prosopographical method (Stone 1971), describes prosopography as "the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives ... The various types of information about the individuals ... are ... juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for significant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behavior or action". This can be read as a plea for a quite unrestrictive view of prosopography, which is certainly the best way forward and in accordance with recent developments (see Bulst 1986).
Debate concerning the prosopographical method has centred on the way in which the social-cultural qualitative aspects (ideology, life style and so on) are to be integrated in an analysis that tends to focus on quantifiable data (genealogy and economic data), and on the necessity to look at the actors in the context of their society (Stone 1971; Roorda 1972; De Jong 1996; Boomsma 1997). But it is exactly such debate that has stimulated successful attempts to have prosopographical analysis embrace these qualitative aspects, even if these themselves do not result from the prosopographical analysis, but are provided by "ordinary" content analysis. In this way, my research seeks to confront the everyday reality of the literati with their self-image within a prosopographical framework. The ideology of the literatus has to be an integral part of the analysis.
Elites, in the sense of power holders, have been the main object of prosopographical research, but it has never been denied that the possibilities of the prosopographical method are much wider (see Roorda 1972; de Jong 1996). Indeed, the medievalists show the way here by researching groups at different social levels (Bulst & Genet 1986). I have found much to inspire me, in part even models to imitate, in the theses of Willem Frijhoff (Frijhoff 1981) and Samme Zijlstra (Zijlstra 1996) dealing with university students, in the partly prosopographical studies of the artists and artisans of Delft in the seventeenth century by John Michael Montias (Montias 1982, 1989), and above all in the excellent prosopographical study of the Encyclopédistes by Frank Kafker (Kafker 1996).
In my research the following stages can be distinguished:
1. The creation of a basic category of people. The following criteria will be applied: included in the basic line-up are those Japanese who consider themselves or are considered by their (near) contemporaries to be heirs to the Chinese literati tradition, and whose year of birth lies between 1675 and 1775.
2. The design of a database. For the appropriate relational databases, see Schijvenaars 1995; Millet 1985; and much information on the Internet.
3. The collecting of information on the individuals selected at the first stage as input for the database. Adaptation of the database design if any problems arise.
4. A first analysis of the information collected. This draws the boundaries of the group to be worked on. It has to be established whether all individuals included in the original selection belong in a network or in one of a number of interrelated networks. Einzelg„nger will be removed. Those individuals who appear as members of these networks, but were not in the original set will be added to the database. The database is finalized. Selective information from the database is worked up into a biographical repertory to be included in the final publication.
5. A full-scale prosopographical analysis of the definitive selection of individuals established at the fourth stage. Here we move from biography to collective biography, and correlate the information in the database in order to discover certain patterns (prominence versus peripheral position; monocentricity versus polycentricity; homogeneity versus plurality, and so on). The result will be a sociogram showing who interacts most/least with whom, and what is the nature of this interaction. Here I will also borrow from network analysis (see Duijvendak & Felling 1993), which I think can be included within the scope of prosopography as described above. It remains to be seen what level of statistical sophistication is allowed for by the specific nature of the material.
6. A content analysis of existing studies and of sources to establish the literati's self-image. This will focus on their perceived relationship to Chinese culture in general and Chinese literati in particular, and on their perceived relationship to their own society.
7. Testing my hypotheses. Exploration of the implications of the patterns established by the analysis in the fifth stage, and of the confrontation between these patterns of the every-day life of the literati and the self-image analyzed in the sixth stage. Then it will be possible to establish whether this group of individuals is a group in the sense of a "social group", as their own mythology and modern scholarship have it, and if so whether it is a primary group, that is an aggregate with a (rudimentary) structure, face-to-face contact and a psychological basis in the consciousness of its members, or, as I have surmised in the general description with heads this proposal, a so-called "quasi-group", a much looser aggregate with less presence in the consciousness (for the terminology, see Bottomore 1972, Kuper & Kuper 1996).

Goals
The main goal of my research is to contribute to the academic debate on Japanese 18th-century literati, by producing articles, reviews, papers/presentations, and a monograph. This debate is in need of some renewal. Especially the hold on the subject by art historians should be broken. In fact, outside of Japan serious work on the literati by non-art historians is quite rare. The art historians have done much valuable work (see above all studies by Addiss, Cahill, Fister, French, Graham, Hickman, Takeuchi, Yonezawa, Yoshizawa, of which some examples are listed in the bibliography), but they have tended to look at the literati as producers of tangible works of art, thus largely closing their eyes to all other activities undertaken by these versatile individuals, even excluding some who might very well have been important middlemen without being productive themselves. In Japan, more work has been done outside art history on individual literati and even on their networking. Again, this is very valuable work (see for instance Hino, Kano, Mori, Munemasa, Murakami, Takahashi, Ushiyama; some examples are listed below), but its authors are not, or not sufficiently, arriving at the analytical stage. As explained above, using the prosopographical method implies that one goes well beyond the collecting stage, while the Japanese research tends to a tell-all-you-know-about approach without any clear framework for drawing inferences.
The ultimate goal, depending on the outcome of the debate, is to redress existing imbalances in our image of 18th-century Japanese intellectual life, as outlined in the general description above. An improved assessment of the literatiďs contribution means a better-balanced picture of a seminal phase in the creation of a new, urban Japan when intellectuals started to address a growing audience. It also throws another light on the creative reception of Chinese culture in Japanese society, one of the most important examples of the acculturation process in East Asia, and in general. Not only as far as acculturation is concerned, also in other respects my research can contribute to laying sound foundations on which comparative research can be based. Especially the comparison between Japanese literati and the literati of Renaissance Italy seems quite promising (I found Bec 1967, Thornton 1997 and Liebenwein 1977 inspirational reading while formulating my ideas on Japanese literati).
My research deals with the transference of Chinese cultural phenomena to Japan and thus finds its place squarely within the CNWS research cluster dedicated to central tradition and regional diversity in East Asia. It also ties in with the flourishing of research into Japanese intellectual life in the Vakgroep Japanse Taal- en Letterkunde at Leiden; I can point to the work of my promotor Prof W.J. Boot and to Mrs G. Winkel, who is studying the roots of ethnographical/ anthropological studies in Japan.

 

---

Tea studies
At present I am working on sencha, "the other tradition of tea" in Japan, i.e. the preparing of tea by steeping tea leaves in hot water. This should result in the annotated translation of a number of seminal 18th-century sencha texts. I have almost finished translating and annotating Ueda Akinari's Seifusagen. Baisaô's little pamphlet Baizanshu chafuryaku (A brief account of plum-mountain tea) and Ôeda Ryûhô's Seiwanchawa (The story of blue golf tea) will also be part of this project. My ultimate goal is to gain another insight into the world of eighteenth-century bunjin, Japanese literati.

The method of drinking steeped loose tea-leaves developed in China during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). This was mainly due to a new way of processing tea-leaves in such a way that the leaves remained green. After picking the leaves were steamed in a boiler. The steaming process leaves the tea-cells more or less intact and no fermentation takes place. The best way to bring out flavour and aroma is to steep the tea-leaves in a pot. By the time of the Manchu dynasty (1644-1911) steeped tea had replaced all earlier methods of tea consumption.

Not so in Japan. There the method of drinking steeped tea was probably introduced only towards the middle of the seventeenth century by refugees from China. The political upheaval connected to the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 caused many monks and other Chinese intellectuals to flee to Japan. One of them was the Zen master Yinyuan Longqi (Japanese: Ingen Ryûki, 1592-1673), who arrived in Japan in 1654 and is traditionally credited with having brought sencha to that country.

A very influential person in spreading the custom of drinking steeped tea in Japan is a figure best known as Baisaô, 'the old man who sells tea'. Baisaô (1675-1763) spent a large part of his life as an ôbaku Zen-monk in his native town in the province of Hizen in Kyûshû. When he was about 50 years old, however, he left the temple an began a wandering life. Around 1730 we find him selling sencha in a little booth in Kyoto.

The Chinese intellectuals, who had fled to Japan, must understandably have idealized their life as literati under the Ming dynasty. They created an image of elegance and sophistication that greatly appealed to many Japanese intellectuals. A new interest in things Chinese developed, the drinking of sencha being one of them. Baisaô's little tea-booth was enormously popular with the scholars and artists of the Capital.

Sencha came to be associated with artists and intellectuals. Many of the greatest names in Japanese art and scholarship of the eighteenth century are in some way connected to Baisaô. To name but a few: Ike Taiga, Yosa Buson, Maruyama Ôkyo, Itô Jakuchû, Ueda Akinari and Kimura Kenkado.

In the course of the eighteenth century several works on sencha were published. The best known of these is no doubt Ueda Akinari's Seifusagen (A little word on the pure breeze), published in 1794.

---