Imagawa Ryoshun’s Nantaiheiki: Edited with Translation and Commentary. Part 3

Abstract

Written in 1402, Nantaiheiki (Criticisms of the “Tale of the Great Peace”) belongs to the 14thcentury politician and warlord Imagawa Ryoshun. Manuscript belongs to the genre of family instructions of the military class (kakun or kaho), although it has some uncharacteristic features of this genre. Until now, it has not become an object of study in domestic oriental studies and has no Russian translation. The Nantaiheiki consists of three semantic parts. The first one contains information about the history of the Imagawa and Ashikaga families. In the second part the author criticizes the shortcomings of the Taiheiki (Tale of Great Peace) that at the time was considered as an official chronicle of the Ashikaga dynasty. In the third part he describes the circumstances of his dismissal from the post of the viceroy of Kyushu island and subsequent disgrace because of his participation in the rebellion of 1399–1400 (Oei no ran). The present article is the completion of the work on the first and second parts of the manuscript published in the previous issue of the Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. It analyzes the content and purposes of the writing of the final part of Nantaiheiki, as well as the consistency of the author’s statements with the conclusions of contemporary Japanese historians. On the basis of the analysis it is concluded that the main purpose of Imagawa is to prove his innocence and to spare his descendants the consequences of his disgrace. In general, the manuscript does not contain a systematic account of events and cannot be considered a reliable source. It’s just a subjective analysis of some episodes from the author’s life with a predetermined purpose, but it is of some interest in terms of argumentation and moral evaluations of the deeds committed by the author and his counterparts. It also contains some curious details illustrating human relations in the system of military power in the fourteenth century. Thanks to the Japanese historians who have studied and translated the manuscript into the modern language, some important aspects of the socio-political life of the fourteenth century’s Japan have been clarified. 

Keywords:

Nantaiheiki, Imagawa Ryoshun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Ouchi Yoshihiro, Oei Disturbance