East Asian Historiography Research Paper

‘East Asia’ as a historic–cultural concept, comprises present-day China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, where history developed around China, which overwhelmed the peripheral countries with its physical size, and political and cultural ascendancy. This historic East Asia has been termed ‘the Chinese world order’ or a system of international relations with China at the center. The system reached Korea and Vietnam in the early Han period (202 BC–9 AD), and Japan in the first century AD.

This Sino-centric system also formed the common cultural heritage of East Asia: the classical Chinese language, and Chinese writing system; the Confucian social and familial order; Buddhism through Chinese translations; the legal and administrative systems, and the art of historiography. The peripheral states of the East Asian world might also be called Sino-graphic cultures, in the sense that they used classical Chinese as a common language, which is, in a sense, comparable with the use of Latin in mediaeval and early modern Europe.

2. Role And Purpose Of Historiography

For the most part, the task of historiographical compilation in East Asia was traditionally a staterun project. The ‘official history’ produced by that compilation, along with materials collected for the purpose, constituted the core of East Asian historiography. It could be said that historiography was the primary cultural undertaking in East Asia. This is in contrast to the cultures of Europe, India, and Islam, where the concentration of cultural power has not been fixed in history.

For 2,000 years, Chinese historiography centered on the ‘official history’ compiled by each successive dynasty as a state enterprise. Later generations positioned the Shiji (The Records of the Grand Historian) by Si-ma Qian (145 – ca. 86 BC) as the first official history and since then, 24 official histories have been compiled. A characteristic of these official histories is that they have an encyclopedic tinge; that is, the body of the work originated by Si-ma Qian brought an entire culture, its politics, economics, society, culture, technology, etc., into one unified structure. History was written as a means of comprehensively describing such a world system.

Historiography in East Asia is perhaps equivalent to such ‘primary cultural undertakings’ as Biblical commentary and the Corpus Iuris Iustanianus in the West, the Laws of Manu in India, and the Koran in the Muslim world.

The purpose of writing history in East Asia was based on the Chinese philosophical premise that historical facts were the only certain and immutable reality. Chinese metaphysics was not premised on a revealed religion based on the existence of a unique, almighty God, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Rather, it took the world as an ever-changing phenomenon, as presented in the Yijing (The Book of Changes). Therefore, it sought immutable reality in history, because human beings could not alter that which had already happened. This belief took history as its axis in Chinese civilization.

This culture of history later spread throughout East Asia in tandem with Confucianism, creating a common historical culture throughout East Asia. The proclamation of this philosophy may be found in Confucius’ statement that, ‘All the empty words I want to write down are neither so clear nor so startling as seeing their meaning in action’ (Shihji).

The Chinese had developed their own way of creating an immutable past. In China and Korea, it was standard practice that, once the state’s historical compilation bureau had completed compiling the official history of the previous dynasty, the bureau destroyed all the sources it had collected. This was to prevent the revision or rewriting of the official history, for once it was published by the government, the history itself took on the character of a sacred text. The most certain way to endow the official history with the imprimatur of authority was to destroy the sources on which it had been based. During the Korean Choson dynasty (1392–1910), for example, the source materials were burned after use. When that was done, the account embodied in the official histories became the facts of history.

In this fashion, East Asian cultures preserved the ideal that history was the sole immutable basis for human judgment. The biographies that comprise over half the material in the official histories maintained this tradition of objective narration in their own way. In the biographies, as in other sections of the official history, they first set forth what they believed to be ‘fact,’ and following that, the historians added their own evaluation. This vast corpus of biographies forces us to consider why the historians believed the biography to be a necessary part of a history. It is because in a culture that lacks a unitary supreme being, the records of the lives of eminent individuals are the only true sacred texts.

3. Historical Objectivity

The tradition was maintained of seeking objectivity in historical narration in the lives of the historians who wrote it even more than the narration itself. We can find an episode that presents the historian as a lofty figure in the life of a fifteenth-century Korean historian.

It is recorded that in 1431, as the compilation of the T ’aejong sillok (the Veritable Records of King T ’aejong) was nearing completion, his successor King Sejong (1418–1450) asked the compilers to show him their work in advance. ‘In the previous dynasty, every monarch personally reviewed the veritable records of his predecessor; but King T’aejong did not review the Veritable Records of King T’aejo.’ Sejong’s senior ministers replied that, ‘If Your Majesty were to review [the work in progress], later monarchs would surely revise [the historians’ work]. Then, [future] historians would suspect that the monarch might look at the draft, and they would inevitably fail to record the facts completely. Then, how would we transmit [facts] faithfully for the future?’

In traditional East Asia, the role of the past was to serve as a normative history. This forms an interesting contrast to Western historical practices, where it evolved as a cognitive discipline. That is, in the West, the historian found his raison d’etre in rewriting the past. The discipline of history developed as a competition among the interpretations and approaches of different historians.

‘History’ in modern East Asia is generally parsed with the two-character compound Chinese word lishi (Japanese, rekishi; Korean, yoksa), but until the middle of the nineteenth century it was expressed in the single-character term shi (Japanese, shi; Korean, sa). This word shi itself originally denoted the historian himself, and only later, by analogy, did it come to refer to the product of the historian’s craft, the written work of history itself. This is particularly important when we note that in the languages of Europe, it was precisely the reverse: The word ‘historian’ was formed to refer to the maker of the written ‘history.’

It is a notable characteristic of historical consciousness in East Asia that it tends to focus far more on the attitude of the historian, than on actual works of history themselves.

4. Development Of East Asian Historiography

4.1 China

In China, Sima Qian substantially established the tradition of Chinese historiography by inventing his own format for compilation. He succeeded his father as the grand historian of the Han emperor, and with his access to court archives, he completed the Shiji (The Record of the Grand Historian) in 130 volumes. It covers a history of three thousands years from the (legendary) Huang-di dynasty to his own period, and covers China and Central and South Asia. The format consists of five sections: ‘Benji,’ or imperial annals (12 volumes); ‘Biao,’ a chronology of the successive dynasties (10 volumes); ‘Shu,’ treatises on economy, technology, astronomy, etc., (eight volumes); ‘Shi-jia,’ annals of feudal states and nobles (30 volumes); and ‘Liezhuan,’ biographies of famous persons and foreign peoples (70 volumes). Sima’s format is encyclopedic in nature, systematizing the world in a single, unified structure; his historiographical format dominated East Asian historiography until the mid-nineteenth century.

Ban Gu (32–92 BC) followed Sima Qian’s work, but limited himself to the history of a single dynasty, which he completed as the Hanshu (History of the [former] Han dynasty). His practice, that each Chinese dynasty compiled the history of its predecessor, became standard for all of the following official histories. It was in the Tang dynasty (618–906) that historical culture truly flourished, as history became an independent subject in the Chinese classification of learning. Historians were closely linked with governmental bureaucracy and their team method of compilation started in this period and continued until the twentieth century.

A new format for compiling historiography was proposed by Sima Guang (1019–1086) in his 294 volume Zizhi tongjian (The Comprehensi e Mirror for Aid in Go ernment) in 1084. It was an extensive historiography that employed the method of chronological order to help readers find certain historical events through dynasties. It covers sixteen dynasties of 1,362 years and includes information from dynastic histories, chronicles, biographies, novels, etc. It is necessary to refer here also to the Hanxueh (the Han School), the development of which established historical study based on textual criticism of historical documents in the Qing dynasty. Qian Daxin (1728– 1804) was one of the great figures among them, whose Nianershi kaoyi (Verification of the text of the 22 histories) was an examination of characters and language, dates and places, genealogies and institutions in the text of the 22 official histories.

4.2 Japan

The idea of official history spread from China to the other East Asian countries that compiled their own official histories, modeled on the Chinese format and written in classical Chinese, not in their native languages.

The first Japanese state historiography was the Nihon shoki (The Chronicle of Japan, 720) compiled by Prince Toneri, and modeled after the Chinese format. It covers the period from the Age of Gods to the end of the reign of Empress Jito (686–697), arranged in chronological order, in annalistic form. Toneri used history as a forum to establish Japanese national identity and consciousness. This is in marked contrast to the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) by Ono Yasumaro, which was also a historiography based on a transcription of oral tradition.

This tradition continued until the late nineteenth century. The Honcho tsugan (Comprehensi e Mirror of Japan, 1644–1670), compiled by Hayashi Razan and his son Hayashi Gaho, was also in the same line of official history sponsored by the Tokugawa shogunate, and the Dai Nihonshi (the History of Great Japan, compiled 1657–1906) was compiled under the support of the Mito clan.

Apart from the historiographical tradition, it is important to add such auxiliary sciences as Bibliography:, classics, textual criticism, and philology, which had developed in Japan to the same levels as in the West by the nineteenth century. These originated, in Japanese tradition, from the Chronicle of Japan (720), of handing down variant texts or conflicting readings and traditions intact to posterity. In this important respect, China differed markedly from Japan. In China, history was transmitted as an authentic, authoritative text, which admitted no variant. This difference is richly illustrated by the work of Hanawa Hokiichi (1746–1821). His Gunsho ruiju (Classified collection of Japanese classics and documents), begun in 1779 and still in progress, first appeared in 1819, with 1,270 titles in 530 volumes; another 2,103 titles in 1,150 volumes appeared in 1822. The objective was not to establish the authoritative text and obliterate the others, but to make available all the variant texts, which later generations might judge. This collection compares favorably with such European endeavours as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, etc.

The Meiji government, established in 1868, which was responsible for the restoration of the emperor as the focus of sovereignty, and led the subsequent modernization of Japan, also continued the tradition of ‘official histories,’ founding the Office for the Compilation of National History. The aim here was to create an official history of Japan, but for various reasons the objective was amended to that of compiling historical documents, and the original idea of compiling a national history was abandoned. The work of the Office continues today in its successor, the Historiographical Institute, now part of Tokyo University. Moreover, virtually every prefecture, district, and locality in Japan, even down to the level of individual villages, continues the tradition of official history at the local level today, compiling local historical sources, and publishing local histories. Similarly, many individual government bureaus, as well as corporations, universities, and other corporate entities, regularly commission their own histories, extending the model of ‘official history’ to the private realm.

4.3 Korea

It was around the fourth century that Korea founded its historiographical tradition, though the epochmaking historiography did not appear until the twelfth century. Kim Pu-sik (1075–1151) compiled the Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms) in 1145, the oldest extant history of Korea, covering from antiquity to the decline of unified Silla in 935. It follows the format of Sima Quan’s official history as is shown by the name sagi (the Korean pronunciation of Shiji), and he intended to provide moral lessons for posterity. Iryon (1206–1289), a high-rank Korean Buddhist monk, compiled the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the three Kingdoms) in 1281, which is the only extant history of Korea before the Choson dynasty (1392–1910), together with the Samguk sagi. This work is unique in the sense that he wrote it privately, including myths, tales, and social issues, and even refers to the sources he used.

So Ko-jong (1420–1488), compiled the Tongguk t’onggam (Comprehensi e Mirror of Korea) as a Korean official history in 1485, modeled on Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian. It covers the period from ancient times to the end of the Koryo dynasty in 1392. This work was compiled under the influence of neoConfucianism, and reflects the moralistic purpose of praising good and condemning evil. An Chong-bok (1712-1791) likewise published his Tongsa kangmok (Outline of Korean History), 20 volumes, in 1778, a chronological treatment of Korean history from Tan’gun, the legendary founder of Korea to the decline of Koryo in 1392.

4.4 Vietnam

In Vietnam, just as in Japan and Korea, some official histories were published including Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu (Complete Book of the Records of Vietnam) in 1479, which is based on the style of the Zizhi tongjian of Sima Guang.

5. Historiology In East Asia

The study of historical theory in East Asia began with Liu Zhiji’s Shitong (Comprehensi e Historiography), written in China in the eighth century (708). It was the first thorough treatise in Chinese—or any other language, for that matter—on historical criticism, which also constituted a history of Chinese historians and a theory of historiography, and deals with such questions as selection and criticism of historical materials, historical objectivity, judgment in history, historical causality, etc. The work was a constant reference for Chinese historians until the nineteenth century, and gave rise to the meta-historical tradition in Chinese historiography.

Liu’s theory of history was further developed by Zheng Qiao (1104–?1162) in his Tongzhi (Comprehensi e Monographs, 200 volumes). In the introduction to the Tongzhi, he proposed his core idea of ‘synthesis’ and ‘inter-relatedness and causality,’ through which he argued the importance of the continuity of historical development. Based on this theory he completed the voluminous Tongzhi, including the ‘Twenty Summaries,’ his noteworthy encyclopedic chapters.

Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) wrote his Wenshi tongyi (General Survey of Literature and History), a work on the theory and history of historiography (only published in 1920, long after his death). The first chapter starts with ‘The Six Classics are all history,’ in which he expressed his philosophy of history, that the very idea of the Sacred (tao) can only be known through men’s actions (shi), which are recorded in the Six Classics.

It is thought provoking to realize how few works of historical criticism were written outside China, in comparison with the voluminous amounts of historical works. It signifies that traditional East Asian historiography was normative in nature, in the sense that it required little discussion of the nature of history. It is also necessary to refer to the fact that there were relatively few works of metaphysical interpretation of the course of history—save perhaps Wang Fuzhi’s (1619–1692) discussion of historical logic and historical tendency in work published only after his death. East Asians valued detailed precision in history, rather than the philosophical interpretations that were developed in Europe. Some exceptions, informed by Buddhism, were found in medieval Japan. Jien (1155–1225), a prominent Japanese Buddhist cleric, wrote his self-deprecatingly titled Gukansho (Notes of the Views of a Fool, 1220), in which he proposed his philosophy of history with the term dori, an idea of historical inevitability, through which he explained historical processes in terms of the state of development and proposed his own periodization. Similarly, a century later Kitabatake Chikafusa proposed in his Jinno Shotoki (Chronicle of the True Descent of the Divine So ereigns, 1339) that Japan is a land founded by the gods and maintained by the blessings of an unbroken lineage of divinely descended emperors.

6. The Rise Of Modern Historiography In East Asia

Western concepts of ‘civilization and enlightenment’ were introduced systematically to East Asia beginning in the mid-nineteenth century had a transformative effect on notions of history and historiography as well. The movement toward ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ history in East Asia began with a variety of intellectual experiments among Japanese scholars in the 1870s and 1880s. As Korean and Chinese intellectuals ventured to Japan toward the end of the nineteenth century, ‘modern’ Western notions and methods of historical inquiry and explanation gradually filtered across the entire East Asian region.

It is worth special mention that Western cultures and technologies including historiography were introduced through translations of European and American works into Japanese. Japanese intellectuals created their own neologisms to translate Western terms by combining two or three Chinese characters together. Those newly invented terms in Chinese characters were later exported to China and Korea, and in consequence, East Asian scholars now share most academic terms in the liberal arts and sciences.

The very fact that such translations were feasible, and successfully received, demonstrates the stage that Japanese historiography had achieved. By introducing Western historiography through translation, rather than keeping it as the preserve of a few language specialists, Western history and historiography were transformed into common intellectual property for all East Asian historians, and, in particular, made accessible to those who worked on their national histories.

As far as historiography is concerned, there already existed a traditional Japanese historiography, and the auxiliary sciences made possible the introduction and importation of Western historiography. Native pioneers in the introduction of Western historiography, historians like Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827–1910) and Kume Kunitake (1839–1931), were initially trained in Koshogaku tradition (Chinese, kaozhengxue: textual criticism, which originated from the so-called ‘Han School’ in the Qing period), and were thus well prepared to accept the empirical methods of Leopord von Ranke. They were particularly receptive to his notions of a rigorously critical approach to sources and the avoidance of value judgments, when his student Ludwig Riess, who was invited to Tokyo Imperial University as a professor of history in 1887, introduced Ranke’s ideas to Japan.

The acquisition and acceptance of European historical theory was started by Japanese translations of leading contemporary European works on historical method and theory, such as those by J. G. Droysen, E. Bernheim and C. V. Langlois and C. Seignobos. Under the strong influence of Bernheim, Tsuboi Kumezo published his Shigaku kenkyuho (Methods of Historical Research, 1903) in Japan, and Liang Qichao (1873– 1929) published the Zhongguo lishi yanjiufa (Methods of Chinese Historical Research, 1922) in China.

‘To study history’ in traditional East Asia had meant ‘to become conversant with the official Chinese histories,’ and the introduction of Western ideas of historiography opened new horizons for students of history, who began to inquire, ‘what are the historical facts,’ in the sense of going beyond the historical narrative to examine the underlying facts themselves. It was an indication of the opening of modern historical scholarship in East Asia, in which the introduction of Western learning played an important role.

A typical example of this consciousness is found in Shigeno Yasutsugu, nicknamed ‘Doctor Obliteration.’ Applying the European historical method to Japanese history, he re-examined the Taiheiki (Chronicle of the Great Peace, 1370–1371), and proved that the fourteenth-century military commander Kojima Takanori never existed.

In China, Gu Jiegang (1893–1980) was one of the most eminent figures, whose Gushibian (Critiques of Ancient History, seven volumes, 1926–1941) contributed greatly to the modernization of Chinese historiography by taking a finely honed critical scalpel to the world of ancient Chinese legend, which had long been accepted as fact. His school was named ‘ancient doubters.’ His method was rooted in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) school of ancient doubters; however, it was at the same time backed with the new European historical method.

Yi Pyong-do (1896–1989) was the first Korean historian to have received training in the modern historical method. He stressed critical and objective methods of treating historical sources in his Han’guksa taegwan (Grand Survey of Korean History, 1963).

With the introduction of Western culture to Japan, history became re-institutionalized from the midnineteenth century onwards, from the governmental section to the newly established Imperial University. However, it should not be forgotten that the introduction of Western historiography reduced East Asian historiography from its former position as a state enterprise to merely a single academic field within the university. Individual historians started to have their own ‘specialty’ in order to survive in this new ‘university’ setting, and in order to distinguish themselves from eminent amateur historians, their researches were published as monographs in the newly established historical journals.

On the one hand, in the West, the ‘professionalization’ of historical research resulting in the establishment of history as an independent university academic field was a great achievement for this institutionally neglected discipline. In East Asia, on the other hand, the introduction of modern Western historical research heralded the end of the prestigious traditional East Asian historiography, which had aimed at a comprehensive description of the entire world. Since then, the subsequent evolution of East Asian historiography has developed largely along the lines of ‘modern’ historiography, in the same basic methodological and theoretical terms as the rest of the ‘advanced’ world.

7. Development Of Modern Historiography

Since modern historiography was introduced to East Asia, its development varied according to the situation in each country.

In China, along with Gu Jiegang’s ancient doubters, newly discovered archaeological results urged a new perspective of ancient history on Chinese historians. In particular, the discovery of oracle-bone inscriptions laid the foundations for the new Chinese ancient history led by such historians as Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940) and Wang Guowei (1877–1927). These new works were later synthesized with Marxist materialism by Guo Moruo (1892–1978). His Zongguo gudai shehui yanjiu (Study of Ancient Chinese Society, 1930) is the first Marxist work on ancient Chinese society. Thereafter, especially with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Marxism became dominant among Chinese historians. Traditional historiographical achievements were mostly replaced by reverse interpretations, a trend which was highlighted in the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). After the 1990s, the worldwide information revolution and the introduction of the latest historical methods of social history are changing Chinese historiography, opening it to the rest of the world.

In Japan, soon after the introduction of modern European historiography, the emperor-centered state promulgated a new political orthodoxy, and began to restrict intellectual freedom, especially in the study of ancient Japanese history. Since the 1930s, social and economic history began to apply the Marxist framework to Japanese history, mostly to the study of Japanese capitalism. After World War II, Marxism emerged as the dominant historiographical school, and it was only in the 1970s that Japanese historians began to accept the idea of social history as their latest historical method from France, Germany, and England. Since the late 1980s, many Marxist historians quietly shifted from socioeconomic history to social history.

8. Metamorphoses Of Public History

Currently, in East Asia, the aura of official history still floats on the surface of peoples’ collective historiographical consciousness. The past is still seen as the trust worthiest ‘mirror on mankind.’ What is being sought from official historiography is not ‘a’ history, but ‘the’ history, the reliability of which, people undoubtedly believe, is guaranteed by public editorship.

In China, 24 official dynastic histories have been published and the tradition of public history continues to the present day. The Qingshigao (Draft of the History of the Qing Dynasty) was completed in 1927, and was finally published in Beijing in 1977. This applies to local history too; the publication of prefectural histories sponsored by local governments began in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and continues even in contemporary China.

In Japan, this idea is seen in school history textbooks and local histories. The Japanese Ministry of Education vets all school textbooks, the idea of which seems a reincarnation of official history as far as history textbooks are concerned. Japanese schools teach students ‘what’ rather than ‘why.’ They cram students’ heads with a fixed course of history – Japanese history, world history, whatever – without much attempt to have students recognize that there are differing viewpoints. Forty-two Japanese prefectures out of 47 have compiled their own prefectural histories – some of which have been compiled two or three times over the last 120 years – and there is hardly a city, town, or village anywhere in Japan that has not done likewise. These local histories are premised on the traditional historiographical notion that there is a historical truth that is embodied in authoritative narratives.

Korea also continued to chronicle an official history and this tradition is alive in present-day South Korea. The 25-volume History of the Republic of Korea, whose publication was completed in 1979 by the National History Compilation Committee (established in 1948), is a state-produced history of the homeland.

Since the late nineteenth century, the practice of history has undergone professionalization and specialization on a worldwide scale, and East Asia too has been drawn into this whirlpool. Since then the style of historiographical practice in East Asia has, in most respects, been the same as that in Western countries. The work of the historian, as an individual, is to write many research papers and books. However, many historians, as far as historians working on their national history are concerned, are also at the same time involved in publicly sponsored historiography; countless university-based Japanese historians, for example, serve on the editorial boards of local and prefectural history projects. We can thus observe the continuing ‘coexistence’ rather than ‘conflict’ of the two differing traditions of historical study.

To put it another way, East Asian historians simultaneously inhabit two worlds of historiography, one a world of Rankean (or traditional East Asian) factual objectivity and another world of post-Rankean interpretations ‘varied and opposing voices.’

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