Chuzan denshin roku

A copy of a Japanese woodblock-printed edition of the Chûzan denshin roku, on display at the National Museum of Japanese History.

Author: Xu Baoguang
Date: 1721
Chinese/Japanese: 中山伝信録 (Zhōngshān chuán xìn lù / Chuuzan denshin roku)

Zhōngshān chuán xìn lù (J: chûzan denshin roku) is an account of Ryukyuan history, politics, topography, language, and customs written by Chinese investiture envoy Xu Baoguang, based on his journey to Ryûkyû in 1719. The volume was republished numerous times in Japan, and became one of the most widely read, and widely regarded, sources on the Ryûkyû Kingdom; numerous Chinese and Japanese works draw extensively on Xu's book.

Along with the history, topography, governmental structures, customs, and language of Ryûkyû, the text also describes the Chinese envoys' journey to the island kingdom, and a variety of formal receptions and banquets enjoyed by the envoys, along with official rituals and ceremonies, including the investiture ceremony itself. The volume's diagrams of the maritime distances between Fuzhou and Naha, and between Naha and various other locations in the Ryûkyû Islands, may be the earliest extant such record.^[1]

Xu's volume was published in Edo and Kyoto beginning in 1765, including a version published in Kyoto in 1766 by Hattori Somon which included kundoku marks aiding the Japanese reader to read the classical Chinese.^[2] The text was later re-published in a variety of different forms, some more loyal to the original than others. Morishima Chûryô's Ryûkyû-dan, published in 1790, draws extensively on the Chûzan denshin roku, as do the Ryûkyû nendaiki and Ryûkyû kitan, both published in 1832.

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References

Yokoyama Manabu, presentation at "Interpreting Parades and Processions of Edo Japan" symposium, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 11 Feb 2013.

↑ Katrien Hendrick, The Origins of Banana-Fibre Cloth in the Ryukyus, Japan, Leuven University Press (2007), 54.
↑ William Fleming, “The World Beyond the Walls: Morishima Chūryō (1756-1810) and the Development of Late Edo Fiction,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University (2011), 89.

[1] Katrien Hendrick, The Origins of Banana-Fibre Cloth in the Ryukyus, Japan, Leuven University Press (2007), 54.

[2] William Fleming, “The World Beyond the Walls: Morishima Chūryō (1756-1810) and the Development of Late Edo Fiction,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University (2011), 89.

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