Glosses, Glossaries, Dictionaries in Ancient Japan: The Construction of the Wamyōruijushō

The Wamyōruijushō (Collection of Japanese Names in Categories, ca. 933), the dictionary that I deal with in this paper, is a turning point in the history of Japanese lexicography and scholarship in general, since it is the oldest extant dictionary that is not just a translation or re-elaboration of Chinese dictionaries, but shows a more deliberate and more developed stage of lexicographic activity based on textual criticism. Despite representing Minamoto no Shitagō’s (911–983) juvenile attempt to systematize the world into a dictionary, the construction of the Wamyōruijushō reveals certain mechanisms in the development of Japanese lexicography, particularly its transition from a predominantly glossographic activity to a more critical practice, and the changing methods of quoting source materials. In this paper I focus on the relation between the Wamyōruijushō (Collection of Japanese Names in Categories, ca. 933) and one of its sources, the Nihongi shiki (Personal Notes on the Chronicle of Japan). In Shitagō’s dictionary, Nihongi shiki most frequently refers to a glossary compiled by Yatabe no Kinmochi (?–?) around the early 10th century, but in a larger sense, Nihongi shiki is a corpus of glossaries compiled between 812 and 904 and strictly linked to the Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan, 720). The Nihon shoki is one of the earliest extant texts of Japanese literature and one of the founding texts of Japanese civilization. As glossaries, the Nihongi shiki are the earliest such examples produced in Japan and related to a Japanese work. The Wamyōruijushō, in its turn, is the first dictionary to quote not only Chinese texts, but also Japanese works, among which the Nihongi shiki is afforded a prominent level of authority. In particular, I briefly introduce the context of scholar-officials in which the Nihongi shiki and the Wamyōruijushō were produced. Then, I introduce the texts and their interactions, focusing on structure and tradition of the Wamyōruijushō and the Nihongi shiki. Finally, considering the reasons why Shitagō used the Nihongi shiki in the construction of his dictionary, I show how there is a certain discrepancy of authoritativeness between the simple glosses, that certainly compiler used, and the glossaries produced in the context of official education. Moreover, I will argue how, in the development of the Japanese lexicographic tradition, there is no straight evolutionary process from interlinear glosses, to glossaries collecting these glosses, to dictionaries.