Time in Medieval Japan

Project Information

TIMEJ

Grant agreement ID: 741166

DOI

10.3030/741166

Project closed

EC signature date 24 April 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 31 August 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 497 500,00

EU contribution

€ 2 497 500,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - TIMEJ (Time in Medieval Japan)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2023-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Our project explored time in medieval Japan in order to better understand how time consciousness evolved in human history. There is a strong received view that juxtapposes a ‘rational’, quantitative approach time associated with modernity and Western civilization to ‘intuitive’ or ‘emotional’ views of earlier times and non-Western cultures. Our project corrects that view, which is important to overcome the fruitless opposition between the reduction of time to number and a romanticizing of earlier societies. By investigating into medieval Japan as a dynamic and internally differentiated society, focussing its plural ways of measuring, recording, articulating, regulating and understanding time, we were able to show that, for example, medieval historiographers or monastic administrators reckoned with an abstract and quantitative notion of time.
In a closely coordinated set of case studies, we examined representative spheres connected to various cultural domains and socio-cultural agendas: the Zen monastery, the political power centers of the court and military adminstration (Shogunate), and the market. An intersectional case study explored the understanding of the female body, especially its menstrual cycle. This subject connected the aforementioned domains and brought together aspects of the physical, ritual and symbolic regulation of human body time. Each case study explored the symbolic forms prevalent in the respective settings, and the aspects of time that were deemed relevant and selected for symbolic articulation. We analysed temporal encoding (chronography), structure and application in the regulation of affairs (chronopolitics), the competence to account and regulate these processes, and the influence on feelings of dismay in the face of the socio-cultural realities of time. Results from these investigations were then compared to explicit/elaborate notions of time (chrononoetics). We paid special attention to the conflicts that arose when established regimes of temporal regulation and expression clashed with each other and with individual experience—a prominent theme in medieval literature, especially in female poetic diaries. The results were compared to the history of time in the Western world, and integrated into a theory of the symbolic forms of time.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The TIMEJ group was set up with eight members in fall 2017, allocated to four research areas: religion/monasteries, administrative centers, markets, body time. We spent the first 6 months to discuss the selection of sources, and the following year focussing on chronography—the ways time was expressed in our sources. We found that received analytical models of chronography almost exclusively focus on chronometry (measured time), and built a more comprehensive model that enabled us to account for typological, aesthetic, and ethical determinations of time as well. We organized and held an international conference “Time in Medieval Japan” at Yamaguchi University in August 2018, where the group presented its first results on chronography (7 papers). This conference also put us in touch with Japanese peers and served as a fist stepping stone to implement an edited volume on “Time in Medieval Japan,” which includes chapters on our research areas and additional chapters on further aspects of medieval Japanese society and culture such as historiography (the long-term view of time), daily life, or war. Most chapters for that volume were written collaboratively by scholars from Europe and Japan.
Our group further presented its results at major conferences in our field: the Deutschsprachige Japanologentag in Berlin in September 2018 and 2022, the International Society for the Study of Time's conference "Time in Variance" in Los Angeles in June 2019, European Association of Japanese Studies conferences in 2021 and 2023, as well as in a number of smaller workshops.
The results of our research have been published in 14 contributions to peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes so far. Furthermore, monographs on the daily records of administrators at the imperial court and the military government, on time in medieval Zen monasteries and doctrinal discourse, and on body time and menstruation as seen an regulated in medieval Japan are under review with major academic publishers. Two further monagraphs are in preparation.
In addition, we created a Wiki on Time in Medieval Japan (Chronopedia) and the Zotero Database of Literature (~4200 entries to date). Our Literature database with 5000 entries does not only contain bibliographical information, but also excerpts and partial translations of passages in primary sources and the research literature pertinent to our subject and will be shared with the public and academic community via an open access platform.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have for the first time achieved a survey of attitudes to time and expressions of time in various sectors of medieval Japanese society. Our systematic, bottom-up investigation into the expressions of time (chronographies), time regimes, economies and policies of time (chronopolicies), and theories/concepts of time (chrononoetics) has revealed the plurality of temporal notions and paradigms not only between different domains, but often within strongly related texts and single authors. This is a clear break with the received view that premodern, non-Western societies had a largely intuitive approach to time. Contrary to received views, we have demonstrated the existence of quantitative, linear notions of time and their importance to technical documents or chronopolicies, but also as elements in documentation eg. of religious qualification. We could show how, depending on the context, quantitative determination of time is often used to identify certain attributes important to the task at hand—which may be religious, political, martial, economical, or aesthetic. In the practical dimension, we noticed that punctuality and speed were important in various contexts, but that time regimes did not regulate activities beyond the scale of a modern half hour. In monasteries especially, this helped members of the congregation to concentrate on the current activity—evidently a way of coordinating actions towards shared goals that is more beneficial to individual well-being than ‘running against the clock’
While we had expected to find a clear gender divide in the perception and expression of time due to the generally patriarchal organisation of medieval society, we found that female agents used the same modes of expression and showed the same attitudes as men when they were in charge of, for example, economic or administrative affairs.

TIMEJ_Representation of main research areas (C) Alexandra Ciorciaro