A socio-political study of the dissemination of the polite knowledge printed in household encyclopedias in nineteenth century Japan

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The focus of this study has been the bulky editions of setsuyoshu and ozassho, the household encyclopedias of nineteenth century Japan. A comprehensive analysis of these texts has made clear that the polite knowledge printed in them covered a broad range of 'civility', including even that towards non-humans. Some hundred copies kept in public and private archives were bibliographically clarified, and an examination conducted into the mode of wear and tear of each copy. A discussion of the diversity of the usage of the books followed their initial examination. While prior research has enabled Yokoyama Toshio to complete a computer-graphic analysis of the wear and tear on the bottom surface of about 60 surviving copies of setsuyoshu, the current study has given him a chance to review that digitizing method. In addition, this study has enabled the researcher to grasp the active intermediary roles that setsuyoshu and ozassho played in disseminating polite knowledge nationwide, being, on the one hand, supported by the users' growing interest in an ideal of courtly elegance, and on the other, modified by their desire to avoid any competitive snobbery. A pantheistic belief in the Five-Elements school of astrology and geomancy stands out among the traces of court culture depicted in setsuyoshu and ozassho. The enormous flexibility as well as strength of this belief is evidenced in the wear and tear of the relevant pages of the copies examined. Such a discovery urges scholars to evaluate this forgotten genre of literature as one of the significant civilizing elements of nineteenth century Japanese society.