A Dig and an Investigation and a Study of Stylus-Impressed Writing in Every Place of Western Japan. Development and a Study of a Instrument for Decoding Stylus-Impressed Characters

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1. Report on the discovery and survey of stylus-impressed documents.i. To date, 3070 stylus-impressed documents have been discovered in Japan. During the three years of our project, one third of these documents were found in all parts of Japan. A large number of these documents were located in the Western region of Japan.ii. It has become apparent that a large number of documents have remained undiacovered in each of the western prefectures.iii. These documents were also located in the Miyazaki and Okinawa prefectures ; regions were they had never been found before. This discovery strongly suggests that kakuhitsu was used in all 47 prefectures of japan.2. Unofficial publication of the survey results.During the 3-year project, 489 texts were found in Heisei 9, 386 texts in Heisei 10 and 187 texts were found up until December of Heisei 11. Yearly indexes were unofficially published in order to catalogue the title of each document and to record the place of its discovery. These catalogues … More were distributed to universities and to those organizations having in their possession stsylus-impressed writings.3. Symposia on the stylus-impressed writing project.Nine symposia have been held since Heisei 4. Six of these were in preparation to the project and three of these were held during the course of the project in the summer of 1996, 1997 and 1998. During these symposia, members and people co-operating in this project introduced and discussed their research and reporting methodology. We also presented reports on our particular area of the projact, thus bringing together many and different aspects to this project and creating a common information base.4. The development of a deciphering instrument to read stylus-impressed writing.A member of this project, Yasukazu Yoshizawa, invented a deciphering instrument in order to read the faded out writing of stylus-impressed documents. Tha newest version of this instrument, which was improved during the last three years of the project, was very often used during the course of the project. This machine presently in use at Hiroshima University.5. A new frontier of research.Ancient dialects correspoding to specific regions have become evident through the discovery of these new stylus-impressed documents. We believe that the history of Japan's dialects can now be concretely traced.6. The next step to this project.We are planning to :i. Organize a more intense search of stylus-impressed documents on a national scale and conduct an general study of stylus-impressed writings.ii. Perform a detailed study of those texts that are in good condition.iii. Highlight the importance of these discoveries as an indication of the various forms of education in Japan's history and evidence of the varied culotures in Japan.iv. Research the stylus-impressed writings that have been discovered in the Dunhuang text in mainland China and in medieval Western manuscripts. Less