The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan by Federico Marcon

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan by Federico Marcon Yulia Frumer The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. By Federico Marcon. University of Chicago Press, 2015. 392 pages. Hardover $45.00. When I began studying classical Japanese and kanbun, teachers cautioned that words seemingly similar to those used in modern Japanese did not necessarily have the same meaning. The word shizen was particularly singled out, with the comment that it was absolutely wrong to translate the word as “nature” in the context of Tokugawa-period texts, since the association of shizen with nature was a Meiji-period attempt to translate the wide range of metaphysical, scientific, and cultural meanings embedded in the Western term “nature.” Though I never doubted this basic advice concerning terminology, reading late-Tokugawa texts dealing with the natural sciences led me to suspect that the notions of nature implicit in those texts were, in fact, not so unlike the meanings we usually attribute to post-1868 Japanese. I was therefore thrilled to see Federico Marcon’s The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, a volume that examines this very topic—how attitudes toward nature, along with the variety of possible words associated with it, changed over the course of the Tokugawa period. The book focuses on the history of honzōgaku—the study of plants, animals, and birds—from the late sixteenth century until the early years of the Meiji period. This thematic focus allows Marcon to explore two interrelated questions. First and foremost is the question of how nature was perceived, discussed, depicted, and utilized. The second is how the discipline of honzōgaku itself changed throughout the years, and how these changes facilitated the emergence—and later the transformation—of a class of professionals known as honzōgakusha. Marcon’s answers to these questions are quite enlightening. With regard to the first question, we can say that the concept “nature” gradually lost its sacred and metaphysical connotations and became, instead, objectified and commodified. However, this is only a very superficial description of the process, and the beauty of The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge is in the greater detail it provides. Marcon wishes to bridge the space between the physical reality of flora and fauna and the inherent historicity of knowledge and to show how “we change the world by knowing it” (p. 15). He thus focuses on shifts in legitimizing strategies over the course of [End Page 143] the Tokugawa period, describing how people gradually came to identify nature less with names (meibutsu) and more with resources (sanbutsu). In other words, over time attitudes changed such that people perceived natural goods at first as serving a medicinal purpose, then later as products to be consumed, then as items having value in the context of social interactions, then as intellectual commodities and objects of an exploring gaze, and finally as an economic resource. Economics plays a significant role in Marcon’s discussion of his second question—how honzōgaku changed over time as a discipline and as a marker of social class for its practitioners. Research into the variety of existing species of plants and animals was often motivated by economic reforms, which sought to enhance local production of crops and goods. Governments in need of expertise hired specialists as advisers, encouraging the emergence of the profession of honzōgakusha. As nature became not only a physical but also an intellectual commodity, honzōgakusha, who often came from low- to mid-level samurai ranks, benefited significantly from the patronage of high-ranking samurai and wealthy merchants. Thus, gradually, the profession came to be no longer defined by the end goal of a particular government enterprise (such as increasing harvests of crops or medicinal herbs), but rather by the ability to carry out investigation for the sake of investigation. One of Marcon’s most intriguing arguments is that many of the developments in the ways nature was perceived in Tokugawa Japan mirrored similar developments in Europe, without having been directly affected by them. Marcon’s argument is nothing like the old...