Angelika 
Koch
Leiden University. University Lecturer Premodern Japanese History and Culture
Blood, Tears and Samurai Love: A Tragic Tale from Eighteenth-Century Japan and its Digital Future
This talk aims to introduce a joint Leiden-Yale digital research project centred on a unique early eighteenth-century Japanese manuscript acquired by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Books Library in 2017 (working title: Shudō tsuya monogatari). Set in 1714 in northwestern Japan, the anonymous work describes a samurai same-sex love affair and its tragic consequences. As such, it provides a rare example of an early modern 'true-record-book' (jitsuroku-bon) – a book of rumours surrounding actual events and scandals, illicitly circulating in handwritten manuscript form – on the subject of male same-sex love.
In world history, Edo-period Japan (1600-1868) has been particularly noted for its flourishing culture of male same-sex love. However, because existing research has overwhelmingly focused on the fiction, art, theatre and printed guides on the subject that emanated from early modern Japan’s large urban centres, local practices have remained elusive. Manuscript itself has often been a neglected medium in early modern Japan’s so-called ‘age of print’, partly due to the expertise in premodern cursive scripts required to decipher such handwritten texts, despite the fact that the scribal world had complementary functions and provided a haven for works deemed unsuited for print, as Peter Kornicki has previously argued. In this sense, the project manuscript provides a particularly valuable resource for exploring alternative visions of same-sex love beyond the culturally dominant centre and its print culture, taking the reader inside real-life events that unfolded in a close-knit community of mid-ranking warriors in a far-flung, northern locale.
The project seeks to unlock the manuscript for students, scholars, educators and the general public by providing a fully annotated and translated digital edition of the original, alongside short introductory essays on the text and pedagogical resources to enable this primary source to be used in the classroom.
血と涙と武士の愛: 18世紀日本の悲劇的な物語とそのデジタルの未来へ
このライデンイエール共同デジタル研究プロジェクトの中心は、2017年にイエール大学バイネッキー図書館が貯蔵しているユニークな18世紀初期の日本の写本（仮題：衆道通夜物）である。1714年の日本北西部を舞台とした作者不明の作品は、武士の同性愛と悲しい結末を描いている。これらは、男性の同性愛を題材とした近世の「実録本」（実際の出来事やスキャンダルにまつわるうわさを手書きの原稿で不正に広まった本）のまれな例である。
研究プロジェクトのウェブサイトでは、注釈を付けて翻刻・翻訳された原本のデジタル版を提供することで、学生、学者、教育者や一般の人に写本を公開することを目的とする。同時に、この原稿を教育現場で使用できるように、テキストに関する短い紹介エッセイと教育リソースを提供する。