Sinitic and Varieties of Religious Translation in Early Modern Japan

This chapter examines early modern Japanese translations of religious texts written in Chinese and belonging to the Buddhist and Confucian traditions. The definition of a “religious” text is defined broadly. Indeed, the Japanese translation for “religion”—shūkyō 宗教—is a nineteenth-century neologism that arose in response to European thought. The Western term “religion” is only an approximate fit for Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintō, the three main “religious traditions” of Japan. This chapter focuses on Buddhist and Confucian texts, not only due to their religious family resemblance, but also because of their common Chinese source language. Canonical Confucian texts were written in classical Chinese (literary Sinitic). Although many Buddhist texts originated in India, they usually reached Japan in Chinese translation, the language of scholarship in Japan. This chapter focuses on the Tokugawa (1603–1868), often viewed as “early modern” for comparative purposes, since this period saw the growth of commercial centers, the expansion of capitalism, increasing literacy, and the development of a commercial publishing industry. All of this resulted in new translations of religious texts designed for emerging classes of scholars and new readers.