Historical sources, historiography and method
This domain tests whether you can classify a source, date it, and judge its reliability - the skills that separate a Rekiken candidate from a memoriser of dates.
Classifying sources
- Komonjo (documents): originals versus utsushi (copies) versus henshū-mono (compiled, edited collections). A copy transmits errors; check the transmission note (okugaki).
- Nikki and records: court diaries such as mid-Heian and medieval examples are primary, but private and interested.
- Narrative histories (Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, rekishi monogatari, gunki) are edited accounts, not raw documents; the Shoku Nihongi is closer to a compiled official record.
- Material and archaeological evidence: excavated wooden tablets (mokkan) have corrected written accounts, for example on provincial administration.
Method
- External criticism: provenance, date, authenticity. Internal criticism: author, purpose, audience, bias.
- Dating uses nengō plus year, month and day, with gannen as the first year and intercalary (urū) months; conversions must respect that a Japanese year overlaps two Gregorian years.
- Scientific aids: dendrochronology, radiocarbon, and stratigraphy for sites; kuzushiji (cursive) reading for premodern texts.
- Historiography: Edo-period kokugaku and Confucian historiography, then the modern university seminar with the Shiryō Hensan-jo (1889) and positivist source editing.
Worked example
Question: a letter survives only in a later printed collection. How do you assess it? Reasoning: treat it as a copy. Establish the collection's editor and date, ask whether the original is extant, check internal consistency (titles, nengō, month order), then corroborate the content against an independent source. Only then accept it as evidence.
Traps
Treating a chronicle as a verbatim document; converting a nengō year directly by subtracting a constant; ignoring that a document's author may be an interested party.