Knowledge of nature and craftEurope—this function of print, at least in its early stages, however, has been critiqued by Adrian Johns,
The Nature of the Book: Printing and Knowledge in the Making. The same argument regarding early modern
change is made to more surprising effect in the history of science in Europe. See, for example, Marcon,
Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge, 24–26.
23 The influence of European texts on Japanese culture is largely a phenomena of the early modern period,
and so I will not consider it here. Nakayama does look at some of the earlier attempts to handle Western
astronomy in A History of Japanese Astronomy which, temporally, fall within the time period addressed in
this chapter—this shows the ways in which attempts at strictly bounded periodization are thwarted by
historical realities.
24 For mathematics, a change to courses of study in the Bureau of Higher Learning (Daigaku- ryō, ironic-
ally the addition of the field of kidendō or Japanese history) (Sugimoto and Swain, Science and Culture in
Traditional Japan, 83); for medicine, the presentation of the Daidō ruijūhō manual, no longer extant (88);
and for astronomy, the adoption of the Xuanming- li (Jp. Senmyō-reki) system of mathematical astron-
omy for calculating the official calendar (51).
25 As mentioned above, changes in the historiographic record may also accord with changes in society, and
so these should not be thought of as mutually exclusive. It should be noted that the strong influence of
the Six National Histories on shaping a history of science is not unique to this work, for typically time-
lines of Japanese science that include the premodern period draw explicitly from these sources. Beyond
the years covered in these texts, specifically dated entries in historians’ timelines decrease. See the time-
lines at the end of Sugimoto Isao, Kagakushi and in Nihon gakushiin, Nihon kagakushi kankōkai, Meiji-
zen Nihon kagakushi sōsetsu, nenpyō.
26 Similarly, the 1414 Rekirin mondōshū is attributed to Ming Neo- Confucian influence, instead of its expli-
citly credited (and now lost) tenth- century model. Sugimoto and Swain, Science and Culture in Traditional
Japan, 198.
27 Sugimoto and Swain explicitly mention the lack of influence on “astronomical science,” citing
Nakayama, A History of Japanese Astronomy, on page 128. Papers gathered in Momo Hiroyuki Rekihō no
kenkyū identified the importance of the 950 importation of the Futian- li (Jp. Futen- reki) for mathemat-
ical astronomy in Japan. Since then, Yano Michio, Mikkyō senseijutsu: Sukuyōdō to Indo senseijutsu and
Hoshiuranai no bunka kōyrūshi has analyzed horoscope astrology and its links to the continent in more
detail. Emphasis on the role that horoscope astrologers had on the calculation of eclipses even among
non- Buddhist practitioners can be found in Saitō, Kotenmongaku no sanpomichi.
28 Nagahara and Yamamoto, “Shaping the Process of Unification.”
29 Iida, “Kodai Nihon no kinzoku bunka”; Nihon gakushiin, Nihon kagakushi kankōkai, Meiji- zen Nihon
kōgyō gijutsu hattatsushi for iron- mining and working; William Coaldrake, The Way of the Japanese Car-
penter: Tools and Japanese Architecture on tools and techniques in carpentry.
30 See, for example, von Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea. Bruce Batten, Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War
and Peace, 500–1300; and Ivo Smits, “The Way of the Literati: Chinese Learning and Literary Practice
in Mid- Heian Japan” both point out the ways that contact between Japan and China (or between Jap-
anese and Chinese texts) were limited, but this does not negate the influence of what contact occurred,
as can be seen in Andrew Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Know-
ledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War, and the contributions in Goble et al., Tools of Culture: Japan’s
Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000–1500.
31 Momo Hiroyuki, Rekihō no kenkyū, vol. 2: 61–103. The system used in the 1228 attempt was the
Qintian- li of the Southern Song. Hyakuren- shō Antei 2/6/1.
32 Sugimoto Isao blames kokufū (Japanese- culture) centrism (Kagakushi); Shigeru Nakayama primarily
blames Buddhism (A History of Japanese Astronomy).
33 The complicated history of how eclipse predictions and other astronomical calculations were evaluated
are the topics of chapters three through six of Kristina Buhrman, “The Stars and the State: Astronomy,
Astrology, and the Politics of Natural Knowledge in Early Medieval Japan.” What the debates at court
over eclipse prediction make clear is how even failed predictions were not necessarily sufficient to con-
vince an audience at the time that the system for making the predictions was in need of replacement—a
violation of the positivist mode of the history of science also found in the history of modern Western
science. See Steven Shapin, “Cordelia’s Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Science.”
34 By the late Kamakura period, the establishment of locally produced calendars presented a practical
reason why the adoption of a new system for mathematical astronomy was not successfully adopted—
the 1684 Jōkyō-reki reform may be as much a testament to the Tokugawa shoganate’s political pull as
it is to Shibukawa Harumi’s mathematical genius.