On Japanese Research into Naxi Literature
Written by the Naxi scholar Bai Gengsheng, this 1989 article surveys the rapid rise of Japanese scholarship on Naxi culture and literature. It explains why Japan, starting decades behind Western Naxi studies (pioneered by Rock and Bacot), caught up quickly after 1966 — citing Dongba culture's intrinsic value, Japan's postwar search for its own cultural origins in agrarian East Asia, alignment toward American scholarship, a high starting point built on prior Chinese and Western research, and growing exchange after China's 1979 opening. Its core is a critical survey of Japanese work on the Naxi creation epic Chuangshiji: Ito Seishi's comparative structural work linking it to Japan's Kojiki/Nihon Shoki myths (shared genealogical structure, oral-to-written transmission via Dongba priests versus Japanese kataribe, eye-symbolism analysis), praised but critiqued for a vague concept of 'system'; and Suwa Tetsuro's structuralist decomposition of the myth into four mythic-origin themes tied to an agricultural/pastoral duality, disputed by the author. Shorter treatments of Kimishima, Murai, and Shimura follow, plus a note that Naxi authored literature remains understudied.
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