Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between official historical works and popular works of historical fiction produced in the early Edo period. It examines passages from the biographical text Toyotomi Hideyoshi fu 豊臣秀吉譜 written in Literary Sinitic (kanbun) by Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583–1657) in 1642 at the request of the Tokugawa government, with particular focus on its treatment of Hideyoshi’s early career, his personal qualities, and his negotiations and wars with Ming China and Korea. The image of Hideyoshi presented in this text deserves attention as a part of the Tokugawa historical project aimed at shaping representations of the past. Analysis of the network of texts about Hideyoshi produced in the seventeenth century, in kanbun and in Japanese, supports the claim that the divide between official and unofficial, historical and literary, cosmopolitan kanbun and vernacular Japanese, was rather fluid. Similar content appeared in works of different genres and could be recorded using multiple inscriptional styles interchangeably. At the same time, the kanbun version has its own peculiarities that supplement the content found in other versions. This chapter demonstrates that kanbun materials contain valuable data for the study of historical figures such as Hideyoshi, and for a deeper understanding of textual production and circulation in premodern Japan. I also suggest that, at least in the early Edo period, Literary Sinitic predominantly read in Japanese (by kundoku) was perceived in Japan not as “Chinese,” but as a high formal register of Japanese.