The transcendence of language: encyclopedic practice and the emergence of a new nation as reflected in Nishi Amane’s Hyakugaku renkan
The transcendence of language: encyclopedic practice and the emergence of a new nation as reflected in Nishi Amane’s Hyakugaku renkan

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, it is an open secret that Japan is redefining superpower as a cultural issue. An important interpreter of its ambitions are modern Japanese encyclopedias which on one hand deal with knowledge conceptualization and organization as means to enforce a specific worldview as human experience and progress, and on the other hand underline hidden interactions between knowledge and information in a transcultural context. While focusing on Nishi Amane’s seminal lecture series from 1870-1871 bearing as title the English word Encyclopedia and as under-title the Japanese construction Hyakugaku renkan (literally The Linked Circle of Many Sciences), it is this paper’s goal to underline some of the strategies employed by this leading intellectual and political figure of the Meiji period to implement a knowledge system according to Western standards, but patterned upon Japanese cultural and spiritual heritage. Beyond translation and sedimentation through appropriation there is the performative power of language – and its identificatory mechanisms.

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