The Reception and Elucidation of Zinnebeeld in Edo Japan

The word «emblem» is almost always recognized simply as a trademark or a logotype in contemporary Japan. However, during pre-modern Edo Japan, while the Tokugawa shogunate enforced the sakoku (closed nation) policy and severely restricted foreign trade and exchanges for about 260 years until 1854, several progressive intellectuals grasped the concept of «emblem» as Andrea Alciato (1492-1550) conceived, and translated the word into Japanese quite accurately. This paper will consider their efforts to understand the emblematic way of conceiving the world which attracts them. To that end, my discussion focuses on the translation and reception of the Dutch word zinnebeeld (an emblem in English) in Japanese and on paintings and writings of Shiba Kōkan (1747-1818), who understood how zinnebeeld was used in the West and applied the idea to his artworks. As no single equivalent word conveyed the idea of an emblem in the native Japanese vocabulary, the translations show how the Edo intellectuals arrived at the understanding of the emblem as the combination of the image and the text to teach a moral or truth. Given the highly limited access to Western science and arts during the sakoku period, it is significant that Kōkan grasped the Western idea of the emblem. These cases of the reception of emblematic thinking constitute one important aspect of the Japanese reception of Western thought in the Edo period.