Romance of the Two Kingdoms: Okajima Kanzan's Chinese Explication of 'The Annals of Pacification' (Taiheiki engi)

This paper examines the Taiheiki engi (1719): a translation of a fourteenthcentury Japanese history into the format of Chinese vernacular fiction by the Nagasaki-born interpreter, Okajima Kanzan. Kanzan,s translation took place during the initial stage ofJapanese engagement with Chinese vernacular fiction. I discuss the ways in which Chinese literary theory impacted Edo-period Japanese classical scholars, conceptions of the educational value of Chinese texts, and Kanzan,s effort to reimagine cultural relations between China and Japan. Not simply an ironic defamiliarization of Japanese texts, the Taiheiki engi is important in its attempt to nativize Chinese rhetoric about the discursive position of Chinese narrative and place Kanzan at the front of an emergent tradition of unofficial historiography in Japan.