184
Containing China
heed the gods, before quickly summarizing Empress Jing
ū
’s (tradition-
ally circa 170–circa 269 CE) reign, to which he appends the interpreta-
tion below:
These must have been successive manifestations of the Principle that noth-
ing is absolute. The Principle that natural aptitude must take precedence
over sex, the Principle that in the event of a mother as empress, one must
follow her with filiality. Since I aim to inform others of these Principles in
the final age, this [Principle] is one in which [karmic] cause and effect are
in harmony. Not a soul understands this Principle! Next, in the age of Em-
peror Seimu’s predecessor Emperor Keikō [traditionally 12 BCE–130 CE],
Takeshiuchi [traditionally second through fourth centuries CE] was first
named Minister. This, for its part, was due to the Principle that ministers
must appear.
130
Passages such as these imbue Jien’s principles with the air of a posteriori
explanations. Principles are identified, but elaboration is minimal. They
are both too vague to reveal much new (“cause and effect are in harmony”)
and too specific (“ministers must appear”) to offer any basis for extrapo-
lation beyond asserting that there must be a principle for everything. The
cumulative effect is to persuade the reader via inductive reasoning that
there is presumably a principle for each and everything that occurs. But
most of the principles do not suggest a historical trajectory of the same
coherence or duration
as those suggested in the
Mirrors
to date.
The ambiguity of “principle” in the above context is exacerbated by
the fluidity of the term as used by Jien. His concept of
dōri
is more open-
ended than that of the
Mirrors
and serves multiple purposes. In some in-
stances, such as when Jien explains his rationale for writing in
kana
, it
lends itself to an interpretation of “reason” or “rationale.”
131
In others, it
is called upon in an abstract capacity similar to that of the principles found
in
Mirrors
. In contrast to the authors of the
Mirrors
, Jien is committed to
applying principles at both the macro and micro levels. This leads to a
seemingly endless proliferation of principles, in which the “principle” be-
130. Nakajima,
Gukanshō
, 188.
For an alternative translation,
see Brown and
Ishida,
Future and the Past
, 21–22.
131. For
this instance, see Nakajima,
Gukanshō
, 183.
The Continent as Object of Knowledge
185
comes a rhetorical deus ex machina that allows it to be extricated from
the thorniest of interpretive situations. Even violence in the name of the
protection of Buddhism is legitimated through a postulation of dominant
and subordinate (literally, “light” and “heavy”) principles.
132
That said, Jien anticipates some of the difficulties his theories present,
and in the seventh and final scroll of his work, he announces that he will
present the idea of the principle in a “manner that is slightly easier to
grasp.”
133
Here, he offers seven diff erent refractions of principles, most of
which can be mapped to discrete historical periods. Yet this schema, too,
falls into redoubling and abstract rhetoric that does not make Jien’s con-
cepts much more accessible. Even in his short summary, principles are
variously manifest or obscured and implementable or not. The sixth is
extreme in its circularity but is particularly germane in that it applies to
the present (the thirteenth century): “In this way, principles are impos-
sible to classify (
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