Research Highlights

As if to mock the Confucian saying, "There are not two suns in the sky, nor two sovereigns over the people" (Book of Rites), the third century in China witnessed the era of the “three Kingdoms,” a time when three emperors vied for power. In Japan, this period corresponds to the era of Queen Himiko. The historical "facts" of that time are preserved today primarily in the third-century Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi), compiled by Chen Shou during the Jin dynasty, with annotations added by Pei Songzhi in the fifth century during the Liu Song dynasty. From these historical accounts, various stories have emerged, transforming actual historical figures into legendary characters. Over time, these narratives culminated in the long-form colloquial novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi), composed during the Ming dynasty.

My research focuses on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, employing the following three approaches. The first is a comparative study of print lineages (textual criticism). More than forty editions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms exist, as it was competitively published by Ming-era publishers. By meticulously examining these versions, I aim to outline the trajectory of the stories within the Three Kingdoms narrative.

The second approach involves tracing the novel's formation history. While rooted in historical "fact," the narrative of the Records of the Three Kingdoms expanded over time through poetry, folk performing arts, popular beliefs, drama, and local histories. By exploring texts across various periods and media and collecting regional folklore and local histories, I aim to construct a multifaceted reception history of the Records of the Three Kingdoms.

The third approach extends the perspective of reception history to contemporary China and Japan. This involves tracing the Three Kingdoms narrative in modern contexts, such as in literature, film, television, manga, games, and digital fan fiction. In doing so, I explore subcultural elements, such as continuity and discontinuity across time, from classical to modern eras, as well as the transregional inheritance and new creative adaptations between China and Japan.

Spanning 1,800 years of continuous reception and reproduction, the immense content of the Three Kingdoms offers a rich collection of material that can be sorted by era, region, audience, and media. All three approaches share a focus on the interplay between fact and fiction. How have people entrusted profound "truths" to fictional elements that transcend factual history, and how have these "stories" continued to evolve? The core of my research lies in investigating how a singular "fact" can be endowed with multiple "truths."