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Time in Medieval Japan

Chronography

Chronography is one of the analytical levels that constitute TIMEJ’s bottom-up approach.

 

The level of chronography concerns the recording and expression of time. We used Roland Harweg’s extensive work on this topic as a basis on which to build our own expanded methodological framework.

 

Harweg draws some useful analytical distinctions:

First of all, there are many ways to express temporal information. For example, one could refer to natural phenomena (“at sunrise”, or “when the birds start singing”) or to a system of abstract time units (“at 10:00”, “in June”, or “in 2019”). Naturally, the degree of specificity also strongly relates to the available technologies for measuring time. Such time specifications may be either relational or absolute. To distinguish this, we must ask: can an outside observer calculate their temporal distance to the specified point in time?

Harweg also suggests to look into other divisions, such as whether the chronography localises points in time (“at 9:00”), measures durations (“for 2 hours”), counts frequencies (“every day”), or delimits time in a certain way (“up to this point”, “since my divorce”). He also points out the difference between explicitly referring to time, and conveying temporal information implicitly, as is the case for example with certain verbs (“searching” is durational, while “finding” is punctual) or tense.

 

The distinctions that Harweg addresses, however, are merely concerned with the quantitative aspects of temporal articulations - what we have dubbed “chronometrics”. The TIMEJ project operates with an expanded methodological framework that includes other aspects of temporal articulation as well. We pay attention to questions such as whether something is decidedly addressed as temporal or atemporal (“the eternal darkness”), whether time is attributed certain characteristics (“this is an age of decay”), as well as the degree of certainty with which temporal statements are made (“it has to be tomorrow” vs. “it may be tomorrow”). Further, expressions that assert, for example, causal temporal relations, such as “if you lie once, it will become a habit” are of interest to us.

 

The methodology furthermore takes into account whether the chronography is predominantly descriptive, as would be the case in a diary that portrays past events, or a novel that lays out fictional events; or prescriptive, like a conference schedule or a time table at the bus station; or emotive, i.e. conveying a certain attitude towards time, as might be the case in a poem.

 

An article by the project leader Prof. Raji C. Steineck outlining the methodology has recently been published in the KronoScope journal (read here).

Literature on chronography

Steineck, Raji C. „Chronographical Analysis: An Essay in Methodology“. KronoScope 18, Nr. 2 (2018): 171–98. https://brill.com/view/journals/kron/18/2/article-p171_6.xml

Harweg, Roland. 2008. Zeit in Mythos and Geschichte: weltweite Untersuchungen zu mythographischer and historiographischer Chronographie vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart. 1. Band: Formen der Chronographie. Berlin: LIT.

Harweg, Roland. 2009. Zeit in Mythos and Geschichte: weltweite Untersuchungen zu mythographischer and historiographischer Chronographie vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart. 3. Band: Chronographie im Orient vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin: LIT.

Weiterführende Informationen

Latest conference:

TIMEJ Online Conference 2021 

August 18–20th 2021

International Society for the Study of Time

 

Yamaguchi University Research Institute for the Study of Time

 

Read more about our joint coference of 2018 here.

Time in Medieval Japan

Prof. Dr. Raji C. Steineck

2017-2022

Time in Medieval Japan (TIMEJ) is a research project of the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich.

It is funded by the  European Research Council (ERC) with an Advanced Grant under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 741166)

Read about the outline of the project on the official CORDIS Webpage

Read more about the TIMEJ-Artwork