The Japanese scriptural culture belongs to the Chinese culture sphere, especially to it's eastern part which includes China, the Corean peninsula and Japan. The Chinese script reached Japan with other items of Chinese culture in waves through the Corean peninsula, and these waves settled down there in layers. These layers of Chinese scriptural culture evolved independently and stimulated each others without showing signs of intentional elimination (except for Christian scriptures in the early 17th century we have no example of autodafés in Japan).
It is a question whether, at the first contacts between the 2nd and 4th century, the Chinese script was more than magic formulas engraved on religious objects as mirrors or swords, but the second wave undoubtly brought not only the script but also a great number of books, the technical knowledge how to produce paper, ink and brushes, and last but not least literati, men who could read and write and teach their ability to others. From the mid 6th century up to the year 900, that is more than 450 years, lasted the national project to acquire the Chinese culture in a systematic and controlled way. From the very beginning this transfer of knowledge was linked with the introduction and propagation of Buddhism as a new state religion and it was Buddhism in the form of the temples which for the next fifteen centuries provided continuity in preserving and handing down the scriptural heritages, both the secular and religious ones. At the end of the 9th century existed 16790 secular books, most of them of Chinese provenience, besides the more than 5000 holy scriptures of the Tripitaka, as we know from the inventary list of the Nihonkoku genzai shomokuroku (891) which was issued after the fire in the imperial library in 874 to replace the total loss of books. For the next seven hundred years the scriptual conservation, production and reproduction was in private hands; a state control in form of import limitations and censorship started in the early 17th century. In the meantime, changing new elites tried to acquire the cultivation and the scriptural heritage of the earlier ones by relocating the scriptures, by systematic reproducing (copying) them or by importing them directly from China, as one can see in the case of the Kanazawa bunko, a library originated in the 13th century to support the Kamakura Shogunate, or the Ashikaga bunko in the 16th century, a library with equal functions in the northern Kanto region supported by local leaders.
The Japanese scriptural culture is closely linked to publishing culture: many models for copying came as printed books from China and Corea and publishing of books started as early as the year 770, when the empress Shōtoku commissioned the building of one million stupas which included a printed sacred text (Hyakumantō darani), and the oldest publishing company in Japan, which is still working, was founded in 1201. But our conference focuses on manuscripts, so I exclude the explanations for the publishing culture despite their common features.
In the Christian Occident composite/multiple text maunuscripts are the standard form of the medieval scriptural tradition, in Japan they are exceptions. The standard form for Japanese books are singular texts or parts of one singular text as an independant codex. The reasons for such an exception will be a theme to be discussed at the conference; I guess that the easily accessable materials like paper, ink and brushes which were produced since their introduction in the early 7th century lowered the costs for producing a codex. A second reason can be found in the material properties: Japanese paper (washi) is tear-resistant and very durable but also very soft, so it is unsuited for big Folio sizes and for volumes with great numbers of pages (thinner paper which allowed greater page numbers was developed in the 17th century).
In my presentation I will take up some cases of functionally defined composite/multiple text manuscripts as used for everyday-use (Gebrauchshandschriften) in temple communities. Some visual online-material for the presentation can be found (not before October 5th) at the following address: (http://www.f.waseda.jp/guelberg/hamburg2010/codices_main.htm[=this page])
Only in German language available are the already finished parts of a work in progress, an outline
of Japanese codicology („Abriss der japanischen Kodikologie“) at the following address:
(http://www.f.waseda.jp/guelberg/kodikologie/codices_main.htm) (uploaded 2010/09/14)
A Japanese collection which covers a broad scale of the writing tradition and has it's examples online (with the help of the Nara Woman's University) is the Sakamoto Ryūmon bunko, see under: (http://www.geocities.jp/ryumonbunko/mokufs.htm) (only in Japanese)
Multiple text manuscripts are manuscripts which neither place together different texts under the aspect of a textinternal connection nor try to establish an encyclopedic allround collection. As far as manuscripts for perpetual daily use („Gebrauchshandschrift“ in German) are concerned, there is a functional connection between the collected texts: they are used in the same or in a similar way at similar circumstances, so it makes sense to put them together in one codex.
Composite manuscripts are manuscripts which bind together codicological disparate materials in one codex, for example different paper sizes or different qualities of paper.