Details Concerning the Riben qishi ji

Abstract

As we noted in the previous chapter of this work, the very beginning of the Riben qishi ji recounts how Zhou Cuizhi made contact with the King of Satsuma and requested assistance and how the Tokugawa shōgun promised to send troops to help. This name, Zhou Cuizhi, appears in other texts as Zhou Hezhi, such as the Nan tian hen (Traces of Heaven in the South) by Lingxue zuanxiu (Compiler Ling-xue)^a and the Nanjiang yishi (Forgotten History of the Southern Reaches) by Wen Ruilin.^b Inasmuch as the latter appears to be an expanded and revised version of the former, it should not be surprising that they contain the same material. The Xiaotian jinian fukao and Xiaotian jizhuan, both by Xu Zi, also have ‘Zhou Hezhi,’ but an ‘annotation’ in the latter carries the following note: ‘Upon investigation, it was learned that the character cui is an error for the character he, which is popularly abbreviated as cui. Despite this, the Riben qishi ji still has Cuizhi.