Carbon dating may not be able prove legitimacy

The other day i was talking to my teacher about Hatsumi's new book ('Unarmed Fighting Techniques of the Samurai'), interpreting kata and densho, and he said something very interesting which i think would make a good topic of discussion.

He said that the densho was not a document or scroll that was handed down from one generation to another 'literally' (as in retaining the same scroll the founder wrote himself all those generations ago) but rather the densho were handed down figuratively so that each new generation was granted access to scroll so they could copy/interpret the densho by writing a new one themselves.

This would mean that each successive generation has written a new scroll and that each generation would only have access to the previous generations densho.

This would mean that any radio carbon dating of densho would not reveal ancient documents dating back 900 years but rather to the last generation (ie. our generations densho would only date back 1-50 years and last generations densho only 50-100 years and so on).

(I did not know this until recently but now that i know it makes perfect sense. Considering japans weather any paper document would not be able to survive 900 years, especially when someone is actively using it.)

So the question is - If carbon dating will not accurately display legitimacy of 34 generations what will?
+ Cross referencing other documents that have also been 'transposed' over generations?
+ Artifacts that are excavated and match modern transposed records?
+ Reasonable doubt and educated guesswork?

Just an interesting point i wanted to bring up

 

I don't know how Koryu are verified, but if it IS carbon dating, then how would any koryu be considered legit of what you say is true?
Personally I agree with you on the face of it all, but then I don't understand the proccess all that well. I'm just playing with ideas.

 

Ace,

This is not so surprising since in the old day several densho may have been handed out. Typically you would receive documents for each "level" you had trained in and as a Menkyo Kaiden holder you should have the complete transmission. For carbon dating this is not negative thing, on the contrary this means there often exists several densho so if one is lost you might be able to check another. Take as an example the mokuroku of Takagi Yoshin Ryu that is available as a translated book. The scroll dates to mid-19th century and is a nice proof that we at least have same names for the kata and similar structure.

Regards / Skuggvarg

 

I'm wondering who if anyone is going to go through the process and the cost of carbon dating for this.

I'd be surprised if it's been at all in this context.

 

I think some Koryu have other items which are handed down over the years.

I believe Hyoho Niten Ichiryu has a bokuto which has been handed down throughout the generations, I think it's supposed to of been made by Musashi himself and is deemed a national treasure.

So I would think it is probably reasonable to assume that other ryu have such things too.
Question is do the ryu of the Bujinkan have anything else beyond paper?

 

That's complete nonsense though. Do you think there are no paper sources in Japan older than 900 years? Similarly, do you really think that a prized scroll would be something that was treated carelessly?

Not to mention that there are various ways scrolls were treated so that they were made more resilient.

Simply put I just don't buy this line of argument at all. Are you suggesting that no other koryu has any preserved scrolls beyond their last generation?

 

Are you going to provide an example?

And it's not nonsense. It makes perfect sense. Considering Japans climate of high humidity, extreme heat and cold, damp conditions and proximity to salt water i would say it sounds perfectly reasonable.

I am suggesting nothing about koryu, i didn't even mention koryu in my post. I am saying this is a reasonable line of thought and an effective way to preserve teachings over a long period of time.

I am also implying that carbon dating and physical evidence are not the only evidence to authenticity. (In fact they are very poor evidence)

 

Ace of clubs posted

Doesnt matter anyway even if the document had been handed down 900 years, if the scroll had been passed around there would be a major problem with contamination.

Garth

 

Ace,

You were told this by your teacher. Would that be your budo teacher, or a university professor of some kind?

 

If carbon dating densho is unreliable then it comes down to trusting a few museum curators. And having faith that those curators didn't reproduce teachings from all those densho they have at the museum. This takes a lot of trust in a few curators, its funny no one allotted the xkan the same amount of trust. Atleast these curator seem to have a version of shinden fudo ryu so maybe this could help verify xkan version and be a catalyst for proving the other ryuha.

 

An example of a Japanese text older than 900 years? Are you serious?

It's not an ideal climate to store manuscripts if left out to the elements but then I can't think of many climates save for arid deserts that would be good for preserving texts/scrolls etc.

As usual even a quick look through wikipedia gives a hint that Japan is not the land which manuscripts forgot:

"Japanese books were traditionally made of washi, or Japanese paper. This durable, fibrous paper does not easily yellow or become brittle with age, which has contributed to the remarkable preservation of early books."

That's neither here nor there. You are suggesting that it would be practically unheard of in Japan for scrolls to be preserved for long periods of time because of the climate. This is not true.

It depends on what you are using them for. To establish the authenticity of a scrolls age they can be useful methods depending on contamination. If an individual is making claims about the age of something and using their claims to support their legitimacy then carbon dating can be useful to establish whether their claims are valid or not. As for Hatsumi as I understand the claims made for his scrolls is that they themselves are ancient rather than being modern copies of ancient scrolls. Can anyone beside Ace clarify?

 

CKava

This is similar to the ridiculous claim made for the amatsu Tatara Hibumi.

Garth

 

This is not a problem unique to this area. I remember helping my gf study for a European Medieval History course at university, and one of the big issues was finding out which sources could be trusted as "authentic", and which sources were copies of older sources. Since monasteries were the main repository for scrolls and documents, it was very common for monks to transcribe new version of old scrolls, and to even "edit" the information found in them to bring them more "up to date". The notion of preserving historical authenticity wasn't a major idea yet; rather, it was common, and even desirable, for monks to change information to suit their purposes. To complicated matters, the notion of authorship hadn't become entrenched yet either, and so monks wouldn't sign their names or indicate which bits of info they had added, and which they had taken from older sources.

So we end up with a fairly serious academic problem. Carbon dating cannot reliably determine the age of the information contained in these scrolls, and we know that alteration was common practice. The only real measure of authenticity is to cross-reference scrolls with each other; at least in Europe it is thought that many monasteries started off with similar information, and scrolls were often traded back and forth between monasteries as needed. We can pick out the same modular bits of information inserted into many different scrolls, and infer the age that way. It's sort of like digging for fossils; if we consistently find fossils of the same life form in rocks from a certain age range, we can infer that the creature probably lived during the time period indicated by the age of those rocks, and had its start and its end sometime within that time period. We can do the same for bits of information found in scrolls by comparing it to the various ages of the scrolls we find it in, which allows us to make a guess at when the information was first written down, and when it was altered or disappeared from use.

The trouble is, I don't know if the same culture of reproduction existed in Japan. If not, and there really only is one scroll that was only recopied once per generation, there really is no way of knowing if anything was changed. Was the older copy destroyed once the new one was written? If so, the historical authenticity of the current document is going to be very difficult to establish. It would be almost impossible for a document that is 900 years old to be copied every generation and end up exactly the same today as it was then; that's one very long game of telephone, and even just honest mistakes (not to mention purposeful alterations) accumulate quickly.

What we need to find out in a case like this is how accurate was the transmission, and how do we know this. If there isn't a single older copy of the scroll surviving from its 900 year history, then it seems doubtful that it was indeed re-copied every generation. The easiest thing to do would be to ask Hatsumi himself, I guess. Did he re-copy the one he has? If not, who did? Where is the older version? And who is going to re-copy the current version? If he says it's actually 900 years old, then carbon dating could probably shed a little light on things. If he says it's a copy, then for the legitimacy of the document to be proven we'd need some accurate and impartial historical evidence stating that copying did indeed take place. The problem you run into there though is the difficulty you'll have in proving that the document has been preserved through so many generations of copying.

 

wikipedia is not a proper source.

 

Wikipedia is useful for stating the obvious and anyone who spent any time studying Japanese history knows that many texts and scrolls and whatnot do often survive in Japan regardless of the climate.

If you want proper academic studies that use many, many written sources from earlier than 900 years take a look through the essays here that focus on historical topics: http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/jjrs_cumulative_list.htm#latestissue

 

Ace what qualifications does your instructor have to make such a statement, is he a historian, professor or something besides a martial arts instructor that will give him more credibility. Where did he here this about the Densho, is this something he researched and where.

 

To be honest, the argument is a bit of a straw man anyway, since Carbon dating isn't the primary method used to evaluate the authenticity of any koryu...It's used in some cases to roughly date the age of documents held by the school, but it's not the deciding factor at all..

As for the weather in Japan being a factor in the degradation of paper, well, it's far from ideal, but the idea that because it's hot and humid in summer all carbon dating is useless is rather presumptuous...

I've personally seen scrolls held by the Takenouchi family that date back to the 1500's... Almost 500 years old, and I've seen other items in museums that were far older than those (The scrolls in question were stored in a glass case next to the main dojo...Not "preserved" in any way, and they were still legible, albeit rather fragile looking..)..

Authenticity is agreed by many experts looking at what is taught, how it is taught, what other records exist of the school, the schools documentation and records, scrolls and other passed on items, and the syllabus of the ryuha in question...Then the topic is debated and debated until a consensus is reached...It's not decided purely by carbon dating, or purely by any one thing...It's a wide ranging investigation into the claims being made...Not just one aspect..

So, yeah, supposing that your idea about paper degradation was even correct, it wouldn't mean that carbon dating was useless, or was even used to decide the authenticity in question...Hence the straw man..

But thanks for the post..

 

What's the real underlying assumption here? The older something is, the better it is because it's closer to the point when God came down and handed Man tablets showing how to kill people in battle?

Do you want technology form 900 years ago, or technology from today? Like most things, martial arts adapt and evolve, or die.

The real issue stems from the claim by Hatsumi that the budo he teaches was used succesfully on the battlefield. Since his art is no longer being tested in such a way, any changes after that supposed golden age can be seen as a watering-down of what really works.

Who really buys into any of this anyway? Let's say the scrolls and the method are 100% verified - what Hatsumi teaches is exactly how ninjutsu was done 900 years ago in Japan. You can't just take that old stuff and make it work today, you'd HAVE to change it because in modern times we don't wear armor, and people carry Glocks instead of swords.

And on the other end of the spectrum, let's say what Hatsumi teaches is proven 100% to be Takamatsu's invention. Thousands of people won't care, they'll demonstrate that what they learned works, and that Takamatsu was always being tongue-in-cheek, or some other excuse.

So in the end, I don't see how it matters if it's proven either way, and it will never be proven anyway. Personally, I think the history of ninjutsu is very confused, and myths and legends mix with reality. Experts disagree. As a martial artist, if it works for you, keep doing it, whether it's confirmed by a scroll or not. Confirm it yourself.

 

The difference in terms of koryu-ness is honesty, and technical background, who would you rather learn from, someone who learnt all there BJJ from a video and there own imagination, or someone who spent 100's of hours of mat time with american top team etc.

If people who have been studying the Takamatsuden for a large portion of their adult lives, were learning that they had been lied to over that period, then that would be a huge issue.

 

That's very interesting. Why, then, is the fact that Hatsumi-soke didn't allow his documents to be taken away from his possession and carbon-dated cited as the reason why the schools under the Bujinkan umbrella (except Takagi and Kukishin of course) weren't recognized as a "Koryu?"

Very interested.