Reading History in Oneself: The Path of Social History of Abe Kenya

Shortly after the end of World War II, in a monastery in Japan, a child in the form of a middle school student said in Latin, "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti." After the ceremony, he was responsible for extinguishing the candles on the altar.

On his days off, he left his dorm room to meet his mother. On the way back, his mother sometimes bought him ice cream. Ice cream was cold, and my mother wrapped it in napkins. As he ate, he walked to his dormitory, and the napkin wrapped in ice cream was reluctant to throw it away, because there was a residual cream aroma on the napkin.

Everyone in the monastery, even himself, thought he would become a cleric, and he did not know that he would leave the monastery and enter the university and become a researcher of history. He is the historian Abe Who is known for his study of the social history of medieval Europe.

This article is from the B06 of the May 6 feature of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly, "Under the Stars in the Middle Ages: The Historical Journey of Abe Keiya".

"Theme" B01 丨 Abe Keiya's historical journey

"Theme" B02-B03 丨 Let History Meet Reality: Abe's Historical Thoughts

"Theme" B04-B05丨 Legend also has history: history and fiction in "The Magic Piper"

"Theme" B06 丨 Reading History in Yourself: The Path of Social History of Abe Kenya

"Literature" B07 丨 Mua: From "The Horse" to the Poetry of Prometheus

"Commemoration" B08 丨 Xie Chensheng: With a century of life, to prevent the annihilation of cultural relics and monuments

"People without a hometown"

In 1935, Abe was also born in Kanda, Tokyo. His father, Kiyotaro Abe, a native of Takamatsu, runs a bicycle factory in Hongo, Tokyo, and sells bicycles. Abe's mother, the second wife of Kiyotaro Abe, married Kiyotaro Abe at the age of 18. Abe's parents were 18 years apart, and when they married, Kiyotaro Abe already had a daughter and two sons. As a child, Abe also lived mainly in Tokyo Hongo, and sometimes went to villas in Kamakura.

After the outbreak of World War II, Abe also left Tokyo with his family and took refuge in Kamakura. At the end of the war, Kamakura was no longer safe, and Abe went to Kawagoe again. Abe was also frail, and when he was in elementary school in Kamakura, he spent a year at the nursing school for frail children before officially starting elementary school. Later, he transferred schools due to moving. In 2005, Abe also published his autobiography, in which he recalled feeling in his childhood that "it was not my current self before I looked at myself, but as if I was watching something else in another dimension."

For Abe, who was still a child, the most direct manifestation of the war was the shortage of food. In the past, his mother used to make him donuts, and during the war, even daily food was difficult to guarantee, and his mother began to cultivate land and grow vegetables such as tomatoes and eggplants. At that time, Abe also had the opportunity to return to Tokyo with his mother from time to time. In the face of food shortages, the Meiji and Morinaga sweets shops in front of Tokyo Station sell only roasted apples. In Abe's view, roasted apples at that time were simply "the delicacy of another world." Abe's family also changed. In January 1943, Akiya Abe's father died of cirrhosis. In the same year, Abe's half-brother died of tuberculosis.

Abe Is also like the american editor Haruka.

After Japan's defeat, Abe returned to Tokyo with his mother. However, the house in Kanda had been burned down. At that moment, Abe also felt that he had lost his hometown and became a "person without a hometown". The good old life was gone, and Abe's mother had to start working. After his mother started working, she did not have time to take care of Abe Kenya and decided to send him to an institution that could take care of food and housing. In 1947, Abe also entered a dormitory run by a German monastery.

It was at this monastery that Abe was first exposed to European culture. He studied catechism and also the history of Europe, centered on the history of the Church. During this period, Abe was also baptized. From time to time, Abe also had the opportunity to leave the monastery and meet his mother. His mother gave him pocket money and took him to eat ice cream. However, Abe also suddenly found himself on a completely different path from his peers. "I was talking to my friends in Tokyo, and I had only studied The essentials of Catholicism, and they were already thinking about which university to apply to, and I was wondering if I had lost my way on a special path."

In 1949, Abe also decided to leave the monastery's dormitory and return to Tokyo. Relatives of Abe's relatives, who were working in similar institutions at the time, believed that such institutions could provide better food, lodging, and clothing than the average Japanese family, and did not understand why Abe should leave. Years later, Abe also wrote in his essay collection Reading History in Yourself:

"No matter how good clothes and food can be provided, institutions cannot replace families."

Cover of the Japanese edition of "Abe Keiya Autobiography".

"There are some people in this world who don't

A position that is recognized by others"

After returning to Tokyo, Abe entered Tateshii Nishi Junior High School in Ryoma-ku, where he was in the third grade. In 1950, he entered Ishijini High School (High School). Abe's mother opened a Chinese restaurant near Oizumi Gakuen, and Abe also helped deliver takeaways while studying. Botanist Tomitaro Makino lives nearby and often orders takeout from Abe's mother's shop. When Mr. Abe went to deliver food, Mr. Makino saw that he was a student, asked him what he was studying, and encouraged him to learn a foreign language seriously.

At that time, Abe was already able to read English books. At Ishijini High School, students learn a second foreign language from the second year of high school, either German or French. Abe also chose French under the persuasion of his teacher. The teacher is Professor Kenzo Mizutani of Gakushuin University. When Abe recalled this experience in his autobiography, he felt that it was a very luxurious thing for a very famous university professor to teach French to high school students every week.

When he was about to graduate from high school, Abe also listened to a lecture at the school, and he was impressed by the eloquence and style of the teacher who gave the lecture. After learning that this teacher was Professor Uehara Ofahashi University, Abe also decided to apply for Hitotsubashi University. However, Hitotsubashi University is a very difficult school to take, and Abe did not pass the examination. After falling off the list, he attended preparatory school for one year and finally got admitted the next year. "During my time in prep school, I realized that there are people in this world who are not recognized by others," he said. ”

In 1954, Abe also joined the Faculty of Economics at Hitotsubashi University. Although I was a student in the Faculty of Economics, I was very interested in history and naturally began to take a lot of history classes. It was at Hitotsubashi University that Abe realized the importance of learning a foreign language. In his sophomore year, Mr. Abe also attended a seminar by Professor Ryūo Mabuchi, who led his students to read the German edition of Max Weber's Economic History. Some students are lazy and do not read the German version, but read the Japanese translation. When Professor Zengyuan found out, he reprimanded them severely, stressing that they must read the German version. Abe's mentor, Uehara, also placed great emphasis on foreign language learning. A student instructed by Professor Uehara wanted to study Rilke, but the student did not speak German and studied it in japanese texts. When Professor Uehara heard about it, he reprimanded the student.

Professor Uehara was very strict, and before listening to his seminar, he needed to write a ten-page report in German explaining why he wanted to join the seminar. Abe had only studied English and French at the time, so he asked Professor Uehara if he could write the report in French. Professor Uehara agreed. After that, Abe also began to learn German. In order to study medieval history, he began to study Latin again. At that time, Hitotsubashi University did not have a teacher who taught Latin, and the teacher of Latin class was hired externally. Yuji Omura of the "Athénée Fran ais" language school (Athénée Fran ais) opened classes at Hitotsubashi University. At the beginning of the class, there were about 20 people in the class, but the number gradually decreased, and sometimes there was only one person in the class. Yuji Omura sometimes takes Mr. Abe to classes at a café near the station, inviting him to eat cake and coffee.

When he was in college, Abe's family conditions were not rich, and he even needed to sell books for money. Years later, Abe regretted selling max Weber's German edition of Economy and Society and the Latin dictionary. After graduating from undergraduate studies, Abe also continued to enter graduate school and earned tuition by being a tutor. His classmates at the graduate school graduated from prestigious private high schools and were shocked to learn that Mr. Abe had previously attended a new high school.

War, food shortages, loss of old homes, failed entrance examinations, financial constraints... Abe's upbringing profoundly influenced his research orientation. He focuses on people in history, seeing people in history as individuals rather than numbers, especially the common and marginalized. As Abe also wrote in The Flower-Clothed Piper, "Man is not an animal that can live with a house, food, and a natural environment. What matters is the relationship between these things, the natural environment, the objects, and themselves, and this relationship constitutes the world. ”

I believe that the different patterns of getting along between people come from their different cultural roots, and thus produce cultural characteristics. Moreover, the relationship between people is established by the relationship between the object as the medium, and the relationship formed by the entanglement invisible to the naked eye. - "Under the Stars in the Middle Ages"

Read history in yourself

By studying the history behind the story of the Flower-Clad Piper, Abe also noticed the wandering musicians.

In the 13th century, wandering musicians were untouchables. As a result, Abe also began to pay attention to the medieval Untouchable community. He believes that contempt is not the same as contempt, that contempt is neither contempt, and that contempt contains a feeling of fear. Criminals, gravediggers, public bath operators, surgeons, chimney sweepers... In the late Middle Ages they were all considered untouchables.

Abe also pays attention not only to the living conditions of these marginalized people, but also to the social constructs that produce contempt. After The Flower-Clad Piper, Abe also wrote The Social History of The Criminals: The Life of the Common people in medieval Europe and Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages: A Social History of the Dead, arguing that medieval contempt arose in the 13th and 14th centuries. In these two centuries, due to the widespread spread of Christianity, especially the popularization of the belief in purgatory, people's views on the world, life and death, have undergone tremendous changes, and it is in this context that contempt has been formed.

"In Europe, the historical existence of dalits is quite extensive, and when I excavate these in terms of regions one by one and study them, I have also re-examined the society of the modern and modern European society as a whole."

Abe also began his research on the social and psychological history of medieval Europe, using the Untouchables as a starting point. This focus on everyday life and ordinary people seems very much like the research orientation of the French School of Almanacs, but according to the recollections of Jun Ito, a student of Abe Kenya, Abe was often asked if he belonged to the Annals school, and he always replied no.

As Abe also wrote in the epilogue to "Reading History in Yourself":

"It seems to me that the basic lines of my research are all questions that arise from within myself. Later, I began to think about how I was going to understand my relationship with my surroundings, how I was going to act in that relationship, and from this reflection, my research extended to the Middle Ages in Europe. ”

Fate gave him tribulations and prompted him to think, and the extension of these thoughts profoundly influenced his research.

Text/Luan Yingxin

Editor/Yang Li, Yaguang Liu

Proofreading/Xue Jingning