Semme ( Japanese 宣 命, せ ん み ょ う , "pronouncing the words of the emperor") - imperial decrees (edicts), as well as the genre of early Japanese literature , which appeared at the end of the 7th century AD e. Works in this genre were written in both Japanese and Chinese.
Content
- 1 Features of Semme
- 2 Method of writing Semmyo-gaki
- 3 See also
- 4 notes
- 5 Literature
Features of Semmyo
Semyo, written in Japanese , came to us as part of the historical and mythological annals of Shoku nihonga ("Continuation of records about Japan"), which was completed in 797 and contained the texts of 62 imperial decrees. Among them, the oldest dates back to 697.
Semme, written in Chinese, were divided into two types:
- “Sho: sho” ( 詔書, し ょ う し ょ ) - written imperial decrees that were compiled by a team of relevant officials and were only approved by the emperor himself;
- “Chokushi” ( 勅旨, ち ょ く し ) - a command written by the emperor with his own hand, which was burned after pronouncing their contents.
In the Heian era and later, imperial decrees were written exclusively in the official-business-style Chinese language, and therefore, according to experts, they already "did not have a direct connection with the artistic or ceremonial-cultural sphere of Japanese culture" [1] .
Semme belongs to the genre of fiction primarily because of their mythopoietic style, as well as because of the numerous rhetorical decorations, metaphors, syntactic parallelisms, synonymous repetitions, and more. Characteristic of the seven is the rhythmic and melodic structure of individual fragments or decrees in general.
The theme of the seven was varied: the accession of the new emperor to the throne, holidays, appointments, granting titles, punishment, warning the rebels.
Semmyo-gaki's writing method
During the Nara period , when some of the seven were recorded in Japanese , the method of writing the Japanese language was still being formed, there was still no alphabet of hiragana and katakana . For the recording of the Japanese language, exclusively Chinese characters were used.
While at present, for writing the Japanese language, Chinese characters are used as carriers of meaning, or as carriers of a phonetic shell, in semme and norito they used another way of writing - semme-gaki. Its essence lies in the fact that significant parts of speech were recorded with ordinary-sized hieroglyphs (semantic use of hieroglyphs), and service particles and endings were recorded with smaller hieroglyphs (phonetic use of hieroglyphs).
| Original | Interpretation in Modern Japanese |
|---|---|
天皇我大命良 末 等宣布 大命乎衆 聞 食倍 止宣。 | 天皇 （す め ら） が 大命 （お ほ み こ と） ら ま と 宣 （の り た ま） ふ 大命 を 衆 （も ろ も ろ） 聞 食 （き こ し め さ） へ と 宣 （の る）。 |
See also
- Nara period
- Norito
- Manjogan
Notes
- ↑ Norito. Samme. / Monuments of writing of the East XCVII /. - Per. with Staroyap., research and commentary by L. N. Ermakova. - Moscow., Science, 1991
Literature
- (Ukrainian) Semme // Japanese literature: anthology. Volume I (VII — XIII centuries) / Compiled by: Bondarenko. P., Osadchaya Yu. V. - Kiev: Dmitry Burago Publishing House, 2010. - pp. 99-105
- Norito. Samme. / Monuments of writing of the East XCVII /. - Per. with Staroyap., research and commentary by L. N. Ermakova. - Moscow., Science, 1991
- 森岡隆 『図 説 か な の 成 り 立 ち 事 典』 （ 教育 出版 、 2006 年 8 月） ISBN 978-4-316-80181-0
- 大 島 正 二 『漢字 伝 来』 （ 岩 波 書店 、 2006 年 8 月） ISBN 4-00-431031-8
- 久松 潜 一 ・ 佐藤 謙 三 『角 川 新 古語 古語 古語』 （ 角 川 書店 、 1993 年） ISBN 4-04-010404-8
- 新村 出 『 広 辞 苑 』 第 4 版 （岩 波 書店 、 1993 年 9 月）