Editions of Jōjin's Diary: A Library of Textual Exasperations
Jōjin was a Japanese monk who made a pilgrimage to China between 1072 and 1073, and left a diary in classical Chinese describing his travels. The diary includes passages that are models of clarity along with others that are highly problematic. In the past, the diary had received only limited attention from scholars, but, more recently scholars, primarily in Japan but also in China, Europe and North America, have begun to work on the diary more seriously. So far, the results have been uneven in quality, but reliable editions of the text should be published soon. The paper presented here will consider difficulties both with the text itself and with the currently limited editions available.