The Transmission and Disposal of Medieval Documents : Shihai-Monjo and An

Abstract

Documents available to us as historical materials at present are limited to those that heve been transmitted and preserved by people who benefited from them. They form only a small part of the documents that actually existed and were exchanged in the past. In order words, beside transmitted documents, there were a tremendous amount of documents that were intentionally discarded. Shihai-monjo, a document appearing on the "reverse" side of transmitted one, enables us a glimpse of this situation ; however, the archival study of shihai-monjo as non-transmitted documents is not very extensive. The research to date has tended to focus on the unique, stimulating contents of shihai-monjo not found in transmitted documents, while neglecting to consider among other things how they were transmitted.This paper pays particular attention to official documents among shihai-monjo --- that is, Kokushi-chosen, Kokusen, kebiishi-bettosen etc. --- and examines under what circumstances they were discarded. They were documents from which no one benefited and can be clasified into three groups : a) orders given via Mokudai to Rusudokoro ; b) intra office orders ; and c) Kisho. Groups a) and b) were sent to unconcerned parties on the basis of authority and duty, and for that reason were not preserved, while groups b) and c) were discarded within the office without being delivered, a fact that cannot be accommodated to the theory that tht role of documents is the communication of intent between sender and receiver.Also discussed are documents which have the form of shomon, but have the word an (draft) written on the right. First I have tried to demonstrate that the word an was written by the author of the documents himself. Secondly, I have shown that there were two functions of an : one, to indicate that the document did not affect as shomon ; the other to distingush between two copies of the same document, thereby treating one as shomon and the other as its graft, when there were two beneficiaries concerning a particular right.By studying shihai-monjo, I have emphasized the variety of nontransmitted documents and clarified the power and the role of documents beyond mere utility.