The Research On Document Value Of Huang Zunxian's Annals Of Japan

Annals of Japan was written by Huang Zunxian while he was the counselor of Qing Dynasty in Japan. The Annals focuses on events in Mingzhi Restoration. It shows Huang's strong will of system reform. It was regarded as a representative work of 19th century when the Chinese began to care about other parts of the world. From the perspective of document,the paper examines carefully to the value of Huang Zunxian's Annals of Japan and makes up the insuffictency of the predecessor's study.This paper consists of five parts:Section I analyzes writing purposes of Annals of Japan from subjective and objective factors and elabrates its compiling processSection II sorts out existent versions of Annals of Japan in order to insight into the academic sources of Annals of Japan.Section III analyzes material origins of Annals of Japan from three parts,that are Chinese and Japanese historical literatures, association and sketches and notes , and investigative materials. The author finds out that the Chinese and Japanese historical literatures were cited are authoritative;the people who talked with Huang Zunxian were famous sinologists in Japan at that time and had a deeper understanding and research of Japanese history. They offered a lot of help to Huang. Besides, Huang ever did a great deal of field work and got many first-hand materials. All these ensured the academy of Annals of Japan .Section IV sums up compiling thoughts and features in Annals of Japan. The author points out that Huang's documentary compiling thoughts are factual,realistic and practical.Huang's principles of collecting materials are extensive,perfect and good.He combined with annals, history lists and historical criticism in Annals of Japan. All these are inheritance and innovation of Chinese traditional documentary compling thought and methods.Section V analyzes historical material values of Annals of Japan to show its values on document and status on history of document.In a word,the documentary compiling thought was included in Annals of Japan, documentary compiling methods of annals, history lists and historical criticism, rich and real content recording from unique perspective,and its higher historical material values and social functions, make Annals of Japan not only have been highly regarded at that time, but today it still has very high value of document and holds the quite important status in Chinese documentary history.