本居宣長『うひ山ぶみ』

What prompted me to pick up this book was an article titled “Learning Methods from Motoori Norinaga’s *Uhiyama-bumi*” by Ryoma Sato, a scholar of whom I am a huge fan. Intrigued by the unexpected title, I gave it a read and was surprised to discover that a figure from the Edo period—someone I had never paid much attention to outside of Japanese history exams—had left behind universal teachings on learning methods. For example, there is the following passage: When reading a book casually, no matter how thoroughly you try to read it, there are limits to what you can grasp. However, if you read with the intention of writing your own annotations, you will consciously pay attention to every detail, and your reading will become more precise. Furthermore, you will often gain additional insights through these connections. Therefore, even if the annotations are never completed, they are highly beneficial to scholarship. This principle is not limited to annotations. In any endeavor, one must strive to write. Upon looking into it, I found that Motoori Norinaga was the person who, on his own, deciphered classical texts—including the *Kojiki*, which was not highly regarded at the time—and systematized them as a field of study. Indeed, he possessed even back then the skills demanded in the modern era: critically analyzing the flood of information and constructing a unique perspective. However, after reading through the book, I realized that for someone like me with no interest in Kokugaku, the most interesting points were essentially already covered in the blog post mentioned above.