Kinokuni

Kinokuniya, the bookstore, has no relation to Kinokuniya Bunzaemon. This really threw me off when reading Reigokai’s translation of the TsukiMichi: Moonlit Fantasy (月が導く異世界道中) web novel. In chapter 324, Tomoe describes Rembrandt’s sudden interest in the construction methods of the main character’s company like so:

“I am impressed that that man is trying to replicate this. Not only Echigoya, he is even aiming for the Kinokuniya. He is capable.”¹

This statement took me a while to process. See, my mind immediately associates the name Kinokuniya with a bookstore, which doesn’t have anything to do with construction methodology, right? Then there’s the parallels being drawn between Kinokuniya and Echigoya, which is a name I honestly don’t recognize. Tomoe and to a lesser extent Makoto constantly reference things from the Edo Period, so I was getting used to just glazing over this kind of thing. Like, the building they’re constructing is meant to be a yoseba, which is pretty esoteric. Kinokuniya, though, is a name I’ve seen before, so I just had to dig into it a little. Honestly, I have always wondered why the bookshop was called that, so this is basically just me forcing myself to actually figure it out!

If you ask the internet what kinokuniya means, English sources for learning Japanese will typically just tell you that it is the name of a bookshop. Obviously, this is not the whole story. Kinokuniya as a transliteration of the Japanese “紀伊國屋” is indeed the name of a bookshop, but also the name of the legendary merchant Kinokuniya Bunzaemon, the less legendary merchant Kinokuniya Bunemon,² and some Kabuki actor. Still, kinokuniya could also be a transliteration of the name of a supermarket (紀ノ国屋) or the name of a sweets shop (紀の國屋).

This can seem fairly confusing due to a number of sources claiming that kinokuniya translates to “bookstore of the Kii province,” possibly based on a misreading³ of a part of the Wikipedia article on the bookstore. In fairness, the article is somewhat confusing regarding this, as the full Japanese name for the company, 紀伊国屋書店, could be translated as such. More literally, this reads as “Kii Province store bookshop” or just “Kinokuniya Bookshop.” Of course, it is for this very reason that the English name for the company is “Books Kinokuniya.” This distinguishes the company from those other stores and denotes the market of the business, which makes sense given that it did start out as a lumber dealer before the original store was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.

The attentive among you may have noticed that these translations all refer to Kii Province, yet the name does not include that second i. This is one of the many cases where the Japanese language is simply fucking with you. While the kanji 紀 is certainly read as ki, as in the terms 日本書紀 or 世紀, the kanji 伊 would appear to be read no instead of i as one would expect. You should certainly expect this, it’s the same kanji you’d find in Iga (伊賀), like the ninjas, or the ateji⁴ name of Italy (伊太利). So why is this the case?

This is a question that definitely, probably, almost has some form of an answer. Let’s take a little stroll through history to the 7^th century here. In the Kansai region, on a peninsula south of Osaka, the province initially known as Kinokuni (木国) was founded.⁵ It’s name was likely derived from the abundance of forests in the area; there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to this claim, but why else would you call it “tree country?” It’s immediately obvious that we’re dealing with one of those funny phenomena in the reading of this: the no is not written in the name. This is actually a common occurrence with place names in Japan,⁶ both no and ga are frequently left to inference, though the latter has in some cases been given the incredibly confusing character “ヶ” to represent it. This may seem like an absurd way to write names, but it makes sense when you consider the way kanji was merely adopted as a means to write preexisting words and names in Japan. With the initial adoption, some considered the writing to be a tad chaotic, obviously something had to be done about this.

In 713 (和銅 6 年), an imperial edict was issued to fix up this system by dictating that all provinces ought to have their names written with two ‘auspicious’ characters (好字).⁷⁸⁹ Evidently the kanji for tree wasn’t auspicious enough,¹⁰ so it was to be replaced, but what about that two character rule? This became a source of many inconsistent readings of kanji throughout the country, though in this specific instance they merely elongated the vowel, turning 木 into 紀伊.¹¹ Despite it then being written kii, it was frequently still read simply as ki. Thus, it’s not that 伊 is read as no, it simply is not read at all, and the no is inferred separately. Isn’t that fantastic?

Just going to put this out here now, lest it suddenly pop up later and leave you all confused: Kinokuni was also called Kishu (紀州). Why? I don’t know, man, I don’t fucking know.¹² Shuu (州) basically means ‘state,’ like it’s a suffix used for US states: ミネソタ州. All the provinces had aliases like this for some reason.

Is this a satisfying place to end? There’s a lot of other stuff I could talk about, but it feels a bit tangential. The history of the province is pretty interesting, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about warrior monks and samurai. Going over that stuff would give a somewhat clearer picture about the bookstore’s name. Then there’s the legend of Kinokuniya Bunzaemon. Of course, I could go on about the various things named after the place, like the mikan and the dog breed. So, if you want me to write about that, then beg?

Footnotes