The vault and the broadcast

Claim (verbatim)

The vault and the broadcast. Japanese textual survival ran two opposite strategies, legible as opposite distributions in the union catalogue. Court literature survived by the vault: few, early, jealously guarded copies in aristocratic houses, where scarcity was the asset. Temple didactic literature survived by the broadcast: many copies, constantly recopied for preaching, none precious. Same centuries, opposite topologies — so witness-count and earliest-witness-date should trade off by institutional carrier, not by a work's age or fame, and works that switched carriers should switch statistics.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

From the union catalogue, sample pre-1400 works in (a) court genres (monogatari, nikki, private waka collections) and (b) temple genres (setsuwa collections, didactic tales, sermon literature). Primary clause (verdict follows it): class (b) has the higher median count of extant manuscript witnesses per work AND class (a) has the earlier median date of oldest extant witness — both inequalities must hold. Secondary: court works that escaped into temple or renga pedagogy (Ise monogatari is the type case) show class-(b) statistics.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Kokusho somokuroku union catalogue of Japanese books, whose per-work witness lists carry counts, holding institutions, and dates.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The contrast is recognized qualitatively: Japanese court literature (monogatari, nikki, private waka collections) survived through a few early, jealously guarded aristocratic copies, while temple didactic literature (setsuwa, sermon material) survived by constant recopying for preaching -- two opposite survival strategies. Not located: the item's specific TOPOLOGICAL measurement over the union catalogue -- temple genres having the higher median count of extant witnesses per work AND court genres the earlier median oldest-witness date (both inequalities required), with carrier-switching works (Ise monogatari entering renga pedagogy) taking on the temple statistics. The vault/broadcast contrast is documented as an impression; the witness-count-vs-oldest-witness trade-off measured over the Kokusho somokuroku is unrun.

• Kokusho Somokuroku union catalogue of Japanese books (per-work witness lists with counts, holding institutions, dates); setsuwa preaching-resource transmission vs guarded court-text transmission — The union catalogue and the court-vs-temple transmission contrast; the topological trade-off is the unrun measurement
• Kokusho somokuroku per-work witness lists (counts, institutions, dates) — The kill dataset for the witness-count vs oldest-witness-date comparison

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.