In this essay I discuss the various ways time can be inscribed in texts below the level of explicit propositions about time. I argue that a full chronographical analysis needs to account for the dimensions of the theoretical, the practical, and the aesthetic. Taking Kant’s table of categories as a guide to the fundamental functions of chronographic determination, I propose a methodology of analysis that goes beyond the aspect of quantitative measurement, and includes typological, thetic and modal information about time. Numerous examples from various textual domains such as poetry, historiography, science and law illustrate the wide applicability of the proposed analytical categories. The full matrix of dimensions and determinative functions can be used to describe the chronographic signature of a text, which depends as much on its communicative purpose as on the technologies of calculating and describing time available to its authors.

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Various attempts have been made to systematize fundamental patterns of temporal organization and to establish links between these patterns and natural and cultural evolution. This paper compares three pertinent theories of time in the light of evidence from Japanese cultural history: the hierarchical theory of time by J. T. Fraser, the fourfold paradigm of time imageries by Y. Maki, and the social learning theory of time by G. Dux. It demonstrates that the “canonical forms of time” established by these authors can be brought into meaningful conversation with each other and that they suggest helpful methodologies for the analysis of temporal perspectives in Japanese history. At the same time, comparative analysis reveals reasons for caution against simplified evolutionary accounts of cultural history. From very early on, Japanese literary sources evince an acute consciousness of conflicting temporalities. At the same time, there is no unified “Japanese concept of time”—neither trans-historically nor at any given period.

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