The Confucian turn | In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early—Modern Japan, 1582-1860 | Oxford Academic

The Confucian turn | In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early—Modern Japan, 1582-1860 | Oxford Academic

In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early—Modern Japan, 1582-1860

Richard Bowring

Contents

1. Front Matter
2. Part I 1582–1680
   • 1 From Hideyoshi to Ietsuna
   • 2 The fate of Christianity
   • 3 Creating a new order
   • 4 The Confucian turn
     • 4.1 Early interest in Cheng-Zhu thought
     • 4.2 The Great learning and its importance
     • 4.3 Fujiwara Seika
     • 4.4 ‘Manifesting luminous virtue’ and ‘Having affection for the people’
     • 4.5 ‘Resting in the utmost good’
     • 4.6 The Hayashi lineage
   • 5 Two individualists
   • 6 The Way of the Kami
   • 7 The Way of the Warrior
   • 8 The Way of Man
3. Part II 1680–1786
4. Part III 1786–1860
5. End Matter
6. ====
   4 The Confucian turn

• 4.1 Early interest in Cheng-Zhu thought
• 4.2 The Great learning and its importance
• 4.3 Fujiwara Seika
• 4.4 ‘Manifesting luminous virtue’ and ‘Having affection for the people’
• 4.5 ‘Resting in the utmost good’
• 4.6 The Hayashi lineage

The Confucian turn

Abstract
This chapter discusses the introduction of Song Neo-Confucian thought into Japan, concentrating on the role played by former Buddhists such as Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan. Particular attention is paid to the metaphysics and the main tenets as expounded in the Great Learning as interpreted by the Song scholar Zhu Xi. 

It is with Seika that we find expressed the ideal social organization of ‘samurai-scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant’ that became the prism through which many saw themselves during this period. Reality was, of course, far messier. The chapter ends with a discussion of the links between the scholarly Hayashi family and the shogunate, and the early attempts by Hayashi Razan himself to find an accommodation between Neo-Confucianism on the one hand and Shinto on the other.
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6 The Way of the Kami

• 6.1 The politics of Shintō
• 6.2 The situation in Mito and Okayama
• 6.3 A Shintō–Confucian synthesis
• 6.4 Yamazaki Ansai
• 6.5 Kaibara Ekiken and Shintō

6 The Way of the Kami 

Richard Bowring

Abstract

This chapter deals with the politics of religion in the early years of the Tokugawa period. It does so by taking up two very different examples, one in the domain of Mito and the other in the Okayama domain. In the former, Buddhist temples were rationalized in order to save both money and space and we see the first attempts to clarify the distinction between Buddhism and Shintō, which had up to that point been inextricably intertwined. This process went much further in Okayama, although in neither case was the attempt really successful. The main aim of the chapter, however, is to analyse the unusual phenomenon of arguments in favour of a synthesis between Shintō and Confucianism. This had already begun with the work of Hayashi Razan but was further developed by Yamazaki Ansai, whose influence proved to be crucial and long-lasting.

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7 The Way of the Warrior

• 7.1 Whither the samurai?
• 7.2 Yamaga Sokō
• 7.3 Rejecting Cheng-Zhu thought
• 7.4 The Way of the Warrior

7 The Way of the Warrior 

Richard Bowring

 

Abstract

This chapter discusses the very different role of the Confucian scholar in China, Korea, and Japan. At its core is the work of Yamaga Sokō and his invention of the Way of the Warrior (shidō) as part of the process by which the fighting man was tamed and given a role as leader in a time of peace. Military values were transformed into examples of upright behaviour expected of a ruling class. Although much of this was expressed in Confucian terms, Sokō took issue with the more egalitarian aspects of Song Confucianism (in particular the work of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi) and argued for a much more authoritarian approach. This was just one of the many ways in which the Japanese were forced to adapt a foreign ideology to their own ends.

Keywords: Yamaga Sokō, meaning of the term ‘samurai’, role of Confucian scholars, bureaucratization, Akō domain, military values, rejecting Zhu Xi

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