THE ADOPTION AND ADAPTATION OF NEO‑CONFUCIANISM IN JAPAN: THE ROLE OF FUJIWARA SEIKA AND HAYASHI RAZAN BY W.J. BOOT >>> VERSION 3.0 <<< © W.J. Boot, Leiderdorp Printed: Leiden, December 1992 Revised: Leiderdorp, August 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE 1 INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER I : THEORIES AND CONTENTIONS CONCERNING THE RISE OF NEO‑CONFUCIANISM IN THE BEGINNING OF THE EDO PERIOD 13 A. The discovery of Confucianism 14 1. Fujiwara Seika and Kang Hang 14 2. The Seika Legend 35 B. The Line of Succession 49 Kan Tokuan 49 Nawa Kassho 51 Hori Kyōan 53 Matsunaga Sekigo 53 Hayashi Razan 56 CHAPTER II : THE SOURCES OF THE NEW CONFUCIANISM 69 A. The Middle Ages 69 1. Shōmono 70 Daxüe 72 Zhongyong 74 Lunyu 76 Mengzi 78 2. Printed works 81 3. Evaluation 83 4. Conclusions 95 B. The Bunroku‑Keichō Period (1592‑1614) 98 1. Korean influences 99 Conclusions 117 2. The education of Razan 119 3. Evaluation and conclusions 131 CHAPTER III : THE DOCTRINES 138 A. Fujiwara Seika 142 1. The doctrine 146 2. Conclusions 167 B. Hayashi Razan 174 1. The Doctrine 175 2. Conclusions 203 APPENDIX : On Qi 212 APPENDIX : On Ling 215 CHAPTER IV : CONFUCIANISM AND THE BAKUFU 220 Nakae Tōju 250 Serving the bakufu 260 Conclusions 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY 302 PREFACE This is a new version of the text of the dissertation I defended in Leiden on January 19, 1983. Over the last few years I have retyped the original text, because the original version, composed on an Apple‑II, proved to be unusable and inconvertible. My intention was to retype the text as it was originally published, but this turned out to be impossible. I could not refrain from changing the wording and correcting the more egregious mistakes, and from taking into account some books that appeared after I have finished the original. This explains the intrusion of references to works that were published in 1982 or later, e.g. the translation of Kanyangnok that appeared in the Tōyō Bunko and Gernet’s Chine et Christianisme. Basically, however, the text is the same as that of the original dissertation. I have decided to make the text available in this form, first, because I intend to make a thorough revision of the whole book, taking into account the recent publications of Herman Ooms and Watanabe Hiroshi, to name only a few of the studies that have appeared in recent years, and rechecking all the translations and references. The second reason is that every now and then colleagues ask me for a copy of the original publication. Since at the time I had only 150 copies printed, these can no longer be obtained. Making the text available in this form is the next best thing, until I have completed the second revised edition. Leiden, December 1992 On the occasion of this digital publication of my thesis I have again made a number of corrections. Perfection is only approached asymptotically. I have also changed the Chinese transcription from Wade-Giles to Pinyin, and turned the endnotes into footnotes. The characters are provided at the first occasion when a name or title appear, or, when appropriate, in the bibliography. As the document can be searched, the index could be dispensed with, together with the references to the original edition. This digital edition should therefore be regarded as Version 3.0. Leiderdorp, August 2013 2 INTRODUCTION The present book is structured around the proposition, a well‑known and ancient one, that Neo‑Confucianism in Japan began with Fujiwara Seika, that Hayashi Razan was Seika’s most important disciple, and that Razan was hired by the bakufu as its Confucian ideologist. I am well aware that the status of this proposition, at least amongst specialist in the field, is rather low, and thatinrecentyearsseveralscholarshavequeriedor disproved parts of it.1 However, the proposition offers an interesting and, in my opinion, valid angle of approach for the study of the first beginnings of Neo‑Confucianism in Japan, and of its proponents Seika and Razan. The main interest of the proposition is that it offers — or pretends to offer — a solution for three problems that must be settled before one can embark on further studies of the intellectual history of the Tokugawa period. These problems concern the time of the introduction of Neo‑Confucianism, the nature of the Neo-Confucianism that was introduced, and the way in which it functioned in its social and political context. According to the proposition Neo‑Confucianism began with Fujiwara Seika. As it is commonly understood, this means the Neo‑Confucianism was introduced in the last decade of the sixteenth or the first of the seventeenth century. Both during the Edo period and later many scholar have tried to explain “why this should be so.” Their explanations fall into two main categories, one of which is the availability of new sources 1 For details, cf. Ch. I, n. 1. Here I will confine myself to one quotation, from an article by Ishida Ichirō ("Tokugawa hōken shakai to Shushi‑gakuha no shisō," 1962), that gives the proposition more or less in full: In the beginning of the Tokugawa period Confucianism, or, more specifically, the schools of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, tried to take over the role of a theology (shingaku) in the formation and preservation of the new feudal society, instead of creeds like Buddhism, “Tentō,” or Christianity. However, it seems that the school of Wang Yangming could not faithfully discharge the role that the new feudal order required of it. ... It is a historical fact, deserving our attention, that, on the other hand, ever since the beginning of the bakufu, the school of Zhu Xi worked loyally in support of the policies of the bakufu and the fiefs. Tokugawa Ieyasu first invited Fujiwara Seika. Seika had originally been a monk of the Five Monasteries, but after he had come into contact with Keian’s Japanese explanation of the commentaries of Zhu Xi he had immersed himself in the study of Zhu Xi's teachings. Eventually he had returned to the lay‑state, and he exerted himself to liberate Zhu Xi‑ism from Buddhism. Subsequently Ieyasu appointed Seika’s disciple Hayashi Razan, and put him in charge of civil affairs (bunji wo tsukasadorashimeta)(pp. 72‑73). We may not overlook, that in their essence the teachings of Zhu Xi‑ism agreed with the structure and spirit of the feudal system of the Edo period and supported it. By its very nature, a feudal system demands intellectual uniformity. But this certainly does not mean that it is a matter of indifference, which "thought" becomes the standard of unification. The fact that one teaching, over such a long period of time, became interwoven so deeply with all areas of life, cannot have been the result of a fortuitous union; it must have been due to mutual sympathy and response (ibid., p. 75). 3 (i.e. “books from China”), and the other, the establishment of the Tokugawa realm of peace. The first explanation we find mentioned several times in Edo sources, and has recently been greatly developed by Abe Yoshio.2 In his theory Abe emphasizes the sudden availability of Korean (not Chinese) books, and argues that the rise of Neo‑Confucian studies was linked causally to the introduction of Korean Neo‑Confucian works into Japan as a result of the invasions of Korea that took place in the 1590’s. Abe’s theory is discussed in Chapter II.B of this study; for the reasons stated there, I cannot consider his theory as proven or even as plausible, though it might be allowed to live on in an attenuated form, i.e. that a number of Korean Neo-Confucian works were brought to Japan in these years, that Seika and Razan had read these works, and that they had some knowledge of Korean Neo‑Confucian debate during the Yi Dynasty. The other explanation, which considers the rise of Neo-Confucian studies in relation to the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, has always enjoyed great popularity. In the older Edo sources (introduced in the second part of Chapter I) it generally took the form of the assertion that the peace brought by the Tokugawa had been responsible for a flourishing of the literary arts, and therefore of Neo-Confucian studies. In consideration of the fact that one of the Neo-Confucian patriarchs, Hayashi Razan, had been employed by the bakufu, it was further developed into the assertion that the bakufu had taken a positive interest in Neo-Confucianism and used it to establish its rule of peace. This development of the original assertion in its turn led to the idea, postulated by some modem scholars (e.g. Ishida Ichirō and Maruyama Masao), that a “compatibility” existed between Neo-Confucianism and the social and political structure of Tokugawa Japan. Such a “compatibility,” however, did not exist. The feudal society that developed in Japan was quite different from that of China, both the contemporary China and that of Zhou or Song times. The other argument, namely that Neo-Confucianism was “used” because it favours the preservation of the status quo, is also not valid. Neo-Confucianism is primarily concerned with the ends and means of individual self-cultivation, and its most important political demand is that administrative offices be filled with those who have succeeded in cultivating themselves. Depending on the circumstances, this can 2 See especially his Nihon Shushigaku to Chōsen (1965). 4 become a highly explosive doctrine. Such essentially egalitarian demands stood not the slightest chance of being met in feudal Japan, where every office tended to become hereditary, and where no amount of education or self-cultivation would ever help one to cross the social barriers laid down by birth and family affiliation.