EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 Tokugawa Intellectual History

EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 others see man as the bearer of values Tokugawa Intellectual History: largely determined by or responsive to State of the Field economic, social and political influences; others, as a being in quest of spiritual goals; yet others, as the decentered ©James McMullen, Oxford University participant in a linguistically constructed world with which their own relationship is I at best problematic. This diversity means that scholars have tended not infrequently Tokugawa intellectual history has been either to talk past each other, or to write called “one of the liveliest and most virulently partisan, indeed sectarian, interesting” branches of the study of Japan reviews of each others’ work. in America. 1 The claim was made by The strength of Yamashita’s survey lies Samuel Yamashita in a spirited and precisely in his attempt to encompass a accessible article, “Reading the New very heterogeneous body of work within a Tokugawa Intellectual Histories”. broad overview. He set his subject, Yamashita’s essay surveyed publications moreover, in the wider context of recent between 1979 and 1992. In this sense, European and American thinking on much of the ground for the present essay intellectual history. He has, one might say, has already been covered. Yet even a attempted an intellectual history of modest attempt to update a survey of Tokugawa intellectual history. Yamashita Tokugawa intellectual history remains a found that the field was indeed burgeoning, challenge. Of all fields, intellectual history for reasons that apply a fortiori to the seems to exhibit the broadest range of present. He noted the revival of interest methods and approaches. The very concept among Japanese scholars after a long post- of “intellectual history” differs radically war period of neglect, the publication in among its practitioners. It ranges from Japan of extensive series devoted to conventional intellectual biography, thought, and the vigor of American through historical sociology in the grand scholars, as expressed in a series of Weberian manner, to postmodernist conferences. Against this background, explorations of the relation of language to Yamashita divided the scholarship of this reality. The understanding of man in period into four main “interpretive communities”, a concept derived from society that informs the field is also 3 contested. Some writers adhere to a Stanley Fish. These communities are: the common-sense, “objectivist” 2 approach; “modernization school”; the school of William Theodore de Bary; the “new intellectual historians”; and, though he 1 writes of just one exemplar, “the Samuel Hideo Yamashita, “Reading the postmodern theorists”. Yamashita’s own New Tokugawa Intellectual Histories”, Journal sympathies seemed to incline towards the of Japanese Studies, 22:1 (Winter, 1996): 1. An last two mentioned. But he found both useful earlier survey of the field that paid merit and demerit in each of the four attention particularly to Japanee scholarship, is Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi's review artticle, “Early-Modern Japanese Confucianism: The Gyōza-Manjū Controversy”, in Sino-Japanese 3 Ibid., 4; for further discussion, see Janine Studies Newsletter, 1:1 (November, 1988): 10-23. Sawada, “Tokugawa Religious History: 2 The expression “objectivist” is used by Studies in Western Languages, 1980-2000,” Yamashita, ibid., 13. below. 22 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 approaches. “None”, he wrote emolliently, have been overly influenced by H.D. “is intrinsically closer to an imagined Harootunian’s ill-judged review of 1990, historical reality or inherently more which charged Nakai with “rigid truthful than any other. In fact, each of commitment to a normative course that these strategies configures as well as had been supplied by modernization theory disfigures the Tokugawa material”.4 years ago”.8 Yamashita’s classification has a certain Rather few scholars balance high cogency, and can even be linked to the methodological sophistication with institutional setting of the field in the rigorous study of the primary sources for United States. He is above all concerned the period. All too often, there is an inverse with method and intellectual pedigree. He relationship between theoretical bravura is most instructive where, as with the “new and textual thoroughness. Yamashita’s intellectual historians”, he can link the sympathies are confirmed by a perhaps method to the work of historians writing unconscious betrayal of the standards that on Europe and America. At the same time, most empirically orientated scholars would his article is also both provocative and accept as de rigueur. Writing of the work of eccentric. It has several weaknesses, which Kate Nakai and of Bob T. Wakabayashi, he seem to derive partly at least from its praises their method in startling terms. author’s theoretical leanings. First, the Both should be congratulated for modernization category is too inclusive. It reading their sources in the original incorporates historical sociology, like the kanbun or bungotai form, for with the now classic work of Robert Bellah5 with its writings of leading Tokugawa thinkers now explicit concern with the resources that available in modern Japanese, it is predisposed Japan to rapid modernization. tempting to use these more accessible and But, with less obvious justification, it readable versions. Both also made good includes a historian of education such as use of the relevant secondary literature in Richard Rubinger, 6 together with highly Japanese, and to their credit acknowledge focused monographs on particular their debts.9 historical figures. The principal exemplar In a field where the original language is in the latter category was Kate Nakai’s the very stuff on which interpretation is study of Arai Hakuseki’s political career, based, Yamashita’s wording suggests that Shogunal Politics. 7 This work, however, it is especially laudable to consult the was, at most, incidentally and tangentially original texts. This implies expectations of concerned with the causes of the scholarly practice that would be Restoration, let alone the broader theme of unacceptable in the intellectual history of modernization. Here, Yamashita seems to other cultures. Yamashita does, it is true, allude to problems concerning accuracy of 4 reading and translation when reporting Yamashita, 46. the review literature on the work of the 5 Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The “new intellectual historians”. None the less, Values of Pre-Industrial Japan (Glencoe, Ill.: his sympathy with the theoreticians The Free Press, 1957). 6 appears to incline him to sweep disciplined Richard Rubinger, Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 7 Kate Wildman Nakai, Shogunal Politics: 8 H.D. Harootunian, Review of Shogunal Arai Hakuseki and the Premises of Tokugawa Politics, Journal of Japanese Studies, 16:1 Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University (Winter, 1990): 160. Press, 1988). 9 Yamashita, 10-11. 23 EARLY MODERN JAPAN SPRING, 2002 linguistic understanding of primary source form; it retains longueurs in the form of material under the carpet.10 excessively long passages of translation A further eccentricity was that the which, while they help establish the survey addressed only “American” author’s bona fides as a researcher, make scholarship. It is perhaps one thing to for hard reading. None the less, Boot’s restrict such a survey to English language work forms an admirable counterpoint in publications. Regrettably, few have ready method and findings to Herman Ooms’s access to the relevant scholarship written Tokugawa Ideology, reviewed by in other languages, such as German, Yamashita. Boot scrupulously analyses the French, Chinese or Russian. Nor would mainly kanbun primary documentation one wish to deny that America leads the concerned with the early phases of the way; outside Japan, the field is most Neo-Confucian movement in the Tokugawa vigorous in the United States. Nonetheless, period. His work exhibits an exemplary a significant contribution is made by and, indeed, timeless critical thoroughness. scholars writing in English outside that The scholarly community needs such country. After all, the main scholarly works of caution and integrity, just as it journals in Japanese Studies are genuinely needs the stimulus of works of abstraction international. A book written by a and theory. Japanese for an English language Omitted, too, from Yamashita’s survey readership may be reviewed in an were two books of non-American American journal by a Dutch scholar also authorship that dealt with two of the most writing in English. Yamashita’s apparently original and difficult Tokugawa thinkers, self-imposed restriction means that his both influencd by Dutch studies, the survey is incomplete and unbalanced. materialist Miura Baien and the Oddly in a scholar sensitized to the antinomian Andō Shōeki. The New subtleties of power, he seems to constitute Zealand scholar, Rosemary Mercer’s Deep his own hegemonic discourse, to indulge in Words: Miura Baien’s System of Natural what, facetiously to borrow the language of Philosophy, a Translation and critical theory, might be called the Philosophical Commentary, 13 follows a “discursive exclusion of the pattern common in the field: an heterogeneous”. 11 His survey omits a introduction followed by translations from number of works of quiet but real scholarly Baien’s work. What distinguishes this book value. Thus 1992 saw a reissue of W.J. is that, unusually in the field of

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