Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 3

Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 30 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D © 2023 Global Journals “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”: Popular Ethics in Edo Period Japan engagements. 34 For his unifying efforts, Ansai was proclaimed a Suika by Koretaru (1671; Sui “to come down; prophecy”; ka “increase of divine blessings”). He was now revered as a living kami , and became head priest of his own sect, Suika Sh into which blended Shinto and Confucian teachings. 35 b) It ō Jinsai (1627–1705) This school, which was based in Kyoto, provided one of the first sparks of Japano-centric teaching that would be fueled by “ancient learning” and more fully explored under the guise of National Learning. Although also located in Kyoto, It ō Jinsai, the son of a merchant, did not study the ancients for the purpose of supporting Tokugawan Neo-Confucianism nor Shintoism. He developed the “hall to study ancient truthfulness” (the Kogid ō ). His school, in which over a thousand scholars from various social backgrounds and regions studied, was located across the Horikawa River from the school of Yamazaki Ansai. In contradistinction to Ansai, It ō incorporated poetry within philosophical enquiry since he valued the expression of human emotion (the Confucian “subjective” emphasis). It ō ’s approach is situated within the larger category of “ancient learning” called the Kogaku school which were led by Yamaga Sok ō (1622–1685) and Ogy ū Sorai (1666–1728). In time It ō came to some fundamental disagreements with Neo-Confucianism. The Zhu Xi school worked with the assumption that human nature is inherently good. It ō disagreed and postulated instead that humans have the potential to become good. He envisioned that it was the practice of morality in daily life experiences that allowed one to realize the potential for goodness. Najita claims that “No thinker in Tokugawa intellectual history is more pivotal than It ō Jinsai in articulating a broad historicist philosophy that endorsed ‘active life’— sei-sei— over the certitude of ‘death’— shi . This historicist philosophy allowed commoners to 34 Ansai approvingly cites Zhu Xi’s valuation of the sages of antiquity (in Zoku Yamazaki Ansai zensh ū , vol. 3, pp. 1–5 Zhu Xi, Wenji 74:18a; WTdB): “I [Zhu] have observed that the sages and worthies of antiquity taught people to pursue learning with one intention only, to make students understand the meaning of moral principle through discussion so that they can cultivate their own persons and then extend it [moral principle] to others. The sages and worthies did not wish them merely to memorize texts or compose poetry and essays as a means of gaining fame or seeking office. Students today obviously do the contrary. All the methods that the sages and worthies used in teaching people are found in the classics. Dedicated scholars should by all means read them frequently, ponder them deeply, and then inquire into them and sift them.” Cited by Mary Evelyn Tucker, “Kaibura Ekken” in Sources of Japanese Tradition: 160 –2000 , Vol. 2 (2 nd ed.; Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann., eds.; New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) 254– 67, esp. 254. 35 Yusa, Japanese Religious Traditions , 84. conceptualize new relational ‘engagements’ in the fixed social order.” 36 These new relational engagements empowered merchants and other commoners to find ideological virtue in their daily work and lives. It ō di sa greed with the Neo-Confucian view that moral value was intrinsically tied to a social hierarchy that is fixed by cosmology. He separated “moral action in the context of community from political action in the public realm.” 37 empowered ‘engagement’ with, rather than ‘separation’ from, social reality. Society itself was to be accepted as it is, as moral space, rather than the source of endless pain, suffering, and change…It ō ’s historicism does not point to antiquarianism but to active interaction in each particular, existential, historical reality, however humble in outward appearance, as the continuing universal moral present. History, in short, is transformed into an ongoing human field of moral potential. As a result, he focused his scholarly attention upon the era prior to 221 BCE, that is, before the centralized social hierarchies of imperial dynasties. It was in that ancient universe that he tried to find articulations of universal human moral potential. His resultant historicist approach 38 c) Ogy ū Sorai (1666–1728) Although Ansai’s program met with some regional success, especially in Kyoto, it was the teaching of Ogy ū Sorai, which built upon It ō ’s insights, that solidified the rise of popular ethics throughout Japan through a direct challenge to Tokugawan Neo-Confucianism. Sorai philosophically disconnected political and social realities from their metaphysical underpinnings. In his “discrimination” of the way, Bend ō , Sorai argued for the utilitarian nature of ethics. He suggested that ethics were “not timeless norms but practical rules formulated in time to provide regularity and predictability to social existence.” 39 state succinctly the inevitability and justifiability of hierarchy, of structural arrangements as they have come to be at that particular juncture in history; the physical context within which the events of history occur; and the natural fate of one’s social existence, of being locked into class at birth…the eighteenth century witnessed an unmistakable Philosophical differences aside, both Ansai and Sorai still subscribed to natural law as the basis for socio-political forms. This served to 36 Tetsuo Najita, Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: The Kaitokud ō Merchant Class in Osaka (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 26. 37 Najita, Visions of Virtue , 65. Tsuchihashi followed on from It ō ’s historicism and drew upon Miwa Shissai in prioritizing moral purpose over against questions of administrative efficiency. Where the two competed, education of commoners became a more important value than simply maintaining a hierarchically based virtue system. Tsuchihashi “through the mediation of Miwa’s idealism, [createad] a sharper and more coherent focus on the meaning of goodness. It is specifically to alleviate the suffering of commoners in concrete and charitable ways” (Ibid., 65). 38 Najita, Visions of Virtue , 28. 39 Najita, “Method and Analysis,” 9.