Confucian philosophy, Japanese

Confucian philosophy is said to have arrived in Japan as early as the third century AD, but it did not become a subject of meaningful scholarly inquiry until the seventh century. The ‘Confucianism' to which Japanese elites and scholars were first attracted represented fields of knowledge concerned more with ontology and divination than with social ethics and politics. Because of the priority given to birth over talent in official appointments, Confucianism in Japan remained more a gentlemanly accomplishment and never approached the status it had in China, where mastery of its teachings represented a gateway to officialdom. Intellectually, Confucian philosophy was overshadowed both in Japan and on the continent at this time by the teachings of Buddhism, which provided answers both to spiritual and metaphysical concerns. Confucianism in China was refashioned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by a number of scholars, of whom Zhu Xi was the most prominent. He revised the curriculum, restored social and ethical concerns to positions of centrality within the tradition and formulated a new rationalistic ontology. His teachings won a broad following among intellectuals in China and eventually earned the government's endorsement as the official interpretation for China's examination system. From the seventeenth century onwards, Zhu Xi's teachings reached a comparably distinguished position within scholarly circles in Japan, though the government's endorsement of the Hayashi family as official interpreters of Zhu Xi's teachings was the limit of the official authorization of that philosophy in Japan. Though the idealistic Wang Yangming school challenged Zhu Xi's teachings in Japan as it had in China, the more effective challenge was mounted by the classicist teachings known as Ancient Studies. These scholars, of whom the best known was Ogy? Sorai, sought the ‘true message of the sages' by emphasizing direct study of the ancient core texts of Confucianism rather than the exegesis on those classics by Zhu Xi and others. Confucian philosophy contributed to the rationalism, humanism, ethnocentrism and ‘historical mindedness' of Tokugawa Japan. The teachings were also responsible for changing fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions, while also opening intellectual circles to unprecedented pluralism and diversity. Towards the end of the Tokugawa period in the mid-nineteenth century, Confucian philosophy (particularly in the variety fashioned by Wang Yangming) also provided inspiration and justification for those activist reformers who succeeded in overthrowing the old order. During the modern period, Confucian philosophy has been identified with the Tokugawa tradition which has been at times idealized and and at other times vilified. Nonetheless, a number of the assumptions central to Confucian philosophy continue to characterize much popular and intellectual thought in contemporary Japan, as well as those ethics that tend to be most admired, even though actual knowledge of Confucian philosophy does not appear to be widespread any longer in Japan. 1 Confucian philosophy in early Japan The earliest extant Japanese histories record that in AD 285 - the actual date was probably a century or so later - Wani, of the Korean kingdom of Paekche, brought copies of the Analects (Lunyu; in Japanese, Rongo) of Confucius and the Qianziwen (Thousand Character Classic; Senjimon in Japanese) from Korea to Japan ( Confucian philosophy, Korean). Even though most scholarship on Japan tends to identify this introduction of Confucian texts with the introduction of Confucian philosophy, it is nonetheless clear that immigrants from China and Korea who were familiar with the Confucian classics surely preceded the gift of these texts and probably themselves represent the actual introduction of Confucianism to Japan. Confucianism does not appear to have provoked the same measure of suspicion or antagonism as other forms of continental East Asian civilization being introduced to Japan at this time, and the fact that Japanese interest in Confucianism continued to grow is suggested by the arrival in the sixth century of authorities from Paekche on the Confucian classics. Thereafter, with the coincident introduction of Buddhism (also from Korea), Confucian philosophy came to be regarded in Japan as one component of the richly variegated culture and civilization of continental East Asia, both of which were increasingly welcomed and responsible for major changes in Japan. The ‘Confucianism' to which Japanese elites were first exposed, however, was not the ethical socio-political teaching represented by texts like the Analects or the Mengzi ( Confucius; Mencius) which were not at that time regarded as the core of the tradition. Instead, this early continental Confucianism represented the elaboration of metaphysical and cosmological constructions dating from Han dynasty China (206 BC- AD 220) ( Chinese philosophy). According to these teachings, an emperor was the supreme Son of Heaven whose correct performance of his role as an intermediary between Heaven above and Earth below was essential to the harmonious processes of the cosmos ( Tian). According to this doctrine human responsibilities lay principally in the area of governmental administration, which if properly executed would then ensure that everything from seasonal change to plentiful harvest would contribute to terrestrial well-being, and of course the greatest responsibility thus rested with those in the highest positions. Accordingly, those in Japan who aspired to a more powerful Chinese-style imperial institution often invoked these claims to further their own interests. Further, by positing the interrelatedness of all phenomena in the human realm with those of the celestial and terrestrial realms, this early form of Confucianism also taught that an understanding of the whole might be inferred from an understanding of individual particulars, and so it came to include such divinatory exercises as geomancy, astrology and numerology. These too enjoyed considerable appeal in Japan. However, because long-standing aristocratic principles in Japan gave priority to pedigree over either virtue or administrative performance, Japanese Confucianism differed from that on the continent by marginalizing both discussion of imperial virtue as it was believed to promote effective government, and assessment of administrative performance as it was likewise believed to entitle one to career advancement. Thus, it was characteristic in Japan before the seventeenth century to consult ‘Confucian' philosophy on such matters as determining auspicious dates or sites for important events or constructions, but only rarely does one find meaningful engagement of Confucian wisdom on how best to order the affairs of human beings or the state. One example of this peripheral role for Confucian philosophy may be discerned in Japan's first important statement of goals for the polity in terms of the new political thought from the continent, the so-called ‘Seventeen Article Constitution' of 604. In this document, its author Prince Sh?toku exhorts Japanese leaders to accept the continental imperial principle using references to Confucianism as only one possible source of justification, with other often more persuasive arguments drawn from such alternative forms of thought as Buddhism and Legalism ( Sh?toku Constitution). Buddhism in Japan, as in China, succeeded in preempting Confucian claims to authority in the realm of governance by itself asserting its role in ‘protecting' the government from both natural and supernatural threats ( Buddhist philosophy, Chinese). This, however, did not prevent Confucianism from making contributions in other areas. For example, one may discern the influence of Confucian philosophy in the seventh- and eighth-century impulse to record Japanese history for posterity, and it is clear that the early refashioning of the previously oral historical tradition sought to depict at least some emperors in the classic guise of benevolent Confucian-style monarchs. These earliest histories in Japan, however, did not reflect certain other perhaps more fundamental Confucian historiographical principles, such as the notion of dynastic change, the Mandate of Heaven as conferred upon those whose virtue entitles them to rule, and historical evidence of Heaven's rewarding the rectification of names whereby responsibilities were expected to conform to title and position. Further, from time to time as during the reigns of Emperors Daigo (897-930) and Murakami (946-67), Confucianism did receive attention at the imperial court, but such occasions were the exception rather than the rule. Despite the fact that Confucian texts remained part of the curriculum of those aristocrats who trained for positions in service to the imperial court - positions to which their aristocratic birth gave them first claim - Confucian philosophy per se was quickly subordinated to Buddhism and came to be regarded for the most part as a teaching of only secular value whose larger truths might all be found in more developed fashion within Buddhism. Indeed, when the Buddhist pioneer K?kai sought to represent all religious consciousness in terms of ten stages, he ranked Confucianism near the very bottom and second only to the debased consciousness of animal passions, a perspective that was shared widely during succeeding centuries in Japan. 2 Zhu Xi and the Confucian revival During the eleventh and twelfth centuries in China, where Confucian philosophy had similarly been subordinated to Buddhism, Confucian teachings were revitalized. The curriculum was refashioned to restore the ethical writings of figures like Confucius and his interpreters to a central position, and metaphysical and cosmological teachings were restructured in a manner that undermined Buddhism's heretofore hegemonic claims to authority in those areas. The central figure in this development was Zhu Xi (1130-1200) who, without diminishing his achievement, is often described as having synthesized the teachings of a number of earlier figures including Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, Shao Yong and the brothers Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi. Zhu Xi understood the world to be constructed of a combination of principle (li; in Japanese, ri) and material force (qi; in Japanese, ki). Principle, a singular term which included both natural and moral principles, has ontological priority over material force and is complete, unchanging, eternal and good. Material force, by contrast, represents the physical stuff of the universe, is changeable, and contains both good and bad elements ( Qi). Together, principle and material force were thus seen by Zhu Xi as comprising the entire physical universe and as operating according to the same rhythms of change and stasis that govern the cosmos. Within human beings, according to Zhu Xi, principle corresponds to one's original nature (benran zhi xing; in Japanese, honzen no sei), or in other words, that disposition which humans share at the moment of birth and which is likewise naturally and equally good among all people ( Xing). Similarly, in humans material force is represented by one's specific nature (qizhi zhi xing; in Japanese, kishitsu no sei), that disposition which is specific to oneself and which varies in its turbidity from one person to the next. Under ideal circumstances when one's emotions are not aroused to excess, one can respond naturally to one's original nature and one's behaviour accordingly will seemingly spontaneously conform to correct norms. At other times, however, one's emotions and desires are agitated to the extent that they interfere with the ability to respond to others with goodness or in a humane manner. Thus the key to goodness, Zhu Xi taught, was learning how to still one's specific nature so that one's original nature might be manifested in all its excellence. This exercise in turn can be facilitated by either of two ways: first, one can study the external world in order to discern the role of principle within it, recognizing that by apprehending truths concerning principle in the world, one has likewise learned something about one's original nature; alternatively, one may cultivate the quality of seriousness (qing; in Japanese, kei) through such practices as quiet sitting or study of the canonical literature, thereby learning how to still one's potentially disruptive emotional excesses. This twofold praxis gave Zhu Xi's philosophy both intellectually and spiritually compelling properties. These teachings, often styled ‘neo-Confucianism' in European and North American scholarship, reached Japan in the thirteenth century, but aside from a brief period of vogue at the imperial court of Emperors Hanazono (1308-18) and Godaigo (1318- 39), they were taught almost exclusively in Zen monasteries and hence were not regarded as a subject for serious study independent from Buddhism. Such practises as Confucian quiet sitting were thus represented in the monasteries as simply less well-developed versions of such Zen teachings as ‘sitting in meditation' (zazen). Thus, even though Confucian texts were also included in the curriculum of the Ashikaga gakk? (academy) at which scions of this distinguished family trained for service in the bakufu (central government), the teachings had the status more of one of the polite gentlemanly accomplishments than that of political philosophy with its own intellectual integrity. The contrast with the continent could not in this respect have been much greater, for there Zhu Xi's teachings were at the root of a radical change in both ontology and epistemology from a fundamentally Buddhist orientation to one which was grounded in Confucianism ( Neo-Confucian philosophy). 3 Tokugawa Confucianism The relatively low regard in which Confucian philosophy was held in Japan prior to the seventeenth century changed during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Spurred on the one hand by the arrival of new Confucian texts from Korea as part of the booty from Japan's unsuccessful invasion of that country, and on the other hand by the Tokugawa government's eventual understanding of the utility of secular ideology in bolstering its claims to legitimate rule, Confucian teachings for the first time in Japan enjoyed the status of an independent subject of scholarly inquiry. Recent scholarship has demonstrated, however, that Confucianism's displacement of Buddhism's hegemony in these areas was a somewhat slower process than had previously been understood, and required the better part of a century to accomplish. A pioneering figure in this development was Fujiwara Seika (1561-1617), a former Zen priest who became fascinated with the rich diversity of continental Confucian philosophy reflected in the newly imported texts. Seika was attracted to and taught doctrines from a broad range of Chinese and Korean Confucian scholars, including those who challenged the authority of Zhu Xi's teachings. It was Seika's disciple Hayashi Razan (1583-1657) who, by contrast, became an early champion of the version represented by the teachings of Zhu Xi. Since these teachings had been sanctioned in China since the early fourteenth century as the correct interpretation for the official state-sponsored exams, they were essential to the curriculum of all who aspired to government service in China, and if anything they enjoyed even greater favour among aristocratic and official elites in Korea ( Confucian philosophy, Korean). Hayashi Razan initiated efforts, later continued by his son Hayashi Gah? (1618-80), to win official endorsement of these teachings by Japan's central military government with the Hayashi themselves as the authorized interpreters of this tradition. These efforts bore fruit later when, in 1691, the Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi donated land for the relocation of the Hayashi family's school in Edo (modern Tokyo) and appointed Razan's grandson Hayashi H?k? (1644-1732) as its head, a position that the Hayashi maintained within their family through the remainder of the Tokugawa period. Outside the Hayashi family, Yamazaki Ansai (1618-82) was probably the best known Japanese spokesman for Zhu Xi's teachings. Yamazaki Ansai founded his own school, the Kimon, in which he stressed an uncompromising moral rigour in one's pursuit of sagehood, with particular emphasis on the cultivation of seriousness. Ansai also formulated his own version of Shint? called Suika in which somewhat arbitrary correspondences were drawn between elements in the Confucian metaphysic and Shint? noumena. The Kimon was by far the most successful private academy in Japan devoted to the teachings of Zhu Xi, though Ansai's attempt to reconcile Confucianism with Shint? and his tradition of moralism meant that the academy was never without its share of controversies. Zhu Xi's teachings were responsible in Japan for a complex intellectual legacy which included humanism, rationalism, ethnocentrism and ‘historical mindedness'. The humanism was related to Zhu Xi's conviction that the responsibility for maintaining the delicate balance that lay at the heart of both the individual and the cosmos lay squarely on the shoulders of human beings. The rationalism emerged in response to the Confucian belief that the world and all its phenomena were ultimately understandable, and even though the understandings might vary among Confucian teachers, the mere assumption of intelligibility encouraged a broad range of scholarly enquiries. The ethnocentrism was related to the fact that Confucians in China had traditionally regarded their own heritage and tradition as paramount, and so despite the fact that Confucians in Japan were at times regarded as excessively Sinophilic, Japanese Confucians often manifested patriotic qualities that were in no way secondary to those of their Chinese counterparts. Finally, the historical mindedness derived from the fact that Confucianism taught that all examples or virtue and vice necessary to demonstrate the essentially self-correcting property of historical principles might be found within the copious records of the past. Furthermore, with the ontological and epistemological shift that Confucian philosophy provoked, one observes the transformation of a host of related fields of study of which Shint? provides perhaps the best example ( Shint?). Shint? had heretofore existed in comfortable equilibrium with Buddhism and had reconciled its teachings to Buddhism, but from the very start of the Tokugawa period, and with increasing frequency through the seventeenth century, one observes Shint? scholars seeking to refashion their theologies, dropping Buddhist epistemes and replacing them with Confucian vocabulary and assumptions. Many Confucian scholars in Japan, in particular those identified with the Zhu Xi tradition, were for their part similarly impelled to reconcile the ‘truths' of Confucian philosophy with the traditional spirituality of Shint?. In China the principal challenge within the Confucian tradition to the teachings of Zhu Xi was identified with the teachings of the scholar and celebrated general Wang Yangming (1472-1528) who identified the mind as the seat of original goodness within human beings. His philosophy emphasized what he styled the ‘unity of thought and action' whereby, for example, the concept of filial piety was regarded as the genesis of filial action, and filial action was regarded as the completion of the filial impulse. Further, by emphasizing the mind's intuitive understanding of goodness, Wang Yangming and his followers de-emphasized the study either of texts to glean their truths or the physical world to plumb its principles. This philosophy, known as Y?meigaku (literally ‘Yangming studies') in Japan, had proponents there during the seventeenth century, of whom the two best known were Nakae T?ju (1608-48) and Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91), who was also celebrated as a reformer of the samurai class. Nonetheless, Y?meigaku did not command a large audience in Japan until the closing years of the Tokugawa period when its idealistic orientation proved attractive to a wide range of politically activist reformers. In Japan, however, a more significant Confucian challenge to Zhu Xi's teachings was mounted by those scholars whose teachings are collectively referred to as Ancient Studies (kogaku). Though the various scholars identified with Ancient Studies differed significantly, they shared the premise that if truths representing a Way lay within the core texts of ancient Confucianism, then those truths might be better apprehended through the study of the ancient texts themselves, than by reading the exegesis on those texts written centuries later by scholars like Zhu Xi. Ancient Studies is said to have begun with the writings of Yamaga Sok? (1622-85), who described how he came to understand that his ‘misunderstandings' derived from his reliance on Chinese commentaries, but that once he turned directly to the writings of Confucius and the other ancient sages, he finally understood their message. A similar approach was used by It? Jinsai (1627-1705) and his son It? T?gai (1670-1736) whose school, the Kogid? (Hall of Ancient Meaning), represents the first financially successful private Confucian academy in Japan. The most prominent of the Ancient Studies scholars, however, was Ogy? Sorai (1666-1728). Where other Confucian scholars in Japan had accepted naturalist ontologies and without exception regarded the sage as a figure of great wisdom who discovered the Way and its truths, Ogy? Sorai applied a historicist perspective to this question. Sorai regarded the Way as a ‘comprehensive term' which included those laws, rituals and other practices that ancient rulers invented and applied successfully to rectify the ills of their own ages. If, Sorai argued, the ills of the present are to be similarly rectified, then one must account for the altered circumstances that prevail in another time and place for the application of this redefined ‘Way' to be successful. Further, the manner in which one learns of the ancient Way is through the study of ancient texts in which the Way is encoded, but since the words that comprise those texts have themselves changed over time, Sorai insisted that his students become proficient in historical linguistics. Known as the Ken'en, the Sorai school is believed to have been the most popular of all Confucian schools in Japan through the mid-eighteenth century. Confucian philosophy influenced the Tokugawa polity in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most conspicuous was the tendency within the society to see itself as comprised of four classes with samurai (shi) at the top, followed by agriculturalists, artisans and merchants in that order. Notwithstanding the fact that this ideal came to deviate significantly from the mercantilist realities of urban Japan, this paradigm was of Confucian origin in China and represented the attempt to identify the Japanese samurai class with the scholar-bureaucrat (shi) class of China. Similarly, the study of Confucian philosophy came to be of vocational advantage to samurai who found their martial skills no longer as useful to a society that remained essentially at peace for over two centuries. In this way, many samurai became sufficiently expert in Confucian philosophy to themselves become instructors of the subject within their own private academies. One benefit that Japanese society later derived from this development in the study of Confucian philosophy was a well-developed literate and patriotic managerial class available to serve the nation in its later modernization efforts. Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, there was no academic tension between the study of Confucian philosophy and the study of subject material from the native tradition, but during the eighteenth century, scholars devoted to the study of things Japanese criticized Confucians in Japan for not only neglecting but even harming their own tradition by engaging in the study of a ‘foreign' humanly constructed Way. Notwithstanding that this argument both applied and owed more to the followers of Ogy? Sorai than other Confucian schools, one does observe a new tension between Confucian and nativist pursuits during much of the eighteenth century, a tension which is essentially overcome through the reconvergence of these academic fields during the nineteenth century. The scholars who most successfully represented this synthesis of Confucian and native ideals were largely identified with the Mito domain. The daimy? (or lords) of Mito had aggressively sponsored scholarship on Japanese history and ancient classics since the seventeenth century, devoting as much as one-third of the domain's revenue to sponsored research. As the shortcomings of the Tokugawa state became steadily more apparent, it was Confucian scholars from Mito who sought to identify within the Japanese traditions paradigms of such Confucian virtues as loyalty and filial piety, arguing that the study of Japanese history revealed those virtues to have existed in more persuasive forms in Japan than in China. In the same manner, one can observe within Japanese Confucian philosophy itself the fracturing of Confucianism into competing schools in the eighteenth century, followed by the nineteenth-century resurgence of certain syncretic tendencies within the Confucian tradition. For example, even though the popularity of the various Ancient Studies schools of Confucianism contributed unprecedented pluralism and intellectual vitality to Confucian philosophic circles, the often contentious relations between schools represented a scholarly atmosphere that some regarded as indecorous. Alarmed over what it regarded as an unhealthy degree of intellectual heterodoxy within Confucian circles generally, and the Hayashi school in particular, the Tokugawa government issued a directive in 1790 ordering the head of the Hayashi school to maintain greater fidelity to the teachings of Zhu Xi. This concern with philosophical orthodoxy was, in fact, just one way in which the government at this time was attempting to return to those ‘fundamentals' which it believed to have been responsible for the success of the Tokugawa state in the seventeenth century. Numerous Confucian philosophers of the late Tokugawa regarded what they perceived to be the ills of their age as related on the one hand to this contentious intellectual atmosphere and on the other to an excessive tendency toward activism on the part of other Confucians. These scholars sought solace in and believed that they might affect reform through eclectic approaches to the exegesis of traditional Confucian texts. Their scholarship lacks the vitality of that evidenced within Confucian circles of the first half of the Tokugawa period, and in most studies they have been overshadowed by their more activist contemporaries; yet their scholarship provides compelling evidence of the degree to which Confucian philosophy represented an intellectual sanctuary for many late-Tokugawa intellectuals. 4 Confucianism in modern Japan Confucian philosophy contributed to the rationales used by ideologues who led the Meiji Restoration of 1868. For example, the slogan ‘Loyalty to sovereign (ch?) and filial piety (k?) are one' argued that Confucian loyalty to one's lord, here understood to mean the emperor, was no less fundamental than those Confucian virtues that bound family relationships, of which filial piety was always regarded as the foundational virtue. Similarly, the slogan taigi meibun used Confucian vocabulary to argue that there was a correct fixed position for each person within an essentially immutable social order, and when each person performed their duty the social order was harmonious. Both of these slogans reflect the fact that Confucianism generally appears both during the Meiji Restoration and thereafter primarily in terms of its social and political ethics, with the emphasis on individual duty and responsibility. During the Meiji period, when much that was traditional in nature was overwhelmed by the rapid reforms, Confucian philosophy demonstrated remarkable resiliency as its vocabulary and reasoning were used in various ways to reinforce an understanding of the Japanese polity as a quasi-family state. This is particularly evident in the Imperial Rescript on Education promulgated in 1890 under what is believed to be the influence of the Meiji emperor's Confucian tutor, Motoda Nagazane (1818-91). The Rescript speaks of the Japanese people as subjects who are ‘united in loyalty and filial piety', representing the ‘fundamental character' of the Japanese empire and the foundation of its education. Other Meiji scholars such as Nishimura Shigeki (1828-1902) sought to reconcile the ‘truths' of Confucianism with the ‘truths' of Western culture and civilization, often under one or another variation of the binary theme ‘Eastern ethics and Western science'. Despite the fact that Confucian philosophy has been alternatively vilified in Japan as synonymous with all that is old-fashioned and hence bad, and lionized as embodying all that is noble and of enduring value within the traditional culture, it is evident that a number of assumptions that are characteristic of Confucian ontology and ethics remain widely accepted within present-day Japan. Conspicuous among these are the assumptions that there are enduring metaphysical principles that undergird the physical world, and that these principles have a self-correcting quality. For this reason, a fundamental moral optimism is justified. These principles have an analogue within human beings in the form of an originally good disposition which is instinctively capable of moral and ethical behaviour. Human relations are similarly governed by enduring principles, where these relations tend overwhelmingly to be vertical in character with clear superiors and subordinates. One's most important relationships are those within the family, and it is these domestic relationships that provide the training ground for the more complex relationships one enters into outside the home. Since both the material world and the realm of human society are governed by identical principles, all phenomena and things, all persons and other creatures are interrelated, making it possible to gain insight into the whole from mastery of any of its parts. There are other ways in which Confucian philosophy is said to have contributed its legacy to the intellectual and social fabric of contemporary Japan. Most prominent among these are the assertions that the high value attached to education, the high levels of respect accorded to those in authority, the reverence shown toward one's ancestors and forebears, and the willingness to subordinate one's own interests to the interests of larger collectivities in modern Japan are all attributable to the influence of Confucian philosophy. More recent scholarship, however, has tended to see these tendencies as features that either have antecedents in pre-Confucian times or that can be traced to other influences, though there is broad agreement that Confucian philosophy at the very minimum contributed to the reinforcement of these values, each of which remains prominent in modern Japan.