Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T15:33:14.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Tokugawa Philosophy

A Socio-Historical Introduction

from Part I - The Character of the Early Modern State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

David L. Howell
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

This chapter situates in the social context of Tokugawa Japan the emergence of a class of scholars who engaged in the production of texts and in practices that aimed at developing authoritative inquiries on the nature of reality and the laws that govern it (metaphysics); the motivations, norms, and aims of moral life (ethics); the function and rules of language (philology and linguistics); the principles of good government (politics); and the legitimation of cognitive claims (epistemology), among others. Operating within different institutional frameworks and through texts circulating in a variety of formats (manuscript and printed commentaries, treatises, glossaries, dictionaries, collected lecture notes, etc.), these scholars (generically known as jusha) developed a philosophical archive that should be regarded as a qualitatively and quantitatively unprecedented event in Japanese history outside Buddhist institutions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arima, Sukemasa and Akiyama, Goan, eds. Bushidō kakunshū. Hakubunkan Shinsha, 2012.Google Scholar
Backus, Robert L.The Kansei Prohibition of Heterodoxy and Its Effects on Education.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39, no. 1 (June 1979): 55106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Backus, Robert L.The Relationship of Confucianism to the Tokugawa Bakufu as Revealed in the Kansei Educational Reform.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 34, no. 34 (1974): 97162.Google Scholar
Bellah, Robert. Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Beonio-Brocchieri, Paolo. Religiosità e ideologia alle origini del Giappone modern. Milan: Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1965.Google Scholar
Boot, Willem Jan. “The Adoption and Adaptation of Neo-Confucianism in Japan: The Role of Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan.” DLitt diss., University of Leiden, 1983.Google Scholar
Boot, Willem Jan. “Japanese Poetics and the Kokka hachiron.” Asiatica Venetiana 4 (1999): 2343.Google Scholar
Bowring, Richard. In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Breen, John. “Nativism Restored.” Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 429–40.Google Scholar
Burns, Susan. Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Chibbett, David. A History of Japanese Literature: The First Thousand Years. London: Macmillan Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Collcutt, Martin. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1981.Google Scholar
de Bary, William Theodore, and Bloom, Irene, eds. Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
de Bary, William Theodore, Gluck, Carol, and Tiedemann, Arthur E., eds. 1600 to 2000. Vol. 2 of Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Defoot, Carine. “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate.” Philosophy East and West 51 (2001): 393413.Google Scholar
Elman, Benjamin. A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Feng, Youlan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Translated by Bodde, Derek. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Flueckinger, Peter. Imagining Harmony: Poetry, Empathy, and Community in Mid-Tokugawa Confucianism and Nativism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Fukaya, Katsumi. Edo jidai no mibun ganbō. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2006.Google Scholar
Furuta, Hikaru and Koyasu, Nobukuni, eds. Nihon shisōshi tokuhon. Tōyō Keizai Shinbunsha, 2006.Google Scholar
Godart, Gerard Clinton. “‘Philosophy’ or ‘Religion’? The Confrontation with Foreign Categories in Late Nineteenth Century Japan.” Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 1 (January 2008): 7191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldgar, Anne. Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harootunian, Harry D.Late Tokugawa Culture and Thought.” In The Nineteenth Century, edited by Jansen, Marius B., 168258. Vol. 5 of The Cambridge History of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry D.Review of Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning, by William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom.” Journal of Japanese Studies 7, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 111–31.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry D. Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Havens, Thomas R. H. Nishi Amane and Modern Japanese Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Hisaki, Yukio. Nihon kodai gakkō no kenkyū. Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1990.Google Scholar
Hori, Isao. Hayashi Razan. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1964.Google Scholar
Ikegami, Eiko. Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Imai, Jun and Yamamoto, Shinkō. Sekimon shingaku no shisō. Perikansha, 2006.Google Scholar
Inoue, Tetsujirō. Kokumin dōtoku gairon. Sanshodō, 1930.Google Scholar
Havens, Thomas R. H. Nihon kogakuha no tetsugaku. Fuzanbō, 1902.Google Scholar
Havens, Thomas R. H. Nihon shushigakuha no tetsugaku. Fuzanbō, 1905.Google Scholar
Havens, Thomas R. H. Nihon yōmeigakuha no tetsugaku. Fuzanbō, 1900.Google Scholar
Iwashita, Tetsunori. Edo no kaigai jōhō nettowāku. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2006.Google Scholar
Jōfuku, Isamu. Motoori Norinaga. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1990.Google Scholar
Kaibara, Ekiken. The Philosophy of Qi: The Record of Great Doubts. Translated by Tucker, Mary Evelyn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Kaibara, Ekiken. Yamato honzō (1709). National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2605899Google Scholar
Kajiyama, Takao. Dai Nihonshi no shigan: Sono kōsei to jujutsu. Kinseisha, 2013.Google Scholar
Katō, Shūichi. Nihon bungakushi josetsu. 2 vols. Chukuma Shobō, 1975–80.Google Scholar
Kawamoto, Shinji. Chūsei Zenshū no jugaku gakushū to kagaku chishiki. Shibunkaku, 2021.Google Scholar
Kojima, Yasunori. “Sorai’s Theory of Learning.” In Tetsugaku Companion to Ogyū Sorai, edited by Boot, W. J. and Takayama, Daiki, 7184. Cham, Germany: Springer, 2019.Google Scholar
Koschmann, J. Victor. The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan, 1790–1864. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Koyasu, Nobukuni. Edo shisōshi kōgi. Iwanami Shoten, 1998.Google Scholar
Koyasu, Nobukuni. Hōhō to shite no Edo. Perikansha, 1999.Google Scholar
Kurozumi, Makoto. Fukusūsei no Nihon shisō. Perikansha, 2006.Google Scholar
Kurozumi, Makoto. Kinsei Nihon shakai to jukyō. Perikansha, 2003.Google Scholar
Kurozumi, Makoto. “The Nature of Early Tokugawa Confucianism.” Translated by Ooms, Herman. Journal of Japanese Studies 20, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 337–75.Google Scholar
Kurozumi, Makoto. “Nihon shisō to wa nani ka.” In “Nihon” to Nihon shisō, edited by Karube, Tadashi, Kurozumi, Makoto, Satō, Hiroo, and Sueki, Fumihiko, 332. Vol. 1 of Iwanami kōza Nihon no shisō. Iwanami Shoten, 2013.Google Scholar
Kurozumi, Makoto. “Tokugawa Confucianism and Its Meiji Japan Reconstruction.” In Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, edited by Elman, Benjamin A., Duncan, John B., and Ooms, Herman, 370–96. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2002.Google Scholar
Le Goff, Jacques. Les intellectuels au Moyen Age. Paris: Seuil, 1985.Google Scholar
Maeda, Tsutomu. Edo kyōiku shisōshi kenkyū. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2016.Google Scholar
Maeda, Tsutomu. Edo no dokushokai. Heibonsha, 2018.Google Scholar
Maezawa, Terumasa. Ashikaga gakkō: Sono kigen to hensen. Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2003.Google Scholar
Maraldo, John. “Contemporary Japanese Philosophy.” In Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, edited by Carr, Brian and Mahalingam, Indira, 737–61. London: Routledge, 2000.Google Scholar
Marcon, Federico. “The ‘Book’ as Fieldwork: ‘Textual Institutions’ and Nature Knowledge in Early Modern Japan.” British Journal for the History of Science – Themes 5 (December 2020): 131–48.Google Scholar
Marcon, Federico. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Marcon, Federico. “Satō Nobuhiro and the Political Economy of Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Japan.” Japanese Studies 34, no. 3 (December 2014): 265–87.Google Scholar
Maruyama, Masao. Nihon seiji shisōshi kenkyū. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1952.Google Scholar
Maruyama, Masao. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Translated by Hane, Mikiso. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
McMullen, James. “Confucian Perspectives on the Akō Revenge: Law and Moral Agency.” Monumenta Nipponica 58, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 293315.Google Scholar
McNally, Mark. Like No Other: Exceptionalism and Nativism in Early Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015.Google Scholar
McNally, Mark. Pursuing the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005.Google Scholar
Melchiorre, Virgilio, ed. Filosofie nel mondo. Milan: Bompiani, 2014.Google Scholar
Minamoto, Ryōen. Jitsugaku shisō no keifu. Kōdansha, 1986.Google Scholar
Najita, Tetsuo. Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: The Kaitokudō Merchant Academy of Osaka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Nakai, Kate Wildman. “The Naturalization of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan: The Problem of Sinocentrism.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40, no. 1 (June 1980): 157–99.Google Scholar
Nakamura, Hajime. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan. Translated by Wiener, Philip P.. Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Nakamura, Shin’ichirō. Kimura Kenkadō no saron. Shinchōsha, 2000.Google Scholar
Nenzi, Laura. The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko: One Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Nishi, Amane. Kaidaimon. In Nishi Amane zenshū, Vol. 1, edited by Ōkubo, Toshiaki, 1924. Munetaka Shobō, 1960.Google Scholar
Nosco, Peter. “Nature, Invention, and National Learning: The Kokka hachiron Controversy, 1742–46.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41, no. 1 (June 1981): 7591.Google Scholar
Nosco, Peter. Remembering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990.Google Scholar
Ŏm, Sŏk-in. Higashi Ajia ni okeru Nihon shushigaku no isō: Kimon gakuha no riki shinseiron. Bunsei Shuppan, 2015.Google Scholar
Ooms, Emily Groszos. Women and Millenarian Protest in Meiji Japan: Deguchi Nao and Ōmotokyō. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Paramore, Kiri. “The Nationalization of Confucianism: Academism, Examinations, and Bureaucratic Governance in the Late Tokugawa State.” Journal of Japanese Studies 38, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 2553.Google Scholar
Roberts, Luke. Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Robertson, Jennifer. “The Shingaku Woman: Straight from the Heart.” In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, edited by Bernstein, Gail Lee, 88107. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Rubinger, Richard. Popular Literacy in Early Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Rubinger, Richard. Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Sawada, Janine A. Confucian Values and Popular Zen: Sekimon Shingaku in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schulzer, Rainer. Inoue Enryō: A Philosophical Portrait. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Spafford, David. “The Language and Contours of Familial Obligation in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Japan.” In What Is a Family? Answers from Early Modern Japan, edited by Berry, Mary Elizabeth and Yonemoto, Marcia, 2346. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Stanley, Amy. Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Steben, Barry D.Nishi Amane and the Birth of ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Chinese Philosophy’ in Early Meiji Japan.” In Learning to Emulate the Wise: The Genesis of Chinese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China, edited by Makeham, John, 3972. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Sugi, Hitoshi. Kinsei no chiiki to zaison bunka: Gijutsu to shōhin to fūga no kōryū. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2001.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Bokushi. Snow Country Tales: Life in the Other Japan. Translated by Hunter, Jeffrey with Lesser, Rose. New York: Weatherhill, 1986.Google Scholar
Tajiri, Yūichirō. Edo no shisōshi: Jinbutsu, hōhō, renkan. Chūkō Shinsho, 2011.Google Scholar
Tajiri, Yūichirō. Yamazaki Ansai no sekai. Perikansha, 2006.Google Scholar
Takahashi, Masao. Motoori Norinaga: Saisei no igokoro. Kōdansha, 1986.Google Scholar
Takahashi, Satoshi. Edo no kyōikuyoku. Chikuma Shinsho, 2007.Google Scholar
Takano, Chōei. “Seiyō gakushi no setsu: The Theories of Western Philosophers.” Translated by Piovesana, Gino K.. Monumenta Nipponica 27, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 8592.Google Scholar
Takashima, Motohiro. Yamazaki Ansai: Nihon shushigaku to suika shintō. Perikansha, 1992.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Seiichi. “Nihon shisō e no shiza.” In “Nihon” to Nihon shisō, edited by Karube, Tadasi, Kurozumi, Makoto, Satō, Hiroo, and Sueki, Fumihiko, 3358. Vol. 1 of Iwanami kōza: Nihon no shisō. Iwanami Shoten, 2013.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Yūko. Edo wa nettowāku. Heibonsha, 1993.Google Scholar
Tsuda, Sōkichi. Bungaku ni arawaretaru waga kokumin shisō no kenkyū. 4 vols. Rakuyōdō, 1916–21.Google Scholar
Tsujimoto, Masashi. Kinsei kyōiku shisōshi no kenkyū: Nihon ni okeru “kōkyōiku” shisō no genryū. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1990.Google Scholar
Tucker, John Allen. Itō Jinsai’s Gomō jigi and the Philosophical Definition of Early Modern Japan. Leiden: Brill, 1998.Google Scholar
Tucker, John Allen. “Rethinking the Akō Ronin Debate: The Religious Significance of Chūshin gishi.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26, no. 1–2 (1999): 137.Google Scholar
Umihara, Tōru. Kinsei no gakkō to kyōiku. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1988.Google Scholar
Van Norden, Bryan W. Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Wajima, Yoshio. Chūsei no jugaku. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1965.Google Scholar
Wajima, Yoshio. Nihon Sōgakushi no kenkyū. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1962.Google Scholar
Wajima, Yoshio. Shōheikō to hankō. Shibunkaku, 1966.Google Scholar
Walthall, Anne. The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Hiroshi. A History of Japanese Political Thought, 1600–1901. Translated by Noble, David. International House of Japan, 2012.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Scott. The Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors. Burbank, CA: Ohara Publications, 1982.Google Scholar
Yabuta, Yutaka and Yanagiya, Keiko, eds. Mibun no naka no josei. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2010.Google Scholar
Yama, Yoshiyuki. Edo no shisō tōsō. Kadokawa Sensho, 2019.Google Scholar
Yasunaga, Toshinobu. Andō Shōeki: Social and Ecological Philosopher in Eighteenth-Century Japan. New York: Weatherhill, 1992.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×