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Beixi's ‘Ziyi’ and Ancient Learning Philosophical Lexicography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Extract

Yamaga Sokō (1622–85), Itō Jinsai (1627–1705), and Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) are generally recognized as the three luminaries of the kogaku, or “Ancient Learning”, philosophical movement of Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868). One of the most conspicuous features of their masterworks is their lexicographical methodology. The origins of that methodology are found, this paper suggests, in (I) Chen Beixi's (Jpn: Chin Hokukei; 1159–1223) Xingli ziyi (Jpn: Seiri jigi; The Meanings of Philosophical Terms, c. 1226); and (2) Hayashi Razan's (1583–1657) work propagating the Ziyi, the Seiri jigi genkai (Vernacular Explication of Beixi's Ziyi, 1659).

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1994

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References

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18 Susumu, Inoue, ”Hohikei Jigi hampon kō”, Tōhōgaku, LXXX (07 1990), pp. 111–25. Inoue was not, however, familiar with either (I) the 1553 Korean edition at the Harvard—Yenching Institute which, given its kambun punctuation, undoubtedly travelled to Japan, or (2) the Seiri jigi genkai by Hayashi Razan, published in 1659. Though Inoue's study is the most recent publication on the textual history of Beixi's Ziyi in East Asia, it does omit these crucial texts. In the “Appendix” to my dissertation “Pei-hsi's Tzu-i and Tokugawa philosophical lexicography” (Columbia University, 1990), I show that the Harvard-Yenching copy of the 1553 Korean edition was the one which the Naikaku bunko kambun manuscript of the Ziyi refers to as “Razan's text”, and that most probably it was Razan who wrote the kambun punctuation onto its pages.Google Scholar

19 Beixi, XLZY, (1632 ed.), p. 51a. Chan, , trans., NCTE, p. 105Google Scholar. Sokō, , Seikyō yōroku, NST, xxxii, p. 17.Google Scholar

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22 Beixi, , XLZY, p. 59aGoogle Scholar; Chan, , NCTE, p. 115.Google Scholar

23 Beixi, , XLZY, p. 64aGoogle Scholar; Chan, , NCTE, p. 121.Google Scholar

24 Sokō, , Seikyō yōroku, pp. 21–2Google Scholar; Beixi, , XLZY, pp. 73a88bGoogle Scholar; Chan, , NCTE, pp. 142–68.Google Scholar

25 Sokö, Yamaga, Yamaga gorui, iv (Tokyo, 1911), pp. 171; 178; 187; 197; 201; 222; 330; 335; 339–40; 359; 362–3; 383; 397; 406; 410; 415. This list is not exhaustive.Google Scholar

26 Inoue, “ Hokukei jigi hampon kō”, Tōhōgaku, p. 118. I think that this edition appeared later than Inoue suggests. Since it was apparently based on the Naikaku bunko handwritten kambun version, the collophon of which is dated 1621 (and refers to “Razan's text” as its basis), it surely post-dated that work.

27 Inoue's “Hokukeijigi hampon kō” (Tōhōgaku, p. 118) mentions the 1628 edition, citing Kikuya's, Nagasawa Wakokubon kanseki bunrui mokuroku (Classified Bibliography of Japanese Editions of Chinese Texts), (Tokyo, 1986), p. 105Google Scholar, as his source. However Inoue admits that he has never seen a copy of this edition, nor does he know of any Japanese library with a copy of it.

28 Kumagai Reiton, “Postscript to the 1670 Japanese edition”, Seiri jigi kashiragaki [The Annotated Beixi Ziyi], (Kyoto), ch. 2, p. 77. The text that I follow is in the Library of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto Univ. Also Chan's, , “Appendix I”, NCTE, pp. 223–4, translates Reiton's “Postscript”.Google Scholar

29 Razan, Hayashi, “Preface”, Seiri jigi genkai (1659), pp. Ia4b.Google Scholar

30 Razan, , Seiri jigi genkai, kan 2, pp. 3a5a.Google Scholar

31 Yamashita, Samuel, “Compasses and carpenters’ squares: a study of Itō Jinsai (1627–1705) and Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728)”, Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981Google Scholar. Also, Yamashita, Samuel, “The early life and thought of Itō jinsai”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XLIII, no. 2 (12 1983), pp. 453–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Shigeru, Shimizu, “Hochū” (Supplementary notes to jinsai's Comō jigi), in Itō jinsai (Tokyo, 1971)Google Scholar, NST, xxxiii, ed. Kojiro, Yoshikawa and Shigeru, Shimizu, p. 513Google Scholar; Taichirō, Nishida, “Hochū” (Supplementary notes to Sorai's Benmei), in Ogyu Sorai (Tokyo, 1973)Google Scholar, NST, xxxvi, ed. Yoshikawa Kojiro, Maruyama Masao, Nishida Taichiro, and Tsuji Tatsuya, p. 588.

33 Razan, Seiri jigi genkai, kan 2, p. 12bGoogle Scholar; jinsai, Itō, Comō jigi (Tokyo, 1971)Google Scholar, NST, xxxiii, ed. Kōjirō, Yoshikawa and Shigeru, Shimizu, p. 139Google Scholar; Sorai, Ogyū, Benmei (Tokyo, 1973), NST, xxxvi, ed. Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Maruyama Masao, Nishida Taichirō, and Tsuji Tatsuya, p. 148.Google Scholar

34 Sorai, , Benmei, NST, xxxvi, p. 128.Google Scholar

35 Razan, , Sciri jigi genkai, kan 8, p. 13a.Google Scholar

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37 Ansai, Yamazaki, Yamazaki Ansai zenshü (Complete Works of Yamazaki Ansai), (Tokyo, 1936), i, p. 167. Ansai's remarks reiterate points which Wu Cheng's (1249–1333) “Essay on honoring the moral nature” (Wu Wencheng gong ji [Complete Works of Wu Cheng], Siguquanshu zhenben ed., 1756, 23:2a) had made much earlier in China.Google Scholar

38 Jinsai's Nikki is quoted from Shimizu Shigeru, “Kaidai”, ltō Jinsai/ltō Tōgai, NST, xxxiii, pp. 622–3; a'so see Shigeki, Kaizuka, “Nihon jukyō no sōshisha”, Itō jinsai (Tokyo, 1979)Google Scholar, meicho, Nihon no, xiii, pp. 1418. Kaizuka contends that Beixi's Ziyi was “the starting point” from which Jinsai launched many of his own accounts of Confucian terms. In 1684 (Jōkyō 1), the year after Jinsai gave him a copy of the Gomō jigi, Inaba Masayasu killed the tairō, or “first minister to the shogun”, Hotta Masatoshi (1631–84), in the shogun's palace. For that offence, he was beheaded. Jinsai's reluctance to publish his Gomō jigi may have issued from this rather unfortunate connection.Google Scholar

39 Shigeru, Shimizu, “Kadai”, in ltö Jinsai/ltö Tögai (Tokyo, 1971)Google Scholar, ed. Kōjirō, Yoshikawa and Shigeru, Shimizu, NST, xxxiii, pp. 622–7Google Scholar. The most complete discussion of the textual history of the Gomō jigi is in Masahiko, Miyake, “Gomō jigi no seiritsu katei to sono kōi”, Kyoto chōshü Itö jinsai no shisōkeisei (Kyoto, 1987), pp. 348–9.Google Scholar

40 Taichirō, Nishida, “Kaidai”, Ogyū Sorai, NST, xxxvi, p. 619.Google Scholar

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42 Kōjirō, Yoshikawa, “Sorai gakuan”, in Ogyii Sorai, NST, xxxvi, p. 699Google Scholar, quotes a letter Sorai wrote to his disciple Yamagata Shūnan stating that those in power (Hakuseki) “now keep a watchful eye on us, and have come to ostracise me more than ever”. Translation from Kōjirō, Yoshikawa, Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga (Tokyo, 1983), p. 197Google Scholar. Lidin, , The Life of Ogyū Sorai, p. 105. Lidin states that Sorai kept his philosophical writings top secret while composing them, not even allowing his favourite disciples to collaborate with him.Google Scholar

43 Lidin, , The Life of Ogyū Sorai, pp. 20–3.Google Scholar

44 Nobuyasu, Kurata, “Jinsaigaku hihan ni miru Soraigaku no kōzō”, Daito bunka daigaku kangakkai shi, XXIII (03 1984), pp. 5464Google Scholar. Kōjirō, Yoshikawa, “Sorai gakuan”, in Ogyii Sorai, NST, xxxvi, p. 719Google Scholar; translated in Yoshikawa, , Jinsai, Sorai, and Norinaga, p. 226.Google Scholar Yoshikawa does not mention the Ziyi's impact on the Benmei. Lidin's The Life of Ogyū Sorai does not discuss Beixi's impact on either Jinsai or Sorai.

45 Wangjia, , “Preface”, Seiri jigi (1668 ed.), kan 1, p. 4a.Google Scholar

46 Sorai, Ogyū;, “Letter to Itō Jinsai”, Soraishū, NST vol. xxxvi, pp. 525–6.Google Scholar

47 Boot's, W.J. The Adoption and Adaptation of Neo-Confucianism in japan: The Role of Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan (Leiden, 1982)Google Scholar, disputes Abe Yoshio's conclusion that the introduction of Korean editions of Chinese texts had a major impact on the rise of Tokugawa Neo-Confucianism. This study of the origins of the kogaku lexicographical methodology supports, on a small scale, Abe's thesis. Boot mentions Beixi's Ziyi a few times, but he does not see it as a work of cardinal importance to Tokugawa philosophising.

48 Backus, Robert L., “The Kansei prohibition of heterodoxy and its effects on education”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XXXIX (1979), pp. 55106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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50 Asami Keisai's Seirijigi kōgi (Lectures on Beixi's Ziyi, c. 1706–07) is in the Mukyūkai library in Tamagawa gakuen, Tokyo. The Seiri jigi shisetsu (My Teacher's Accounts of Beixi's Ziyi, c. 1728), written by an anonymous disciple of Keisai, is in the Kyoto furitsu toshokan sōgo shiryōkan (Historical Resources Centre of the Kyoto Prefectural Library, Kyoto). The Seiri jigi kōgi (Oral Lectures on Beixi's Ziyi) is in the Fuzoku toshokan (Auxiliary Library) at Kyoto University.

51 Masahide, Bitō, “Introduction”,Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga, by Kōjirō, Yoshikawa (Tokyo, 1983), p. 1.Google Scholar

52 Cf., Henderson, John B., Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton, 1991), pp. 165–6; 175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Henderson discusses Beixi's Ziyi as a commentary. While surely the Ziyi can be so construed, it differs from the mainstream Confucian tradition of commentary writing, which focused on a particular text or set of texts. Henderson does not see the Ziyi as founding a genre of its own.

53 Nosco, Peter, “Introduction”, Confucianism and Tokugawa Culture, ed. Nosco, Peter (Princeton, 1984), p. 13.Google Scholar Also, cf, Masao's, Maruyama Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, 1974), p. 76 n. 12. There Maruyama suggests that Sorai was influenced by Li Panlong (1514–70) and Wang Shizheng (1529–93), but credits Sorai with the idea of a “philological examination of the Six Classics”. This study claims that idea may not have been as original to Sorai as Maruyama assumed.Google Scholar

54 Cf. Harootunian, H. D., Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism (Chicago, 1988), p. 352.Google Scholar

55 Shigeki, Kaizuka, “Nihon jukyō no sōshisha”, ltō Jinsai, pp. 25–6.Google Scholar Kaizuka notes how Jinsai invited questions and discussion of the views he presented to his Dōshisha students. Also Jinsai allowed his disciples to present lectures of their own at Jinsai's academy. Kaizuka suggests that a free, democratic atmosphere prevailed at Jinsai's Dōshisha academy. For a detailed discussion of Jinsai's pedagogical ideas and techniques, see Nihei, Katō, Itō Jinsai no gakutnon to kyōiku (Tokyo, 1940).Google Scholar