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.

Rising literacy, urbanization, and leisure time in early modern Japan led to increasing popular interaction with politics. This chapter, after confirming the basic political apparatus of the Tokugawa state, demonstrates how the governance carried out within that apparatus interacted with increasingly vibrant expressions of political opinion from outside the state. From erudite Confucian analysis to popular riot and lewd graffiti, this chapter argues that public political opinion and action both influenced and at times was courted by the shogunal government. Political discussions in salon and popular culture outside the state introduced key new political ideas which transformed the ideal of governance in Japan from a minimalist concept of military domination and agricultural facilitation to a much more comprehensive vision of general welfare and development.