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Between Principle and Personality
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Emperor and Nation in Japan: Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period. By EarlDavid. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964. 270. $7.50.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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References
1 Writers during the late Tokugawa period interpreted events with the assistance of the classical Chinese concept, one which made it possible to divide occurrences neatly into “internal disaster (naiyū),” and “external catastrophe (gaikan).” In Japanese usage, especially the polemics of the later Mito school, the resolution of naiyū took precedence in the counsels of state, but slipped into the background when the country was forced to confront the realities of what appeared to be an “external catastrophe,” the presence of foreigners in Japanese waters.
2 In its original form, this book was a doctoral thesis submitted in 1957. By his own admission, Earl completed the bibliography and research between 1952–1954. If the preface is any indication, the manuscript was ready for publication in 1960 and the actual copyright date is 1964. Both author and publisher, I suspect, have to share the responsibility in this curious history; even by the time Earl was ready to put the work in the hands of a publisher, 1960, his bibliography was outmoded. In this bibliography there is not cited one Japanese work published after 1955; the percentage of works published after the war is naturally less than those published before the war, but surely there were more works available to the author in 1952–1954 than are indicated in the bibliography. Moreover, once the work was submitted, presumably in 1960 or thereabouts, why did it take the publisher so long to get it out into print? I raise this query because I feel that the book would have been vastly improved had Earl consulted Japanese historiography on this subject in the last ten years.
3 To dub the Mito achievement “the acceptable synthesis” places a responsibility on the author of which he is unaware. Synthesis suggests a dialectic in Tokugawa intellectual history which Earl neither locates nor identifies. What did Mito synthesize? Which elements were genuinely transmitted from a received tradition? Which parts did Mito propose as antithesis? The idea itself is worthy of consideration, but I am afraid Earl has merely labeled a movement without seriously considering the consequences of his description. For a view which embraces this notion of synthesis and more, sec Rōen, Minamoto, “Meiji ishin to jitsugaku shisō,” in Yoshiō, Sakata, ed., Meiji ishinshi no mondaiten (Tōkyō, 1962), 55–83Google Scholar.
4 Readers will recognize this Collingwoodian sentiment; intellectual history as we understand it would be impossible without Hegel. Practitioners of the “history of ideas” approach, not Lovejoy but his followers, have sought to place ideas outside the realm of process and to isolate them in time, unadorned by relationships either to other ideas or to social factors. For an interesting approach to intellectual history, see the writings of Goldmann, Lucien, especially Le dieu caché (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar.
5 See, by all means, the very relevant article on traditional society in the Tokugawa period by Hall, John W. in Ward, R. E. and Rustow, D. A., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964)Google Scholar; also the informative Ishin shiryo hensankai henshū, Ishinshi (Tōkyō, 1942), 1: 30–80Google Scholar; and finally, Sakata Yoshiō has written a brief, but satisfactory, description of this relationship between bakufu and imperial court in his Meiji ishinshi (Tōkyō, 1960), 9–15Google Scholar.
6 This is not to be confused with the interpretation of Maruyama Masaō that the variations of thought in the Tokugawa period represented multi-facets of a total ideology. See his Nihon seiji shisōshi kenkyū (Tōkyō, 1954)Google Scholar.
7 Hideo, Arima, ed., Maki Izumi no kami ibun (Tōkyō, 1914), 711–739Google Scholar, for a complete view of Maki's notion of emperor and restoration; see also Matsumoto Sannosuke, “Sonjōi undō ni okeru kindaiteki seiji ishiki no keisei,” in Sakata Yoshiō, Meiji ishinshi …, 135.
8 Bitō Masahide, Nihon ni okeru rekishi ishiki no hatten, in Kōza, Iwanami, Nihon rekishi (Tōkyō, 1963), 22; 54–58Google Scholar.
9 I am indebted to the following authors and works for a good deal of what is said in this section. Masahide, Bitō, Nihon hōken shisōshi kenkyū, (Tōkyō, 1960)Google Scholar; Sannosuke, Matsumoto, Kokugaku seiji shisō no kenkyū (Tōkyō, 1957)Google Scholar and “Tennōsei hōshisō,” in Nihon kindai hō hattatsushi (Tōkyō 1961), 10: 3–40Google Scholar; Noboru, Haga, Bakumatsu kokugaku no tenkai (Tōkyō, 1963)Google Scholar; and Masaō, Maruyama, “Chūsei to hangyaku,” in Kindai Nihon shisōshi kōza (Tokyo, 1960), 6: 379–470Google Scholar.
10 Sakata Yoshiō, Meiji ishinshi, 9 ff.
11 Matsumoto, Kokugaku …, 96; Tetsujirō, Inoue, Nihon rinri ihen (Tōkyō, 1901), 1: 400–401.Google Scholar
12 Bitō, Nihon hōken. …, 100–132; Maruyama, “Chūsei to hangyaku,” 390 ff.
13 Shirō, Tawara, “Edo jidai zenki no rekishi shisō,” Nihon shisōshi kenkyūkai, eds., Nihon ni okeru rekishishisō no tenkpi (Tōkyō, 1961), 185–194Google Scholar; see also Maruyama, Nihon seijishisō …78–91. Here olitical accommodation means merely a process which constantly revises norms to meet the exigencies of hange.
14 Restorationism and the kokugaku were directly related to Sorai's theory of kogaku (ancient studies). See Itō Tasaburo, “Edo jidai goki no rekishi shisō,” in Nihon ni okeru rekishishisō …, 120; and Maruyama, Nihon seijishisō …., 141–182.
15 zenshū, Koten Nihon bungaku, Motoori Norinagashū, “Uiyamabumi,” (Tōkyō, 1960), 9, 15Google Scholar.
16 Matsumoto, “Tennōsei hōshisō,” 10.
17 It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the Mito writer Aizawa Seishisai argued that all political doctrines and ordinances, because of their divine origins, were one and the same thing. See Yoshijirō, Takasu, ed., Mitogaku taikei (Tōkyō, 1943), 2: 13Google Scholar; also Matsumoto, Kokugaku …., 106. For a good analysis of kokugaku as a “political theology”, see Bellah, Robert, Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, 1957), 98 ffGoogle Scholar.
18 Matsumoto in Kokugaku …., argues strongly that the nativist movement was an effort to promote greater harmony among the ruled, and that this was especially true of bakumatsu kokugakusha whose appeal was directed to the non-samurai sectors of the population. In this sense, late Tokugawa nativism served the same purpose as did the shingaku movement as conceived by Bellah.
19 Matsumoto, “Tennōsei hōshisō,” 14–15.
20 Craig, Albert, Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, 1961), 154–155Google Scholar.
21 See Matsumoto Sannosuke, “Sonjōi undo ni okeru kindaiteke seiji ishiki no keisei,” 140–148.