Abstract
Wang Yangming learning is famous for its principle of the inseparability of knowledge and action. While Yangming himself put his principles into practice in loyal service to his dynasty as a suppressor of rebellions, Japanese history uniquely boasts one follower of Yangming’s teachings (Ōshio Heihachirō 1793–1837) who put his principles into practice through a rebellion against the very government that he had served diligently for many years. Though the rebellion failed rather miserably, it became a great source of inspiration for the impetuous young leaders of the anti-bakufu movement at the end of the Tokugawa period that eventually brought down the Tokugawa government and its feudal social order. This study looks into the actual content of Ōshio’s teachings (which were based on many different Ming dynasty Confucian texts) and examines how they were related both to his years of service as a police official in Osaka and to his eventual desperate decision to raise a rebellion against the Osaka government. The central principles of Ōshio’s teachings—that “the mind itself is principle” and that the body at death returns to the great vacuity (the ultimate eternal source of all being)—are extremely interesting as an East Asian form of idealist philosophy, and their interest is intensified by the fact that they inspired the life and death of one of modern Japan’s great literary figures—Mishima Yukio.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This meaning of ninjō is unusual in Japanese, but Chūsai was a Sinologist steeped in Chinese texts. One meaning of the word given in dictionaries of classical Chinese can be translated as “the standards for judging things agreed upon by conventional society (J. seken)” (世間約定俗成的事理標準) or “the mood and wishes of the multitude” (衆人的情緒, 願望).
- 2.
In 1641, Tōju made a pilgrimage to Ise, where he offered up a poem praising Amaterasu as the embodiment of “Efflorescent filial virtue that continues without cease/Just like the creative work of Fu Xi/I pray in silence to the sages’ teaching of the divine way (shintō 神道)/Which illuminates the temple of the Great Goddess through all six regions of space” (Fukunaga 1974: 1). As the purported creator of the eight trigrams, Fu Xi 伏羲 was the father of the Book of Changes. “Efflorescent” and “illuminates the six regions of space” are allusions to the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki 日本書紀). In the Chronology (Nenpu 年譜) of Tōju’s life, he is quoted as saying “The Great Shrine is [the shrine of] the primal ancestor and progenitor of our country, and every person who lives in Japan must visit it before he dies” (Yamanoi et al. 1974: 297).
- 3.
The Commentary on the Appended Phrases (Xici) of the Book of Changes contains the passage, “Qian yi yi zhi; Kun yi jian neng” 乾以易知,坤以簡能: “Qian (Heaven) presides [over the great beginning] through easiness; Kun (Earth) is capable [of bringing things to completion] through simplicity.” According to the commentator Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), “easiness” refers to the fact that nothing obstructs the creative power of heaven, and “simplicity” refers to the malleability or receptivity of earth, its absence of resistance that brings heaven’s initiatives to completion (Xici A:1, Honda 1978: B: 261). The character for zhi consists of the graph for “arrow” and the graph for “mouth,” indicating the idea of speaking the essence of things directly, i.e., to inform, to know, to govern, to preside.
- 4.
In Okina Mondō, question 84, Nakae Tōju (1608–1648) had written that the sage from birth is one body with heaven, so that his “original spirit” (genshin 元神) and his “original vital force” (genki 元氣) function naturally together in perfect coherence, brimming with the creative force of life (Yamanoi et al. 1974: 130). Miwa Shissai had taught that the inborn knowledge of the good was nothing other than the “god of heaven” (tenjin 天神). Chūsai did not have to go much further to arrive at his proposition that “the mind itself is heaven” and his identification of heaven with the Sun Goddess.
- 5.
The quotations collected in Senshindō sakki make it clear that those whom Chūsai regarded as representatives of “Wang Yangming learning” in China were men of great integrity who devoted their lives without fear of death to popular welfare or national salvation at times of national crisis, as typified by the scholars of the Donglin Academy 東林書院. Like the Donglin scholars, he condemned the representatives of the so-called left wing of the Yangming school, as typified by Wang Gen 王艮.
- 6.
Chinese-style posthumous names were given to the Japanese emperors and presented to the reigning emperor by Oumi no Mifune 淡海三船 (722–85), a Nara-period literatus and nobleman. It is not impossible that “Jinmu” was chosen for Japan’s “first emperor” because of the identification of these two characters in this Yijing passage with Ken Wen.
- 7.
Chūsai’s “also” means that his own work, like Lü’s, was written in a state of inner torment and self-questioning arising from the self-demanding pursuit of rightness. Lü Kun (a native of Ning Ling in Henan) was not a follower of the Wang Yangming school, but his philosophy was based on Zhang Zai’s philosophy of qi. Chūsai’s Senshindō sakki also contains many quotations from Zhang Zai. On Lü Kun (1536–1618), see Handlin 1983, 1987: 219 and Tsang 1997.
- 8.
The term zōbutsusha is not an orthodox Confucian term, deriving rather from the Daoist works Zhuangzi and Liezi. In Chinese usage, it is more or less a synonym for heaven-and-earth or for the Way of nature, but it obviously carries a greater connotation of agency or personification than the former two concepts.
- 9.
In the Edo period a kan was nominally equal to 1,000 mon of cash, though the actual value was 960 (Kōjien, 4th edition).
- 10.
Descriptions by those questioned in the case indicated that it was a picture of a standing woman with disheveled hair embracing a child in her left arm and holding a sword in her right. Evidently, the interrogators took this to be a portrait of the Virgin Mary, as they took the paper dolls to be figures of the crucified Christ. At any rate, Sano had never even seen the portrait.
- 11.
Tang and Wu are the ancient Chinese sage-kings who overthrew the tyrannical last kings of the Xia and Shang dynasties, respectively, thus carrying out heaven’s punishment and receiving the transfer of the mandate of heaven to found new dynasties. As symbols of armed revolution in a polity (Japan) where dynastic revolution was illegitimate, their status as “sages” had been highly controversial in Edo Confucian thought. See Maruyama Masao’s study in this volume.
- 12.
Historians have generally looked back to the Tenpō period for the social and economic beginnings of the Meiji Restoration. Some, such as Horie Hideichi, have even seen Ōshio’s rebellion itself as the beginning of Japan’s modern transformation (Horie 1954).
References
Aiso, Kazuhiro 相蘇一弘. 2003. Studies of the letters of Ō shio Heihachirō (Ōshio Heihachirō no shokan no kenkyū 大塩平八郎の書簡の研究). Tokyo: Seibundō Shuppan. (Miyagi 2005 points out that, because of the discovery of many previously unknown letters, this work forms a new milestone in the study of Chūsai’s biography.)
De Bary, Wm. Theodore, Gluck, Carol, and Tiedemann, Arthur, comp. 2005. Sources of Japanese tradition, vol. 2, 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. (Volume Two reflects a great deal of relatively recent research done on Japanese Confucianism, as well as other streams of Japanese thought, by many of the top scholars in the field, centering on translations from the most influential primary texts.)
Fukunaga, Mitsuji 福永光司. 1974. Nakae Tōju and Shintō 中江藤樹と神道. In Iwanami Shoten’s publication announcement for Yamanoi 1974.
Gotō, Motomi 後藤基巳. 1972. Ōshio Chūsai 大塩中斎. In Uno et al., comp., 1972, 8: 87–98. (Gotō is responsible for all the annotations and studies of Chūsai’s writings in this volume.)
Handlin, Joanna. 1983. Action in late Ming thought: The reorientation of Lü K’un and others. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Handlin, Joanna. 1987. Lü K’un. In The records of Ming scholars, ed. Julia Ching. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Hangai, Jirō 半谷二郎. 1977. Ō shio Heihachirō: His character and situation ( Ō shio Heihachirō: Sono seikaku to jōkyō 大塩平八郎: その性格と状況). Tokyo: Oshisha. (One of the standard Japanese studies of Chūsai and his psychology.)
Honda, Wataru 本田済. 1978. The book of changes (Eki 易). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha. In 2 vols. (The best known modern translation in Japanese, this meticulously written work contains the original text, classical and modern Japanese translations, and copious references to the major commentaries, particularly that of Zhu Xi. For the original text on line, see http://ctext.org.)
Horie, Hideichi 堀江英一. 1954. The social structure of the Meiji restoration (Meiji Ishin no shakai kōzō 明治維新の社会構造). Tokyo: Yūhikaku.
Inoue, Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎. 1900. The philosophy of the Japanese school of Yangming learning (Nihon Yōmeigakuha no tetsugaku 日本陽明学派之哲学). Tokyo: Fuzanbō. (The first study of the Wang Yangming school in Japan written in modern Japan under the influence of Western philosophy; the book’s influence continued well into the post-war period and even to the present day.)
Inoue, Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎, and KanieYoshimaru 蟹江義丸, compilers. 1901. A classified compilation of Japanese ethical thought (Nihon rinri ihen 日本倫理彙編). In 10 vols. Tokyo: Ikuseikai. (This huge publication project was designed to help draw Edo-period Confucian ethical thought back into the ethical discourse of the new modern Japan of the Meiji period as a counterweight to Western thought and modern Western utilitarian ethics.)
Ishizaki, Tōgoku 石崎東国. 1920. A life chronology of Ōshio Heihachirō (Ōshio Chūsai Sensei nenpu 大塩中斎先生年譜). In Ōshio Heihachirō den 大塩平八郎伝, ed. Tōgoku Ishizaki. Tokyo: Daitōkaku.
Kasulis, Thomas. 1994. Researching the strata of the Japanese self. In Self as person in Asian theory and practice, ed. Roger Ames, Thomas Kasulis, and Wimal Dissanayake, 87–106. Albany: SUNY Press. (Kasulis shows how the social science approach and the history of philosophy approach can complement one another to give a better understanding of Japanese perceptions of self than either approach alone.)
Kōda, Shigetomo 幸田成友. 1910. Ōshio Heihachirō. Tokyo: Tōadō Shobō.
Kōda, Shigetomo, comp. 1982–1983. Osaka in the Meiji Period (Meiji jidai no Ōsaka 明治時代の大阪). Osaka: Osaka-shi shi hensanjo 大阪市史史編纂所.
Lebra, Takei. 1992. Self in Japanese culture. In Japanese sense of self, ed. Nancy Rosenberger, 105–120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Lebra offers a tripartite analysis of the Japanese self in which the deepest dimension, the “boundless self,” corresponds to a surprising degree with what Ōshio referred to as the “great vacuity.”)
Legge, James, translator and annotator. 1971. The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸). In The four books: Confucian analects, the great learning, the doctrine of the mean, the works of mencius . Taipai: Datong Shuju. On line in Chinese text project: http://ctext.org/confucianism.
Maruyama, Masao 丸山真男. 1980. Ansai learning and the Yamazaki Ansai school (Ansaigaku to Ansai gakuha 闇斎学と闇斎学派). In The Y amazaki Ansai school (Yamazaki Ansai gakuha 山崎闇斎学派), Nishi Junzō 西順藏, Abe Ryūichi 阿部隆一, and Maruyama Masao (compilers). Nihon shisō taikei 日本思想大系, vol. 31, 601–674. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. (This brilliant and path-breaking study is included in translation in the present volume.)
Mishima, Yukio 三島由紀夫. 1970. Yangming learning as a revolutionary philosophy (Kakumei tetsugaku to shite no Yōmeigaku 革命哲学としての陽明学). In Shokun! 諸君! September 1970: 33–43. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha. (Revolutionary thought, Mishima emphasizes, must be naturalized and given flesh by becoming rooted in the soil, must be amalgamated in a creative tension with the spirit of nationalism, which has not happened, he claims, with Marxism in Japan.)
Miyagi, Kimiko 宮城剬子. 1977. Ō shio Heihachirō 大塩平八郎. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. (Probably still the best overall study of Chūsai and his thought that has been published in spite of the subsequent discovery of previously unknown documents.)
Miyagi, Kimiko 宮城剬子. 1984. Ō shio Chūsai 大塩中斎, Nihon no meicho 日本の名著 series, vol. 27. Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha. (Contains modern-Japanese translations of Chūsai’s three major philosophical works, his letter to Issai, and the gekibun, along with an excellent biographical introduction.)
Miyagi, Kimiko 宮城剬子. 2005. Ō shio Heihachirō. Tokyo: Perikansha. (A reissue of Miyagi 1977 with errata corrected, containing a new postscript discussing documents discovered after 1977 that have enabled advances in the study of Chūsai’s biography in books by Nakada Masayuki and Aiso Kazuhiro.)
Najita, Tetsuo. 1970. Ōshio Heihachirō (1793–1837). In Personality in Japanese history, ed. Albert Craig, and Donald Shively, 155–179. Berkeley: University of California Press. (In footnote 2 of this classic study, Najita outlines the voluminous history of the interpretation of Ōshio through the 1960s, showing how deeply involved his memory has been in the political and ideological struggles of modern Japan.)
Nakada, Masayuki 仲田正之 (comp.). 1990. Ō shio Heihachirō’s recommendations to the Government (Ōshio Heihachirō kengisho 大塩平八郎建議書). Tokyo: Bunken Shuppan.
Okamoto, Ryōichi 岡本良一. 1965. Ōshio Heihachirō 大塩平八郎. Osaka: Sōgensha.
Osaka Municipal Museum (OMM) (compiler). 1976. Special exhibit No. 73, Ō shio Heihachirō 大塩平八郎. (A highly useful compilation of original sources for the study of Chūsai.)
Ōshio Chūsai. 1972. Collection of afterwords written on the occasion of offering books [Hōnō shoseki shūbatsu 奉納書籍集跋], 2, In Uno et al., comp. 8: 410–411.
Sagara, Tōru 相良亨, Mizoguchi Yūzō 溝口雄三, and Fukunaga Mitsuji 福永光司, comp. 1980. S atō Issai, Ō shio Chūsai 佐藤一斎 • 大塩中斎, Nihon shisō taikei, vol. 46. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. (The most authoritative compilation of the most important writings of these two great scholars of Wang Yangming learning, with interpretive studies and annotations by the compilers.)
Sansom, George. 1963. A history of Japan, 1615–1867. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Still a very valuable and readable study of Japanese history in the Edo period, like the two preceding volumes covering pre-Edo Japan.)
Sima, Qian 司馬遷. 1959. Records of the Historian (Shiji 史記), Mainland punctuated edition. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. (There are many editions of this most famous of all Chinese histories, and all standard Chinese editions keep the traditional pagination.)
Steben, Barry. 1998. Nakae Tōju and the Naturalization of Confucianism in Japan. In Monumenta Serica, vol. 46, 249–294. (Focusing on Tōju’s famous Okina Mondō 翁問答, this study examines how Tōju, under the influence of ancient Chinese religious ideas, Japanese religious thought, and the thought of Yangming’s disciple Wang Ji 王畿, transformed Wang Yangming learning into a veritable religion of filial piety with a deeply Japanese character.)
Steben, Barry. 2008. The art of the Samurai: The Hagakure of Y amamoto Tsunetomo. London: Duncan Baird Publishers. (A new selective translation of a classic of Edo-period samurai thought that expostulates through true stories a Kyushu provincial strain of thought centered on the ritual practice of seppuku and the samurai’s need to be ready to die in the service of loyalty.)
Steben, Barry. 2012. 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, ed. John Makeham, 39–72. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.
The Great Treatise, or Commentary on the Appended Phrases (Xici 繫辭). (The most important ancient commentary and the most philosophical part of the Book of Changes. For a complete translation of the text and the Wang Bi commentary, see Richard John Lynn. 1994. The classic of changes, 47–102. New York: Columbia University Press.)
Tsang, Wing-hung. 1997. The life and thought of Lu Kun (1536–1618). Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press.
Uno, Tetsuto, and Yasuoka Masahiro, supervising (eds.). 1972. Japanese W ang Yangming learning (Nihon no Yōmeigaku 日本の陽明学), in 3 vols., forming vols. 8–10 in Yōmeigaku taikei 陽明学大系 (Compendium of Wang Yangming Learning), in 13 vols. Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppansha, 1971–1991. (Contains many of the chief primary texts for the study of Japanese Yangming learning, with classical-Japanese translations, annotations, and interpretive essays.)
Wakabayashi, Bob Takashi. 1995. Japanese Loyalism reconstrued: Y amagata Daini’s Ryūshi Shinron of 1759. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (The author takes a scalpel to previous images and depictions of Daini influenced by ideological fashions, and strives for a more historically grounded understanding of the man and his distinctive version of imperial loyalism.)
Yamanoi, Yū 山井湧, Yamashita Ryūji 山下龍二, Kaji Nobuyuki 加地伸行, and Bitō Masahide 尾藤正英, comp. 1974. Nakae Tōju 中江藤樹. In Nihon shisō taikei, vol. 29. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. (The most authoritative of annotated scholarly compilations of the writings of the founder of Japanese Yangming learning, with interpretive and biographical studies by the compilers.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Steben, B.D. (2014). Moral and Philosophical Idealism in Late-Edo Confucian Thought: Ōshio Chūsai and the Working Out of His “Great Aspiration”. In: Huang, Cc., Tucker, J. (eds) Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2921-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2921-8_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2920-1
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2921-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)