Abstract
This study interprets Matsunaga Sekigo’s 松永尺五 (1592–1657) Ethics (Irinshō 彝倫抄) as an early-modern Japanese statement of Confucian political philosophy, one based on Confucius’ Analects (Lunyu 論語 Rongo) argument that “rectifying terms” provides the essential semantic grounds for a just and righteous political order. Through this genre and methodology, here referred to as philosophical lexicography, Sekigo’s Ethics pioneered common ground shared with many later Japanese and East Asian texts. Unlike most subsequent works in this genre, all of which were modeled after a late-Song dynasty Chinese text, Chen Beixi’s 陳北溪 (1159–1223) The Meanings of Human Nature and Principle (Xingli ziyi 性理字義 Seiri jigi), Sekigo’s rectification of the meanings of philosophical terms generously affirmed Buddhism and Shintō as well as Confucian and Neo-Confucian notions and nuances in its unequivocal, united-front effort to check the fortunes of Christianity in Japan. Written in the wake of the Shimabara Rebellion, Sekigo’s Ethics combatted, with words rather than swords, the foreign heterodoxy, Christianity, that threatened to undermine the fundamental integrity of the social, political, spiritual, and philosophical order of Tokugawa Japan. In drawing on various East Asian religio-philosophical dimensions Sekigo’s Ethics displayed a wide-ranging, seemingly open-minded cosmopolitanism, as well as the very limits of the same in early-modern Japanese philosophical history.
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Notes
- 1.
When two Romanizations are given, the Chinese is first and the Japanese, second.
- 2.
In the early 1590s, major battles were fought at Jinju Castle as part of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s 豊臣秀吉 (1536–98) drive to conquer Ming 明 dynasty China. In 1592, Japanese forces, led by Hosokawa Takaoki 細川忠興 (1563–1646), were defeated by a Korean army commanded by Kim Simin 金時敏 (1554–1592). The following year, massive Japanese forces seized the castle. Copies of the 1553 Korean edition of Chen Beixi’s The Meanings of Terms apparently entered Japan in the wake of these battles. Korean military officers in Jinju had earlier sponsored the text’s publication.
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Tucker, J.A. (2014). The Meanings of Words and Confucian Political Philosophy: A Study of Matsunaga Sekigo’s Ethics . 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_2
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