Zhu Xi’s learning in Japan: ideas, study and institutions

Li concerns pattern or principle; qi concerns the material and vital constitution of concrete things. Reading, investigating things and reflecting on conduct form parts of cultivation. The intellectual system addresses knowledge, ethics and the world rather than only a slogan of political loyalty.

Books and ideas circulated through medieval monastic settings. Around the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, figures including Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan placed classical teaching within new intellectual and political relationships, including contact with Korean scholars. Edo learning later occupied more than one institutional form.

Schools and academies

Zhu Xi’s learning developed in different directions. Yamazaki Ansai emphasised reverent self-cultivation and linked Confucian learning with Shinto. Kaibara Ekken reconsidered Zhu Xi’s teachings in his late work Taigiroku. Other scholars, including Itō Jinsai and Ogyū Sorai, developed competing interpretations of the Confucian classics. Private academies also became places for study and debate.

Commercial ethics at Kaitokudo

Founded in Osaka in 1724, Kaitokudo drew chiefly on Zhu Xi while accepting useful ideas from other traditions. Its fourth head, Nakai Chikuzan, gave a concrete ethical example in Moyohen: ordinary commercial earnings were legitimate, comparable to a warrior’s landed income or a farmer’s proceeds after tax. What he condemned was greed for excessive gain. Classical ethics could therefore guide merchants without treating all profit as wrongdoing.

The 1790 Kansei policy established Zhu Xi’s learning as the orthodox teaching of the academy run by the Hayashi family. In 1797, the Shoheizaka academy came under direct shogunal administration. These measures concerned a particular institution and its teaching; they did not make every scholar or domain school follow one philosophy.

Changes in modern education

The Meiji period brought new schools and academic institutions, changing the place of classical learning. Later historians debated how far Zhu Xi’s thought had served as an official ideology under the Tokugawa. Its varied schools, competing interpretations and different institutional settings complicate any account of a single philosophy uniformly governing Edo society.

Shibunkai and classical study

Classical learning also continued through new associations. Shibun Gakkai, founded in 1880, preceded Shibunkai in 1918. The latter maintained Yushima Seido, held ceremonies for Confucius and published Shibun. These institutions show a continuing place for Confucian learning, although their whole programme should not be identified exclusively with Zhu Xi’s school.