JAPAN: AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST^367
Confucian school; that is the way of such challenges to orthodoxy.
The rangakusha (experts in Dutch learning) tried at first not to pro
voke and diffidently defended their contributions; thus Ôtsuki Gen-
taku, author of a Ladder to Dutch Studies (1783): "Dutch learning is
not perfect, but if we choose the good points and follow them, what
harm could come of that? What is more ridiculous than to refuse to dis
cuss its merits and to cling to what one knows best without hope of
changing?"^30
Such soft words could not turn away Confucianist wrath. The new
learning challenged the very premises of Japanese culture, which had
always learned from China. (The Chinese were the only foreigners not
called barbarians.)* Much depended on the accidents of politics. To
ward the end of the eighteenth century, for example, the government
decreed that only Confucian philosophy should be taught—and a par
ticular variety at that. In subsequent decades restrictions on Western
learning grew more severe, to the point of outright persecution. The
appointment of a Chinese scholar as governor of Edo in the 1830s was
the signal for a tenacious hunt and chase of leading Dutch scholars, to
the point of imprisonment and forced suicide. For a while, Japan was
consuming its best and brightest.^31
Much of ran0akuy moreover, by contradicting traditional knowl
edge, shamed the old believers; and shame, in Japanese culture, is
unbearable. European medicine, for example, as verified by dissec
tions—seeing is believing—made a mockery of Chinese doctrine.^32 By
the same token, in a world of East Asian isolation and complacency,
geographical reality was intrinsically subversive. Here is Ôtsuki again:
"Hidebound Confucianists and run-of-the-mill doctors have no con
ception of the immensity of the world. They allow themselves to be
dazzled by Chinese ideas, and in imitation of Chinese practice, laud the
Middle Kingdom, or speak of the way of the Middle Flowery Land.
This is an erroneous view; the world is a great sphere.... "^33 Unfor
tunately for the Chinese, they persisted in this nonsense. The Japanese,
on the other hand, were facing up to a new truth: "The sun and moon
shine on every place alike."
A word of caution: to say that the Japanese had started to learn
something of European science and technology does not mean they
- They had apparendy been so called at one time, and some adherents of mngaku
were now happy to recall this by way of discrediting Confucian learning. The aim
now was not simply to say that the Chinese were not better than others; they were
worse. That is the way of debate.