no Rikyu became tea master to Hideyoshi, and the social arbiter of good taste in
the 1580s. The tea ceremony became a lavish display and a criterion of elite
standing; in 1587 a huge gathering of 800 devotees was held at Kyoto, at which
Hideyoshi was upstaged by his tea master. Sen no Rikyu’s claims to status prece-
dence apparently provoked the dictator to demand in 1591 that he commit ritual
suicide (Dumoulin, 1990: 239–241; Varley, 1977).- Sources on Tokugawa education (Rubinger, 1982; Dore, 1965; Totman, 1993:
161–168, 301–302, 349–354, 429–435, 469–471; Passin, 1965; Najita, 1987). - As Ikegami (1995) notes, Zen was not the source of the samurai ethos; samurai
codes went back to a distinctive warrior culture of the medieval period, and these
were transformed during the Tokugawa under conditions of pacification into the
“tamed” and refined manners which became anachronistic emblems of samurai
identity. The networks of leading Zen and samurai masters overlapped at just this
time, because the underlying social bases of both career paths were crumbling
simultaneously. - In 1682 came the first non-religious “best-seller,” Ihara Saikaku’s Life of an
Amorous Man, a novel which was something of a cross between Defoe and the
Memoirs of Casanova. This marks the point at which it became possible for a
writer to support oneself purely off the market (Nosco, 1990: 27). - Sources on Tokugawa intellectuals (EP, 1967; Maruyama, 1974; Piovesana,
1963; Tsunoda, de Bary, and Keene, 1958; Totman, 1993; Sansom, 1963; Bellah,
1957, 1978; Harootunian, 1970, 1988; Matsumoto, 1970; Najita and Scheiner,
1978; Naita, 1987; Nosco, 1990; Ooms, 1985; Tucker, 1989; Wakabayashi, 1986;
Koschmann, 1987; de Bary, 1979; Dilworth, 1979; CHJ, 1988: chap. 14). - In a passage which shows the rising tide of rejection of both Zen and Zen-like
meditative practices prominent in religious Neo-Confucianism, Banzan declares:
“My name is vacuity. How with this name can I make a pretense of learning and
serve as a teacher of others?” (Maruyama, 1974: 42). - De Bary (1979). Ansai’s declaration of loyalty—"If a person errs by studying Chu
Hsi, he errs with Chu Hsi. He has nothing to regret"—echoes the famous loyalty
of Shinran to his master during the founding of the Pure Land movements: “Even
though, having been persuaded by Honen Shonin, I should go to Hell through the
Nembutsu, I should not regret it” (quoted in Maruyama, 1974: 37; Kitagawa,
1990: 115). - Shikoku is the large island south of the inland sea. The Neo-Confucian school
there had an independent beginning already in the mid-1500s with Minamimura
Baiken, supported by the local daimyo’s clan. Ansai went there to study following
his Buddhist training at the old centers, at Mount Hiei and at a Rinzai temple in
Kyoto (Ooms, 1985: 199). - Both were grandsons of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and held domains in the innermost circle
of shogunal alliances. - In other words, the samurai becomes a policeman, although Soko formulates this
as a more academic role: “The three classes of the common people make him their
teacher and respect him” (quoted in Tsunoda, de Bary, and Keene, 1958: 399). - Soko’s pronouncements have an anti-Zen tone, which can be applied equally to
978 •^ Notes to Pages 352–358