restoration; at the same time, Chikafusa relied on Buddhist metaphysics to give a
larger significance to the conception of Japan as a divine nation under the kami.
It should be noted that this took place two generations after the rise of Nichiren’s
Hokke movement, which had made the same claim for Japan as the world’s
Buddha-land. Again in the 1480s, when feudal combat in the aftermath of the
Onin War destroyed any semblance of shogunal government, Kanetomo, a priest
of the Yoshida shrine, promoted a syncretist Shinto which reversed previous
rankings and made Buddhas and Boddhisatvas manifestations of the kami instead
of the other way around (Kitagawa, 1990: 160).- Under Shingon auspices, the kami had been reduced to a dualism corresponding
to Buddhist tantrism: matter and mind, male and female, dynamic and potential
aspects of things (Maruyama, 1974: 155). We are reminded here that Keichu, the
adumbrator of National Learning, was a Shingon monk in the camp of Shinto
supporters. - The Shinto–National Learning movement was not the only religious reaction
against (and split in the ranks of) the Sorai network. In 1729 (overlapping with
the height of Kada no Azumamaro’s activity), the Kyoto teacher Ishida Baigan
founded the Shingaku movement. It took an opposing position both to the Shinto
fundamentalists and to Sorai’s naturalist utilitarianism. Shingaku preached that the
spiritual reality behind Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and Shinto were the same;
its main practice, however, was meditation, not ceremonialism, thus putting it
closer to the Zen–sage religion tradition that was now disappearing from the
upper-class intellectual space. Shingaku was preached successfully among the popu-
lar classes, but using the vehicle of the educational marketplace rather than the
traditional evangelist. Baigan’s network connections shaped the direction of his
innovation. He was the pupil of a lay teacher of the Obaku sect (i.e., the most
syncretist of the Zen sects) as well as of a neo-Confucian; his early religious activity
was in the Ise-pilgrimage movement; and he formulated his distinctive doctrine
soon after engaging in argument with a disciple of Sorai. The term shingaku itself
had been used by Sorai in his attack on Neo-Confucian philosophy (Bellah, 1978:
139; 1957: 134–138). - “What they call li is not something clearly fixed, it is not something readily
comprehensible to the human intellect. Hence a Confucian should define li in terms
of the theories of the ancient Sages, and a Buddhist should do so by using the
theories of the Buddha... It is a Way based not on any objective criteria, but
arbitrarily established by individuals” (quoted in Maruyama, 1974: 159). - The schools devoted exclusively to Japanese studies (kokugaku) never reached mass
proportions. Only 9 such schools are known in the entire period before 1872,
making up less than 1 percent of all proprietary schools. The vast majority (70
percent) remained those with curricula of Chinese studies or calligraphy (Rubinger,
1982: 13). The sheer number of schools, however, is not the source of intellectual
movement on the creative edge. Under the law of small numbers, the 200 shijuku
(proprietary schools) founded during 1789–1829, and the additional 800 founded
during 1830–1867, were outside the center of intellectual attention; they propa-
980 •^ Notes to Pages 365–368