Even so, Razan taught in clerical robes and tonsure, indicating how closely
clerical status remained identified with the teaching profession. Ansai did not
leave the monkhood until 1647, and opened his successful Confucian school
at Kyoto in 1655. Hayashi’s school, headed in a hereditary line by his descen-
dants, was elevated to an official “university” only in 1691, with an annual
income as a state-sponsored shrine. The new philosophy was not simply a
matter of the new Tokugawa regime shifting from Buddhism to Confucianism
in search of a new political legitimation, nor a revenge against Buddhism
because of the military battles of the unification wars. Zen in any case had
stayed out of the fighting of the previous period. It was above all the popular
Ikko sect which had been the military threat, yet even Ikko received concessions
under Hideyoshi.^20
Zen still exerted some attraction during the first generations of the Toku-
gawa. The samurai class did not immediately desert for the new ideologies.
Contemporary with Hayashi Razan are Zen stars from samurai families such
as Takuan Soho.^21 Another such is Suzuki Shosan, who abandoned the military
life after the great battles of 1615 to become a monk. He promoted an
innovative direction in Zen, denying the significance of ritual, declaring that
“working the land is Buddha practice,” and formulating an ethics for mer-
chants which stressed the performance of work duties without greed. Suzuki’s
doctrines have been pointed to as a Buddhist version of the “spirit of capital-
ism.”^22 In the generation 1665–1700 there appeared a major Zen figure,
Bankei, who came from a family of ronin (masterless samurai) and converted
from Confucianism; his contemporary Basho was similarly from the ranks of
the lower samurai, and though not a monk, he infused his haiku poetry with
Zen sensibilities. Still later, Hakuin was also from a samurai family.
What we have is a conflict breaking out within the status group of Zen-
educated intellectuals. As usual, conflict fuels creativity simultaneously on all
sides. In the long-term network (compare Figures 7.3 and 7.4), the period
1600–1735 is much more populated by Buddhists of major and secondary rank
than the five preceding generations; it includes, in the mid-1600s, the first
founding of a new Zen sect (the Obaku sect, brought by Chinese émigrés) since
the 1200s. The generations which lead up to Hakuin are a typical buildup of
eminence within a creative network; and if Hakuin is the last gasp of Zen in
its time of troubles, the pattern is in keeping with the principle that creativity
results from shifts in the underlying organizational base, both on the way up
and on the way down.
Fueling the revolt within the ranks of Zen was a conflict between its
aesthetic and academic branches. The elite level of Rinzai was largely secular-
ized already. Appointments to top posts of the Five Mountains were in imperial
hands, reserved for members of the highest aristocratic families (Dumoulin,
350 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths