1990: 270). The worldliness of the Zen establishment undermined its religious
legitimacy; some of the criticism, both by wandering monks and by the advo-
cates of neo-Confucian ethics, took the form of purification movements within
the ranks. The Zen hierarchy had already been splintering in the 1400s and
1500s, giving off separate lineages specializing in teaching purely aesthetic arts.
A hierarchy of specialized tea masters arose alongside conventional enlightened
meditation masters, eventually claiming precedence over religious and even
political ranks (See Figure 7.3).^23 The spread of aestheticism was muddying the
status hierarchies; in the tea cult in particular, wealthy merchants from port
towns such as Sakai were mingling with, and even taking precedence over,
prelates and warriors. The Neo-Confucians of the early Tokugawa were in part
reasserting the ranking of samurai over aesthetic challengers, in part restoring
morality as the central criterion of religious life. The most important of these
early Confucian schools, that of Yamazaki Ansai, had a militantly puritanical
tone, forbidding the composition of poetry, and condemning any emphasis
on calligraphic style as a frivolous distraction from the moral seriousness of
the texts.
The underlying dynamic of Tokugawa intellectual life was the expansion
of educational markets. Zen education by no means disappeared after the great
monastic properties were confiscated; the Soto elementary schools in particular
flourished. Buddhist temples in total proliferated from some 13,000 to over
460,000 (in the 1720s) in connection with the requirement that every family
hold a temple certificate; every sect expanded its academies for training priests
(Kitagawa, 1990: 164; Dumoulin, 1990: 333; McMullin, 1984: 246). But the
temples were now tiny; cosmopolitan connections and competition over posi-
tions disappeared as temples were made hereditary family properties. There
was no longer any centralized elite, no apex of the status hierarchy such as
had been constituted by the Five Mountains at the time of the Muromachi
shoguns. Many different cultural providers could find an audience. Among
them, Ansai’s attack on aestheticism acquired many disciples, but it could not
definitively prohibit or displace some other branch of the market from offering
aesthetic products. Indeed, one of the popular areas of specialization that
opened up soon thereafter was the academic study of literature, first Chinese,
then native Japanese poetry. On these academic bases rode the philosophical
innovations challenging Neo-Confucianism.
Several different types of education developed.^24 First in importance were
the private proprietary schools (shijuku), catering to the samurai class, though
gradually amalgamating with wealthier commoners. Such schools were small-
scale, consisting of lectures in an individual teacher’s home for pupils who
became his personal disciples. This was the predominant form of schooling
until the mid-1700s, and it continued to hold its own despite the challenge of352 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths