just as in the comparable expansion of Chinese schooling after the Sung. The
official Neo-Confucian orthodoxy decreed by the bakufu in 1790 (just before
its attempt at a formalized examination system) was hard to put into effect
among independent intellectuals; but it was indicative of the mood of the times,
when the entire structure was formalizing under its own massive weight.
For the early period when education was just taking off, we should add
schools of the specialized arts: the private teachers and academies of swords-
manship, painting, poetry, flower arranging, and the like which proliferated in
the 1600s. Strictly speaking, these were not part of general schooling but were
more of a continuation of the aesthetic high culture of the pre-Tokugawa
period, expanding forms such as the lineages of famous tea masters. In the late
1600s, at the time of Basho, there were some 700 haiku teachers in Kyoto,
divided into rival styles and lineages (Moriya, 1990: 119; Maruyama, 1974:
115). Such schools did not promote the kind of abstract thinking which is the
territory of philosophy, but their expansion reveals something of the underlying
structure of cultural production. Many of the teachers were samurai, displaced
from their feudal lords or blocked for promotion into higher officialdom by
hereditary families. Teaching was one of the few careers which did not forfeit
the status honor of the samurai rank (as entering commerce would have); and
the audience for such teachers was not only other samurai but also the
burgeoning population of the commercial towns.
A domain school might hire several rival instructors to teach swordsman-
ship to its samurai, each preserving his own ritual closure through oaths of
secrecy. Despite the demilitarization of society—indeed, because of the shift
to purely ritualized peaceful status competition among the samurai—such
schools proliferated in the Tokugawa. Schools of swordsmanship were organ-
ized around lineages of masters, awarding certificates of proficiency to their
pupils, modeled on the Buddhist notion of secret transmission of supreme
understanding to highly selected disciples. The fusion of Zen with samurai
culture which took place at this time was part of the increasing formalization
and scholasticizing of status rankings in both sphere.^25 The eliteness of these
emblems of transmission was breaking down as certificates proliferated in a
veritable inflation of credentials. The proprietary schools went further, break-
ing with samurai exclusiveness and offering open lectures to the public, without
oaths of loyalty or secrecy (Nosco, 1990: 31). These schools thereby provided
the competitive public attention space within which intellectual creativity could
emerge.
The status culture of the higher ranks was now offered in a competitive
market, raising the standing of the wealthier urban classes. In the artistic
schools, and in the proprietary schools of Chinese philosophy as well, com-
moners and samurai blended into a new cultural ranking. In connection with
354 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths