As a mark of independence, he launched the counterattack against European
thinking. His 1891 “Conflict between Religion and Education” rejected Chris-
tianity for placing Christ above emperor, and for its injunction of universal
love as incompatible with national loyalty and filial piety. He also attacked the
materialist evolutionism popularized by Kato Hiroyuki. Inoue represents the
upsurge of Shinto conservatism and nationalism against the generation of the
European importers; but as we have seen, Japanese conservatism was by no
means an anti-intellectual movement, but a long-standing trajectory of inno-
vation within indigenous Japanese networks.^50 Among Inoue’s pupils at Tokyo
were Hatano Seiichi and Nishida Kitaro.
Hatano, who became one of the secondary leaders of the Kyoto school,
combined several network lineages: at Tokyo he studied under Inoue and also
FIGURE 7.5. MEIJI WESTERNIZERS AND THE KYOTO SCHOOL,
1835–1935Innovation through Conservatism: Japan • 373