the puritanism of Ansai’s sage religion: “Those who eliminate all human desires
are not human beings; they are no different from tiles and stones. Can we say that
tiles and stones can comprehend the Principle of Heaven?” (quoted in Maruyama,
1974: 46). In contrast, Ansai’s chief disciple, Sato Naokata, explicitly extolled Zen
as the basis for discipline within government bureaucracy. Here we have a rival
legitimation for the same shift toward the peacetime samurai role which Soko was
concerned with. Rival intellectual alliances approached the same issue with differ-
ent resources.
- Ito came from a branch of the lineage of Fujiwara Seika parallel and rival to Razan,
via his teacher Matsunaga Sekigo. The Kogido initially took the form of a discus-
sion group at Ito’s home, where his wealthy family entertained court nobles,
doctors, Confucian scholars, poets, and painters. From this gathering developed
regularly scheduled lectures with debates and grading (Rubinger, 1982: 50–51). By
this route Ito became the first successful teacher from the merchant classes, break-
ing into the samurai educational monopoly.
- Tetsugen was the most eminent member of the new Obaku Zen sect; he edited a
comprehensive edition of the Buddhist scriptures of every sect, representing an
equivalent on the Buddhist side of the tendency toward pure scholarship that was
building up among the Confucians at this time, as well as the tendency to syncre-
tism in a weakening movement.
- In Sorai’s words, the samurai class “lived like guests at an inn,” where “even a
single chopstick had to be paid for” (Maruyama, 1974: 132).
- At Sorai’s school, pupils were required to sign an agreement which included
this clause, in regard to studying the laws of the Ming dynasty: “These laws are
the institutions of a different era and a different country. One must not simply em-
ploy them in the present era and destroy the existing laws” (quoted in Maruyama,
1974: 97).
- Economics was emerging as a recognized discipline in the generation of the early
1800s, explicitly known as keizai (Najita, 1987: 8). In 1815, following the work
of Kaiho, another Kaitokudo product, Kusama Naokata, produced a history of
money, the central subject of economic controversy since the time of Arai Hakuseki
and Sorai.
- Here Sorai was directly challenging the Bushido school of Yamaga Soko, which
defended the action of the ronin. Oishi Kuranosuke, the leader of 47 ronin, was
a direct disciple of Yamaga Soko (Kitagawa, 1990: 159).
- “Although li seems to be the Ultimate Principle, it is not so. Since it is an abstract
principle, it can be used in any way whatsoever. It is like being able to call a white
thing black or any other color” (quoted in Maruyama, 1974: 146).
- During the crisis of the 1320s–1330s, when Go-Daigo tried to restore imperial
rule, we find in Figure 7.2 the first significant Shinto branch of the intellectual
network. The leaders of the Watarai family, priests at the national Ise shrine,
excluded Buddhist emblems from its precincts while emulating Buddhism by stress-
ing moral purity rather than merely ceremonial offerings for fertility and protection
magic (Bellah, 1957: 65). The court intellectual Kitabatake Chikafusa now joined
the Shinto cause, in part because of its usefulness in legitimating the Go-Daigo
Notes to Pages 358–365^ •^979
