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Philosophy in Japan

Before the Meiji period the work was called learning, gaku, and what it followed was a Way, michi or dō: the Way of the buddhas, of the Confucian sages, of the kami, or of one of the arts, calligraphy, tea, the martial arts. Learning meant modelling oneself on a master text or a master. Confucian learning had several names of its own, jugaku, the learning of the scholars, seigaku, the learning of the sages, rigaku, the learning of principle, shingaku, the learning of the heart-mind, and Matsunaga Sekigo wrote in 1640: “Between heaven and earth, there are three major ways”, the Confucian, the Buddhist and the Daoist. The eighteenth century added Native Studies, kokugaku, the learning of Japan’s own antiquity.

Japan sorted its teachings in two ways that stand side by side. Kūkai (774–835), around 830, ranked all the teachings he knew as ten stages of the mind, with the esoteric teaching of his own Shingon school at the top. Nine centuries later Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746), son of one of the Osaka merchants who founded the townsmen’s academy, the Kaitokudō, and a student there, explained the teachings by their history instead. “All who from of old have expounded a way and founded a teaching have had someone they fasten it to as founder, and have sought to rise above those who stood before them. That is the fixed custom” (Okina no fumi, 1746): each teaching adds itself on top of the last (kajō). His method was to read every saying by three things, “its kind, its age and its person” (Shutsujō kōgo, 1745). In Okina no fumi he found that none of the three teachings, Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto, would do for his own time: “the Buddha’s is the way of India and the Confucians’ the way of China; the country differs, so they are not the way of Japan. Shinto is the way of Japan, but the time differs, so it is not the way of the present age”. What remained was the Way of sincerity (makoto no michi), plain present conduct: “write today’s script, speak today’s language, eat today’s food … do no evil and do all good”, for “a way that is not practised is not the Way of sincerity”.

The lines

English without a named translator is rendered from the original.

Buddhism in Japan — three answers to what study is for: Kūkai’s teachings ranked as states of mind, Hōnen and Shinran setting learning aside for the nembutsu, Dōgen’s study of the self.
The Confucians — the Edo academies: Hayashi Razan’s reading, Itō Jinsai’s philology, Ogyū Sorai’s Way made by the former kings, Kaibara Ekken’s doubt, Ishida Baigan’s learning of the heart for townsmen.
Native Studies — Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga: a Way that was never spoken of, and the oldest texts read with a purified heart.
Miura Baien and Andō Shōeki — two physicians against the learning of books: heaven and earth as one great mass of doubt, and letters as tools for stealing the Way.
Meiji — Nishi Amane’s tetsugaku, Inoue Enryō’s four sages, Inoue Tetsujirō’s Eastern philosophy, Nakae Chōmin’s “no philosophy”.
The Kyoto School — Nishida’s religion as the conclusion of philosophy, Tanabe’s philosophy that is not a philosophy, Nishitani’s thinking of non-thinking, and Watsuji’s ethics with Tosaka’s objection.
After 1945 — Maruyama Masao on thought without a coordinate axis, Karatani Kōjin’s reply, Fujita Masakatsu on philosophy and its language.