Ogyū Sorai

Japanese scholar and philologist

• Born: February 16, 1666
• Birthplace: Edo (now Tokyo), Japan
• Died: January 19, 1728
• Place of death: Edo (now Tokyo), Japan

Ogyū Sorai helped create a Japanese form of Neo-Confucianism that was pragmatic in application but emphasized the importance of government-imposed order and social control. Though his social ideas were not implemented during his own lifetime, his students continued the development and advocacy of his ideas. His social and educational views formed part of the ideological basis for the increasingly authoritarian regime that developed in the Meiji era and continued until 1945.

Early Life

Ogyū Sorai (ohg-yew soh-ri), whose father was a resident physician serving Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (r. 1680-1709) for some years before Tsunayoshi became shogun, attended the same lectures given by eminent scholars to the children of the highest Edo aristocrats. This gave Sorai a considerable educational advantage at an early age. In 1679, however, Sorai’s father offended Tsunayoshi, and Sorai’s family was banished to Kazusa, a town north of Edo, where they remained until 1690, when they were allowed to return to Edo.

Sorai continued his studies on his own in Kazusa and was particularly attracted by Chinese neoclassicism, a movement led by the late Ming scholars Wang Shizhen (1526-1590) and Li Panlong (1514-1570), who advocated the return to classical literary models that were prevalent centuries earlier. The growing popularity of this neoclassicism led to a general respect for Ming literary models, which endured in Japan for several centuries after they were replaced by Qing models in China itself. This affected models for literary Japanese as well as Chinese writers, since Chinese classics with Japanese notations were used in schools in both Tokugawa and Meiji Japan.

Life’s Work

After his family’s return to Edo in 1690, Ogyū Sorai established himself as a teacher in Edo, giving private lessons and lectures. He also reinforced his advocacy of using Ming classical Chinese models through his Yakubun sentei, a 1692 guide to written Chinese composition and style designed for use by the Tokugawa gentry. Ogyū Sorai’s mastery of classical Chinese rhetoric, grammar, and philology came to be admired by the Edo literary establishment in the same way that the British Victorian establishment admired Latin and Greek classical erudition.

In 1696, his scholarly abilities were recognized by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1658-1714), a patron of scholarship and the arts, who was also Tsunayoshi’s closest adviser. Yanagisawa became Sorai’s patron, recommending him to the shogun. Sorai began as a scholar in residence for Tsunayoshi and Yanagisawa, serving with a regular government stipend and on occasion advising Tsunayoshi and Yanagisawa on the Confucian principles of good government as well. Ironically, Tsunayoshi was popularly regarded as an arbitrary tyrant, and many also viewed Yanagisawa as a sycophant interested only in his own advancement. It is unlikely that Sorai ever directly criticized either of his patrons, since they were known for punishing their critics. Sorai continued to enjoy their favor, as long as they were alive.

Sorai began his residency by giving lectures on classical literature and philosophy attended by Yanagisawa and Tsunayoshi. Sorai persuaded Yanagisawa and Tsunayoshi to give official sanction to his views on neoclassicism among the Japanese literary establishment, and he eventually shared his views on Confucian social teachings with the shogun and Yanagisawa as well.

Sorai’s own version of Confucianism was based on a pragmatic interpretation of political and social concepts. He respected the social applications of traditional Confucian virtues, grounded on the main priority of study and self-improvement, leading in turn to harmonious family life. Collective harmonious family life would promote good government, and the country would become peaceful and orderly. While such virtuous modes of behavior were supposed to result in good government and a peaceful country, Sorai viewed good governance and political economy as of equal or greater importance, becoming part of the means to save society rather than the possible end result of behavior according to the traditional Confucian ethic.

In Sorai’s view, there are two main determinants of the nature of society: One was the way the social structure was organized and the other was the way people operated within that structure. In keeping with a society in which Tsunayoshi and his shogunate’s bureaucracy held most of the real power and in which the samurai and the old military feudal lords had become redundant, Sorai recommended that the warriors should return to the land, merging once again with the countryside populace from whom they had originated.

Sorai also recommended that country people should, quite literally, be kept in their places by enforcing a system in which people registered their permanent place of residence. To travel would require permission from the government. This sort of system, with limits on mobility, was attempted to a greater or lesser degree before and throughout the Tokugawa era. Yet in peaceful times the system was often circumvented through loopholes, since itinerant clergy, traveling merchants, pilgrims, and others could get exemptions. In times of disorder, such as the recurring periods of famine that afflicted the Tokugawa era, there were so many masses of desperate people roaming the country that it was practically impossible for the government to control their movements.

After Tsunayoshi died in 1709, Yanagisawa quickly retired from public life, but he continued to be Sorai’s patron. Finally, after Yanagisawa died in 1714, Sorai opened a private school in Kayabacho, a locale in an area that is now part of Tokyo’s financial district. He remained a prominent Confucian intellectual, and even though he was on good terms with the shoguns succeeding Tsunayoshi, he did not receive significant patronage from them. Sorai had begun life as a favored child, then lived in exile, then managed to regain governmental support. In the end, however, he lost that support once more.

At this point in his life, on his own and approaching fifty years old, Sorai focused exclusively on teaching. He had many students from prominent Edo families and made a good income from his school. In the last dozen years of his life, as a private scholar, Sorai finally began to achieve the full scholarly eminence for which he is known in Japanese history, and he did this by training students who continued to promote his teachings and social views long after his death.

Significance

Ogyū Sorai’s leading disciple in the application of his social, economic, and political concepts was Dazai Shundai (1680-1747), the offspring of feudal nobility who ultimately rejected his heritage to spend his life as a scholar. After making several abortive attempts to become a feudal functionary, and also developing a sporadic practice in herbal medicine, Dazai became Sorai’s student around 1715, at the age of thirty-five. Dazai later taught and wrote about classical studies and political economy, but he is remembered mainly for his 1729 economic treatise Keizairoku shūi (English translation, 1998), which expounded Sorai’s ideas on political economy, adding a few extra points, such as the importance of trade and currency transactions. Sorai’s ideas were transmitted to posterity through Dazai’s work.

Sorai’s leading student in traditional classical studies and philology was Hattori Nankaku (1683-1759). Hattori began his career as a young man in the service of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, but after Yanagisawa’s death in 1714, Hattori became Ogyū Sorai’s attendant and student. He became an expert in classical literature and philology and wrote many books about Chinese and Japanese classics. Hattori was extremely successful as a teacher and writer, producing scholarly studies that were used for several generations.

Bibliography

Lidin, Olof G. The Life of Ogyu Sorai: A Tokugawa Confucian Philosopher. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies monograph series. Lund, Sweden: University of Lund, 1973. The only biography of Ogyū Sorai in English, by a foremost Western expert on his life and thought.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ogyu Sorai, Distinguishing the Way: Ogyu Sorai’s “Bendo.” Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica Monographs, Sophia University, 1970. An authoritative study of Ogyū Sorai’s Confucian masterwork.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ogyu Sorai’s “Discourse on Government” (“Seidan”): An Annotated Translation. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1999. The culmination of a lifetime of work on Ogyū Sorai by Lidin.

McEwan, J. R. The Political Writings of Ogyu Sorai. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1962. A work that presents an alternative perspective on Ogyū Sorai’s political writings.

Maruyama, Masao. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974. A historical analysis of Tokugawa intellectual currents by an authority on Japanese intellectual history.

Najita, Tetsuo, trans. and ed. Readings in Tokugawa Thought. Chicago: Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, 1993. A standard source book of writings by Tokugawa scholars, compiled from original sources by a Japanese authority on Tokugawa intellectual life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Tokugawa Political Writings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Contains translations of work by Ogyū Sorai and by Dazai Shundai.

Yamashita, Samuel Hideo. Master Sorai’s “Responsals”: An Annotated Translation of Sorai Sensei’s “Tūmonsho.” Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. An authoritative study of a work by Ogyū Sorai that is usually overlooked by Westerners.

Yoshikawa, Kojiro. Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga: Three Classical Philologists of Mid-Tokugawa Japan. Tokyo: Toho Gakkai, 1983. Parallel studies of the literary and linguistic scholarship of Ogyū Sorai, his Confucian predecessor Ito Jinsai, and his Japanese studies successor Moto’ori Norinaga, by a noted Japanese authority on Confucian thought.