Nishi Amane and Modern Japanese Thought

Nishi Amane and Modern Japanese Thought

by Thomas R.H. Havens
Nishi Amane and Modern Japanese Thought

Nishi Amane and Modern Japanese Thought

by Thomas R.H. Havens

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Overview

A nineteenth-century aristocrat, Nishi Amane (1829-1897) was one of the first Japanese to assert the supremacy of Western culture. He was sent by his government to Leiden to study the European social sciences; on his return to Japan shortly before the climactic Meiji Restoration of 1868 he introduced and adapted European utilitarianism and positivism to his country's intellectual world. To modernize, Nishi held, Japan must cast off the bonds of the Confucian world-view in order to adopt new principles of empirical scholarly investigation and new standards of self-improvement. Though a Confucian by upbringing, Nishi became thoroughly committed to Western intellectual values in his programs for the new Japanese society. In his roles of teacher, writer, and government administrator, he was influential at one of the most critical times in Japan’s history.

Originally published in 1970.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691621357
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 03/08/2015
Series: Princeton Legacy Library , #1488
Pages: 264
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

Read an Excerpt

Nishi Amane

And Modern Japanese Thought


By Thomas R. H. Havens

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1970 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-03080-7



CHAPTER 1

The Intellectual in Japan's Transition from Feudalism to Modernism


The politicians, journalists, commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, educators, bureaucrats, and scholars who guided the Japanese nation through the first two turbulent decades of the Meiji period (1868-1912) disagreed among themselves on many issues, but one thing to which nearly all assented was the pressing need to root out the "evil customs and absurd usages" of their country's feudal past.

This was no mere academic question in the nineteenth-century context. The mature feudalism of sixteenth-century Japan had developed by 1603 into a more advanced form of feudalism unparalleled in European history: the bakuhan system of the Edo period (1603-1868). Japanese politics during this era was characterized by the overlordship of the Tokugawa family military government (bakufu), beneath which some 250 domains (han) exercised regional hegemony. The elaborate control devised by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the first shogun, and his successors had not remained a frozen institutional apparatus throughout the long Edo period, but Japanese political culture, and to a considerable degree Japanese civilization as a whole, remained staunchly feudal until the arrival of the West in 1853. Once the imperial restoration of 1868 had been safely accomplished and Japan had embarked on her historic path toward modernization, the early Meiji leaders perceived the urgency of putting their feudal tradition squarely behind them. Only by renouncing their historical experience, they were convinced, could Japan hope to catch up with the contemporary West and share equal footing with the countries of Western Europe as a modern, progressive state.

This rejection of the past included Japan's intellectual heritage, which was mainly Confucian. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834-1901), the most famous of the Meiji scholars, expressed his abhorrence of the feudal ideology in these words:

"It is not only that I hold Uttle regard for the Chinese teaching, but I have even been endeavoring to drive its degenerate influences from my country....

"The true reason for my opposing the Chinese teaching with such vigor is my belief that in this age of transition, if this retrogressive doctrine remains at all in our young men's minds, the new civilization cannot give its full benefit to this country. In my determination to save our coming generation, I am prepared even to face singlehanded the Chinese scholars of the country as a whole."


In short, thinking men were prepared to do battle with their tradition on many fronts, including the realm of ideas as well as the sphere of institutions.

For very different reasons, the modern determinist historians in Japan have applauded their forebears' eagerness to "struggle against feudalism," believing that in struggle are the germs of inevitable historical process. Marxist historiography suffered grievous vicissitudes before World War II, because of the mercurial record of leftist movements in general and of the Japan Communist Party in particular. A good deal of the Marxist research in the late 1920's and 1930's was intended either to corroborate or attack the ever variable official line of the JCP, which was understandably more concerned with promoting political revolution than historical objectivity. Beginning with Kawakami Hajime's Keizai taiko (Principles of Economics), published in 1928, the major Marxist writers became involved in a lengthy and complicated intramural controversy known as the Koza-Rono dispute on the nature of the Meiji restoration and the growth of Japanese capitalism. The Koza faction regarded the events of 1868 as a transfer of power from a feudal elite to a monarchist clique which had installed a teen-age emperor at the apex of an "absolutist" political hierarchy. Yet beneath this actuality was a frustrated potentiality: the restoration was also an incipient proletarian uprising, deriving its momentum from the city poor and the landless peasants. These elements, according to the Koza view, were building a significant urban-agrarian lower-class movement until it was aborted by a counter-revolutionary alliance of former feudal leaders and merchant-capitalists. This development thwarted the proletarian revolution and led directly from feudalism to a new "absolutist" stage, in which the Meiji state not only failed to eradicate the dark stains of the past but also paved the way to imperialism. The Rono group, by contrast, interpreted the restoration as a fairly successful bourgeois revolution which initiated the arduous task of democratic reform. Although the job was far from finished in the 1930's, the Rono scholars maintained, Japan had now progressed sufficiently from its feudal past to permit a true proletarian socialist revolution.

No matter how tempestuous the debates, however, few men in either camp questioned the Marxist assumption that history was a succession of developmental stages, among which was the stubborn weed, feudalism, that thrived in Japan until at least 1868. It was beyond doubt that the feudal stage had persisted uncommonly long in their country and that the attainment of democracy and socialism was contingent upon a revolt against the past. The issue between Koza and Rono was when, or whether, such a revolt had occurred and, if so, what shape it had taken. This assumption about the procession of historical stages still flourishes in postwar Japan, for example, in the works of Toyama Shigeki, a leading contemporary scholar of the restoration. Toyama attributes Japan's successful modernization to the purge of feudalism, especially because the catharsis was propelled by massive peasant uprisings in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, the Meiji reformers were effective in the degree to which they rooted out Japan's feudal vestiges, however ill-defined. (The works of E. H. Norman, who compiled massive evidence of "feudal decay" in late Tokugawa Japan, have lent further support to these views.) To all of this determinist persuasion, 1868 is a monument: sequentially, the restoration was a break with the past; in terms of value, that break was good to the extent that it was a clean one.

Not only was this outlook suspect because of the a priori ideological assumptions of its proponents; it also failed to stand the test of further research. A fresh evaluation of the link between Tokugawa feudalism and Meiji modernization has arisen since World War II, both in Japan and abroad. Simply stated, the new view is that the Tokugawa period was less an age of evil customs or Procrustean repressions than an era in which the foundations for modern nation-building were laid. Such writers as Albert Craig and Marius B. Jansen have not only refuted the Marxist interpretation of restoration politics in the vital domains of Choshu and Tosa; they have also confirmed the essential political and social continuities during the changeover from feudal to modern Japan. As a leading textbook puts it, "once Japan was launched on the course of modernization, certain underlying conditions made possible rapid progress, though most of these conditions had existed for at least a century without seriously affecting the Tokugawa regime." Among the more important were nationalist sentiments, a well-developed economy, the network of private and state-sponsored schools, a lessening degree of social hierarchy, strong administrative leadership, and the peculiar strength of the throne. Each constituted an inheritance that made it possible to achieve the Meiji goals of strength and wealth more rapidly and more completely than had Japan in fact been capable of a clean break with the past. In short, it is now commonly accepted that the Tokugawa experience, far from retarding subsequent modernization, was an essential cornerstone for the Meiji reforms.

Lurking behind this view, however, is the danger of rendering too favorable an appraisal of the pre-modern period. This rediscovery of the Edo era may be approaching the limits of its effectiveness, insofar as it tries to credit the success of modernization to feudal strengths. Postwar research has unquestionably yielded a valuable dividend in correcting various deterministic evaluations, and it has certainly begun to do justice to an epoch long ignored by historians. But it should not be forgotten that Tokugawa Japan was overwhelmingly feudal, not modern. Whatever signs of modernism appeared before 1853 did so in a setting vastly different from that of Meiji Japan: they remind us that coming events may cast their shadows before, but they are merely shadows, not substance. Without denying the important historical continuities at play, it should be remembered that Meiji Japan was above all an era of change.

Through the lenses of Fukuzawa and his peers, the degree and speed of this change are distorted; their lack of perspective has filled their works with an exaggerated sense of upheaval, drawing too sharp a line between Tokugawa and Meiji. They were wrong to dismiss their past as useless or irrelevant, but they were right that a fundamental intellectual reorientation and a basic institutional reorganization were necessary. Likewise, the Marxists have been too zealous in labeling the restoration as a nascent proletarian uprising, but their studies have justly assessed the mammoth inhibitions which Tokugawa feudalism placed upon modernization.

This emphasis on change is particularly useful in analyzing the character of social and political thought in the early Meiji period. It is clear that in the case of a leading group of Japanese thinkers, the keimo (enlightenment) scholars of the 1870's, the overwhelming experience in their intellectual development was their contact with the novel doctrines of the contemporary West: positivism and utilitarianism. However much these intellectuals owed to their Confucian heritage, they thought of themselves as men of a new age, beholden to new teachings which they deemed requisite for the modern society they hoped to create. As always, both continuities and changes are at work in the history of Meiji thought, but of the two the latter is vastly more important.


This study is an inquiry into the nature of one man's intellectual response to the historical events of his lifetime. Nishi Amane (1829-1897), who was among the earliest Japanese scholars to acknowledge the cultural supremacy of Europe over Japan, was the first man sent abroad by his government to study the Western social sciences. Upon his return he introduced European concepts of natural and international law to Japan, but he is best known as the scholar who first brought positivism and utilitarianism back from abroad. Nishi was not the most eloquent nor the most important of the keimo scholars, nor was he typical of literate opinion in Japan as a whole. He was representative of the best thinking in early Meiji Japan, a scholar who was thoroughly familiar with the Confucian tradition but firmly committed to the doctrines of the modern West. It is Nishi as thinker, not philosopher, with whom I am concerned: the man thinking in his historical milieu, not pondering eternal truths. By understanding the logic of his intellectual position and the reasonableness of his attitudes, we may elucidate the dilemma of the man of letters in coming to grips with modernism. Throughout, I shall attempt to speak of significance, not influence, because Nishi was a man of great foresight rather than lasting impact. I shall try to show that Nishi's mental fibre was largely Western in composition and that, or perhaps therefore, his writings are highly relevant to understanding modern Japan. This is a study of the intellectually significant, not the biographically reconstructible, Nishi.

Before we turn to the issues which preoccupied Nishi and his generation, it will be useful to sketch the dimensions of Japan's intellectual ecumene immediately before Commodore Matthew C. Perry's visit in 1853. From today's perspective, it is the latter half of the nineteenth century in Japan that seems filled with chaos and violent changes, but to the observer of Japan in 1850, the first half of the century hardly appeared quiescent. The later Tokugawa period — especially after 1800 — was a time of intense ideological ferment, when older dogmas were frequently subjected to oblique criticisms and occasionally to direct assault. Nishi was obliged to choose his own intellectual values in a climate of sharply contending doctrines and uncertain truths, in an age when time-honored philosophies no longer seemed adequate and newer ones were still untested.

If the political world of Tokugawa Japan was staunchly feudal, its intellectual realm was just as securely Confucian. A Japanese version of Sung period Confucianism supplied the philosophical underpinnings for the bakufu and social structure established by the Tokugawa family early in the seventeenth century. This Japanese Neo-Confucianism, known as Shushigaku, was an adaptation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) and of other Chinese scholars who had constructed a complex metaphysical system to supplement the ancient teachings of Confucius. In Shushigaku, great weight was given to "the way of mankind" (jindo), a formulation of ethical conduct that was officially sanctioned by the ruling Tokugawa house, in order to restore the social hierarchy that had been disrupted by a century of feudal wars. This conservative ethical schema assigned all members of society to their respective proper stations and insisted on the importance of personal morality to solidify the stratification. Political leadership, in this system, was exercised by statesmen who were thought to be morally superior — as though selected by heaven rather than because of their personal achievements. The feudal warriors (samurai), functionless after the Tokugawa settlement of 1603, were the primary targets of Shushi teachings: they above all were obliged to uphold the five ethics and five virtues (gorin gojo) that were regularly promoted by Tokugawa orthodoxy. But whereas the customary five virtues of Chinese Confucianism had consisted of benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom, and fidelity, in Shushigaku they were redefined to comprise loyalty, filiality, duty, service to one's master (hoko) and keeping to one's station (bugen). The five Chinese ethics or relationships had normally emphasized loyalties to the family, but in Tokugawa Japan one's principal moral obligation was loyalty to the feudal lord. Hence from the moment it received official sponsorship, Edo period Neo-Confucianism was a different breed from the Sung original.

Formality and custom were the markings of Shushi teachings, resulting in a gradual decline in intellectual flexibility among Japanese Neo-Confucianists after the late seventeenth century. The Tokugawa shoguns, in electing to patronize Shushigaku, showed far more interest in the political and social usefulness of the Chinese ideology than in its metaphysical or philosophical ramifications. Ieyasu and the Hayashi scholars who advised him foreshadowed the fallacious "Eastern morality, Western technology" aphorism of the 1850's when they tried to import the utilitarian aspects of Chu Hsi without also accepting the Confucian culture-centrism prerequisite for that utility. Shushigaku possessed only sterile social theory and rusty moral exhortations: it lacked an examination system, a bureaucratic ethos, a mandate of heaven, and the other trappings of a celestial empire. Because Ieyasu failed to create the mechanisms within which Neo-Confucianism could be really useful, and because such mechanisms would themselves have foundered without a firm commitment to the overweening culturalism of Confucianism, it is not surprising that Shushigaku failed to develop a significant tradition of metaphysical speculation or ethical introspection. Its aridity as a mere prescription for social ritual rendered it more and more intellectually vacuous and epistemologically confining as the Tokugawa era wore on.

Because of its hortatory, non-institutional nature, the official doctrine could not be rigidly enforced, and thus it is remarkable how late into the Edo period Shushigaku, for all its limitations, remained the dominant intellectual current. Although Maruyama Masao is certainly right that true Neo-Confucianists considered criticism of the bakufu "not so much as a rebellion against their authority as a system leading directly to the collapse of morality and sanctities," no doubt the continuing preeminence of Shushigaku stemmed mainly from the political prestige of its patrons. So long as feudalism remained intact, Shushi ideologies retained a privileged status as the official rationale.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Nishi Amane by Thomas R. H. Havens. Copyright © 1970 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

  • Frontmatter, pg. i
  • Preface, pg. vii
  • Contents, pg. ix
  • Note, pg. x
  • I. The Intellectual in Japan's Transition from Feudalism to Modernism, pg. 1
  • II. The Early Development of Nishi's Thought, pg. 20
  • III. Study Abroad and Service at Home, pg. 40
  • IV. A Leader in Enlightening Japan, pg. 77
  • V. Attack on Neo-Confucianism, pg. 114
  • VI. Ethics for the New Society, pg. 141
  • VII. Nishi on Politics and Current Events, pg. 164
  • VIII. Civil and Military Society, pg. 191
  • IX. Nishi and Modern Japan, pg. 217
  • Biographical Notes, pg. 223
  • List of Works Cited, pg. 231
  • Index, pg. 247



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