7. This was during the reign of the sixth shōgun, Ienobu (r. 1709–1712). The principals in this case were Jingobei (sixty-five), his son Shirōbei (forty-two), his daughter Ume (thirty-one), and her husband Ihei (thirty-nine).
8. Akimoto Takatomo, governor of Tajima, served as a member of the bakufu Council of Senior Councillors from 1699 to 1714.
9. The Confucian Three Bonds were those between ruler and subject, father and child, and husband and wife.
10. The justice magistrates are the officials of the Hyōjōsho, or bakufu high court.
11. Murō Kyūsō (1658–1734), a renowned Confucian scholar, is the author of, among other works, the essay collection Random Talks on Suruga Heights (Sundai zatsuwa, 1732). Ceremony and Ritual (Yi li) is one of three Confucian classics dedicated to rituals.
12. The Council of Senior Councillors (Rōjū) was the main committee of advisers to the shōgun. The text uses the name Nobuatsu for Hayashi Hōkō (1644–1732), adviser to the shōgun and the first head of the Shōheikō Academy in Edo, which was supported by the bakufu and offered a Confucian curriculum. The scholars of the Hayashi school typically applied the Confucian texts conservatively, relying extensively on Song Confucian metaphysical teachings. Hakuseki generally held Hayashi Hōkō’s opinions in low regard.
13. Hayashi Hōkō quotes a passage from the Zuo zhuan (Tso chuan), a hugely influential expansion of and commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals. See Burton Watson, trans., Tso Chuan: Selections from China’s Oldest Narrative History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 11–12.
14. The Analects (13:18) does not include the term “misdeeds” but states that it is proper for fathers and sons to cover up for each other.
15. The Chinese Penal Code (Lü shu, J. Rissho) here refers to the Sui and Tang penal codes.
16. The Confucian minister (jushin) here refers to Hayashi Hōkō (Nobuatsu).
17. An unhemmed hemp garment signifies the deepest degree of mourning, and a hemmed garment is one degree less severe. An unspecified period is also less severe than three full years.
18. This citation means that it is important to view each case on its own merits, because taking into account special circumstances may lead to new procedures. This particular quotation does not appear in canonical Chinese texts and so was probably taken from a commentary.
19. This means that there is no guarantee that she can remain chaste as a widow under conditions of hardship. This metaphor comes from Analects 9:27.
20. Ume did in fact enter the Shōkōzan (Matsugaoka) Tōkeiji convent, a famous kakekomidera, or place of asylum for women, located in Kamakura.
Chapter 9
CHINESE POETRY AND THE LITERATUS IDEAL
During the Kyōhō era (1716–1736), such notable kanshi (Chinese-style) poets as Hattori Nankaku (1683–1759) and Gion Nankai (1677–1751) flourished. The Tokugawa bakufu encouraged learning and scholarship, and early scholars of Chinese studies like Hayashi Razan believed in learning as a means of governing. The reality, however, was that most scholars, even the most talented, were not given an opportunity to govern. Instead, they usually turned their attention to such areas of scholarship as historical investigation and phonology, which were not embraced by orthodox Confucian studies, or entered artistic fields that generally brought little income or worldly gain—Chinese poetry and prose, painting, calligraphy, seal engraving (tenkoku), the art of tea (sencha)—all of which became popular at this time.
Of particular interest at this time was the ideal of the bunjin, or literatus. These intellectuals devoted themselves to the arts, not as professionals who could profit from them materially or politically, but as serious devotees. The notion of the bunjin originated in the Chinese notion of the wen-ren (bunjin, literally, person of letters), although the Japanese bunjin were not born into a landed gentry class, as they were in China. In their youth, Gion Nankai, Hattori Nankaku, Yanagisawa Kien (1704–1758), and Sakaki Hyakusen (1697–1752)—who are now regarded as the pioneers of the bunjin movement—collided with society, became disillusioned with public service, and turned to the world of the arts.
The bunjin’s disillusionment with contemporary society led also to a certain disdain for the vulgarity of the world. In reaction, they attempted to create or enter an alternative world of elegance and high taste, which would allow them a freedom of expression and imagination that they could not find in the vulgar, everyday world. They created this new world using their knowledge, particularly of Chinese culture, which gave them a sense of uniqueness. The subsequent Chinese influence was so great that even the study of the Chinese vernacular became part of the bunjin world. Imitating Chinese wen-ren, these bunjin lived a life of elegance and refinement (fūga), complete with the accoutrements of scrolls, flower vases, incense, and the like. This bunjin lifestyle and attitude eventually extended to non-kanshi writers and poets such as the haikai master Yosa Buson (1716–1783) and early yomihon writers like Ueda Akinari (1734–1809).
HATTORI NANKAKU
Hattori Nankaku (1683–1759), the second son of a wealthy urban commoner father, was born in Kyoto but moved to Edo after his father died. In 1700, at the age of seventeen, Nankaku was invited to become a samurai and waka poet in the service of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (1658–1714), a senior councillor and adviser to the fifth shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (r. 1680–1709). Through Yoshiyasu, Nankaku came to know Ogyū Sorai and, around 1711, became one of Sorai’s followers. After joining Sorai’s Ancient Rhetoric school, Nankaku turned from waka to kanshi and put Sorai’s philosophy—of actively affirming human emotions and the value of composing poetry as a means of expressing them—into practice, making the composition of Chinese poetry the equal of orthodox Chinese studies. This was a revolutionary move that had a lasting impact on later poets, who came to regard Nankaku’s lifestyle and work as the ideal of the bunjin.
After Yoshiyasu died in 1714, Nankaku had a falling-out with Yoshiyasu’s successor, and in 1718, at the age of thirty-five, he left the Yanagisawa house and spent the rest of his life out of samurai service, devoting himself to poetry, writing, and painting. Nankaku became an accomplished practitioner of the nanga (southern school) style of literati painting, which was closely connected to his poetic practice. After Sorai’s death he kept alive Sorai’s literary legacy while Dazai Shundai (1680–1747) carried on Sorai’s work in political thought. As a representative of Sorai’s Ancient Rhetoric school, Nankaku was a neoclassicist who looked to the middle Tang as an ideal, and in 1724 he printed an edition of the Tangshi xuan (Tōshisen), an anthology of Tang poetry said to have been compiled by Li Panlong, which popularized a certain version of Tang poetry in Japan. Nankaku also was interested in Daoism and wrote a number of Chinese poems about the ideals of the recluse.
TRAVELING DOWN THE SUMIDA RIVER AT NIGHT (YORU BOKUSUI O KUDARU)
The following seven-word quatrain (zekku), a form popular in the middle Tang, is from the Collected Prose and Poetry of Master Nankaku (Nankaku sensei bunshū), first published in 1727. The poem transforms the Sumida River, a small river on the outskirts of Edo, into a grand river transporting the reader into another, fantastical, Chinese-like world. The watery reflection of Golden Dragon Hill (Kinryūsan), a local hill at Asakusa on the banks of the Sumida, creates the image of a golden dragon floating down the river. The reflection on the river also causes the moon to burst out of the water, a line that echoes Li Bo’s poem “The Song of the Moon at Mount Emei” (Emeishan yue gi). In the last line, the poet arrives at the boundary between the “two provinces,” Shimōsa and Musashi, in the present-day Ryōgoku area.
On the banks of Golden Dragon Hill the moon floats over the river.
The water sways back and forth, the moon bursts out, the golden dragon moves forward.
My little boat never stops; the sky is like the water.
With the autumn winds blowing from both shores,
I pass between the two provinces.
[Gozan bungaku, Edo kanshi shū, NKBT 89: 214, transl
ated by Haruo Shirane]
JOTTINGS OF MASTER NANKAKU UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT (NANKAKU SENSEI TŌKA NO SHO, 1725)
In Jottings of Master Nankaku Under the Lamplight, written in the Japanese epistolary style (sōrōbun) around 1725, Nankaku insists in the passage translated here that the writer must strive to recapture the elegant (ga) language of the past, which he sees as having disappeared in a process of historical decline. He finds examples of this elegant language in a canon of classical Chinese texts that he regards as being influenced by such Ming-period Ancient Rhetoric school figures as Li Panlong (1514–1579) and Wang Shizhen (1526–1590), who discovered their model for prose in the Record of History (Shiji) from the Qin (221–207 B.C.E.) and Han periods (206 B.C.E.-C.E. 220) and their model for poetry in the middle Tang. Nankaku singles out for criticism the poetry of the Song dynasty (960–1279), for what he sees as its rational and discursive character. He argues that for Song Neo-Confucians—which the Sorai school attacked for their preoccupation with rational principle (ri)—the expression of anger and sorrow may appear to be a sign of weakness, characteristic of women and children, but in fact it is the “elegant emotions” (fuga no jō) of outstanding poets.
Beginning with the Six Classics, elegant [ga] language is beautiful and is not the language ordinarily used in the common [zoku] world. . . .
Writings such as the Book of Songs and the ancient-style yuefu ballads of the Han and Wei and Six Dynasties are examples of elegant emotions. . . . For example, when parting from a friend, we recall the pleasures that we have had and lament the sorrows that will follow our parting, and together with our friend we shed tears and commiserate about our sadness. In the eyes of those of the Song and later, attuned only to the study of rational principle, these appear to be weaknesses of women and children, but in reality they are the emotions of elegant people. . . .
Poetry is something that is sung and is not, by nature, a means for exhaustively expressing rational principle. Things that can be manifested in rational principle are vulgar things.
[Nihon shiwa sōsho, Bunkaidō shoten, 1920, 1: 49, 58–59, 60–61, translated by Peter Flueckiger]
RESPONDING TO THE LORD OF GOOSE LAKE (GAKO-KŌ NI KOTAHU)
According to Nankaku, people of the present day can recapture the elegance of the past by imitating the proper models. As he explains in the following excerpt from his letter “Responding to the Lord of Goose Lake,” elegant emotions do not simply pour out of the heart spontaneously; rather, they are found in and nourished by the textual tradition, which constructs and elevates the heart of the poet. At the same time, he emphasizes that this tradition must be internalized through a long period of study. The addressee of this letter was Suwa Tadatoki, daimyō of Takashima Domain in Shinano Province. Nantaku displays his bunjin consciousness by addressing Tadatoki as “Gako-kō,” or the “Lord of Goose Lake.” Gako, a reference to a place-name in China, is an elegant name for Lake Suwa, located in Tadatoki’s domain.
The words I use have already been used by the ancients, and the conceptions I express have also been expressed by the ancients. When I try comparing my own poetry with the poetry of the ancients, they are so similar that it is difficult to tell them apart. It is like this not because I imitate the ancients but, rather, because my very self is a product of their writings. This is what makes poetry difficult.
[Sorai gakuha, NST 35: 226–227, translated by Peter Flueckiger]
GION NANKAI
Gion Nankai (1677–1751), the son of a samurai doctor in Wakayama Domain, studied kanshi and Confucianism with Kinoshita Jun’an (1621–1698) and served as a Confucian official. Then in 1700, because of misbehavior, he lost his salary of two hundred koku and was imprisoned in a remote corner of the domain. In 1710, he was pardoned, returned to Wakayama Castle, and resumed his work as a Confucian official. His ten years of exile had a lasting effect on Nankai, particularly on his negative view of secular power, and it was through his poetry, painting, and calligraphy that he sought to liberate himself in an aesthetic world apart from contemporary society. In keeping with the style of his kanshi teacher, Kinoshita Jun’an (1621–1698), Nankai looked to Tang poetry as an ideal and became one of the “three [kanshi] masters” of the Shōtoku era (1711–1716), along with Arai Hakuseki and Yanada Zeigan.
Nankai came to embody the ideal of the bunjin in being able to distinguish himself not only in Chinese poetry but also in calligraphy and painting. Largely self-taught as an artist, Nankai became an outstanding Nanga painter and one of the founders of the Japanese bunjinga (literati painting) tradition. Many of his artworks were accompanied by poems, with the art, calligraphy, and text forming an organic whole in the bunjin manner. Nankai wrote in a kanshi poem entitled “Song on Poetry and Painting” (Shigaka), “What I cannot express through poetry, I express through painting, and what painting cannot describe, I explain through poetry. The voiceless poem and the formless painting can be said to give pleasure for an entire life.” Painting, in other words, is a “voiceless poem” and poetry is a “formless painting,” each complementing the other.
THE FISHERMAN (GYOFU)
Both the Daoist classic the Zhuangzi and the noted Chinese poetry collection Soji have sections on the “fisherman,” who is depicted as an ideal, someone who forgets the cares of the everyday world and floats freely over lakes and seas. The fisherman fishing alone in the cold is also a common subject in Chinese painting. This poem similarly depicts the fisherman as a man free in the midst of nature and can be read as an allegorical reflection of Nankai’s own ideal of a bunjin life. Both the horse carriage and the courtier headdress are signs of high social status. As the poet notes in the last two lines, the dangers of boating are not as bad as the dangers of surviving in human society. This poem, which appears in Later Collection of Master Nankai (Nankai sensei goshū), is a seven-word regulated poem (risshi) in eight lines, in which the third and fourth lines, and the fifth and sixth lines, form couplets.
With only a straw hat, a cloak, and a fishing pole
He never travels in a horse carriage, and no courtier hat rests on his head
He spends his entire life simply riding the misty waves.
While in his cups he never feels the chill of wind and snow.
Roosting herons, sleeping seagulls: these are his companions.
White and red floating weeds—where are the rapids?
But stop talking about the dangers of boating on rivers and lakes!
Look! The journey through this world is far more difficult.
[Gozan bungaku Edo kanshi shū, NKBT 89: 210, translated by Haruo Shirane]
Gion Nankai, Eight Daoist Immortals of China. This hanging scroll depicts a popular subject in literati painting—Daoist immortals, who were model recluses for the literati, occupying an imaginary mountain. Eight such immortals, in loose robes symbolizing their untrammeled existence, are engaged in elegant pastimes such as playing the flute and Chinese chess. Literati landscape motifs include mountain peaks, a waterfall, and a pine tree (foreground). In literati fashion, calligraphy, poetry, and painting are combined. In running script (upper left), Nankai transcribes part of a poem eulogizing the lifestyle of a recluse by the Chinese scholar-poet Tao Hongjing (452–536), an acclaimed Daoist master and calligrapher: “You asked what I have in these mountains? Many white clouds on the peaks.” (42.5 in. x 16.3 in. Property of Mary Griggs Burke. Photograph: Otto E. Nelson)
ENCOUNTERING THE ORIGINS OF POETRY (SHIGAKU HŌGEN, 1763)
Encountering the Origins of Poetry is Nankai’s most systematic presentation of his views on Chinese poetry, particularly on the issue of elegance (ga) and vulgarity (zoku). In the passage translated here, Nankai argues that in all regards—content, diction, taste, spirit—Chinese poetry must be guided by the distinction between these two elements, with every attempt made to eliminate the commonplace and the vulgar and to stress the elegant. This view of elegance became one of the fundamental assumptions of bunjin culture with respect to not only poetry but a
lso painting and calligraphy. The origin of this attitude can be found in a strain of Confucian thought that looked for the human ideal in the ancient sage-kings and saw history as a gradual decline leading up to the present. This translated into an emphasis on the elegant, which was associated with antiquity, and a denial of the vulgar, which became associated with the present. This perspective assumed that by mastering the language of the past through elegant poetry, one could elevate or transcend the present.
On Elegance and Vulgarity
Poetry [shi] is the vessel for elegance [fūga]. It is not something for vulgar use. If one needs to refer to things of vulgar use, one should not turn to poetry. One should be able to take care of such things with ordinary or low words. This applies not only to Chinese poetry but to Japanese poetry . . . as well as to music, chess [shōgi], calligraphy, and painting. All of these must be elegant activities. Earlier I spoke of painting. For example, when painting a mountain or a farmhouse in a landscape painting, no matter how realistic it may be, if one paints an outhouse, a pile of compost, or things like a stove, the result will be extremely shabby and vulgar. In depicting a human being, no matter what that person may be like, if one depicts the anus or the sexual organs, it will be rude and improper. . . . When it comes to elegant matters, one should avoid this kind of thing and paint those parts that are elegant and avoid those parts that are vulgar. . . . This distinction applies to things, words, and taste. . . . One must seek the elegant in things and avoid the vulgar.
[Kinsei bungaku ron, NKBT 88: 246–249, translated by Haruo Shirane]
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