Individuality in Early Modern Japan

Thinking for Oneself

Peter Nosco

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367336875
• eBook ISBN: 9781351389617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia giapponese

Two of the most commonly alleged features of Japanese society are its homogeneity and its encouragement of conformity, as represented by the saying that the nail that sticks up gets pounded. This volume's primary goal is to challenge these and a number of other long-standing assumptions regarding Tokugawa (1600-1868) society, and thereby to open a dialogue regarding the relationship between the Japan of two centuries ago and the present. The volume's central chapters concentrate on six aspects of Tokugawa society: the construction of individual identity, aggressive pursuit of self-interest, defiant practice of forbidden religious traditions, interest in self-cultivation and personal betterment, understandings of happiness and well-being, and embrace of "neglected" counter-ideological values. The author argues that when taken together, these point to far higher degrees of individuality in early modern Japan than has heretofore been acknowledged, and in an Afterword the author briefly examines how these indicators of individuality in early modern Japan are faring in contemporary Japan at the time of writing.

1 Introduction

Creating a Context for Thinking for Oneself

Key terms—The terms early modern(ity), individuality, and ideology figure prominently in this volume, making it helpful to have, if not actual definitions, then at least an understanding of what I intend when I use them. This also requires me to acknowledge at the outset that each of these terms has an extended, richly contested tradition, and in the explanations that follow I aim for an almost stick-figure simplicity and clarity that is not a reflection of the sophisticated theoretical debates that inevitably swirl nearby.

In terms of early modernity, I follow Björn Wittrock (1998) in appreciating that there are multiple models of early modernity but that they generally share a significantly higher capacity for resource mobilization than in the preceding “medieval” or “late medieval” period, and similarly exhibit a new level of collective identity largely absent in earlier times. Since in this volume I argue that collective identity and individual identity emerge in tandem, I could as well argue that a new level of individual identity is equally prominent in early modern Japan specifically and early modern societies generally.

To put approximate years on this in Japan, I would date the beginnings of Japanese early modernity with the ascendance of the warlord Oda Nobunaga (織田信長 1534–82) in the 1570s and its conclusion with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Examples of monumental resource mobilization would be the construction of Osaka Castle begun in 1583, and the ill-advised invasion of Korea in the 1590s; collective identity emerges roughly a century later but takes yet another century to develop into theories of Japaneseness. In this volume I tend to use the terms early modern, Tokugawa period, and Edo period in ways that are essentially synonymous but with slightly different nuances: “early modern” when I wish to emphasize a comparative dimension; “Tokugawa” when the state is part of the issue being discussed; and “Edo” when my interest is more social and cultural than political.

I use individuality to refer to an acceptance and appreciation of human difference, i.e., what distinguishes one person from another. One cannot discount the effect of extant source materials on our understanding of individuality in Japan, but the image that emerges of early modern individuality is that it has antecedents in the honorific culture of samurai elites and in the elitism of Buddhist and Kyoto courtier custodians of culture, as well as in patterns of medieval reclusion. A central contention of this volume is that this earlier exceptional individuality becomes commonplace during the Tokugawa period. Please note that I generally do not use the word individualism, which I understand to be the advocacy and promotion of human difference, as well as the assertion of supremacy of individual self-interest over the interests of the collectivity. The distinction is important for this study.

I use ideology, in turn, to refer to any corpus of secular thought intended by those in authority to influence the behavior of individuals and groups. I exclude religious—in early modern Japan’s case principally Buddhist—thought and organizations from consideration because religions by their very nature seek to influence the behavior of groups and individuals, and thus render any definition of ideology that includes them overly broad.¹ When bodies of social thought are subject to either indifference or disapproval from the state, I refer to them as counter-ideological. Generally, from the Genroku years (元禄 1688–1704) through the end of the Tokugawa in 1868, the Bakufu (幕府) or central government in Edo had relatively clear ideological preferences but at the same time tended toward cultural liberality, by which I mean it was generally indifferent to cultural expressions and social mores that it did not perceive to be threatening or destabilizing.

Individuality and ideology—For decades and with virtually one voice, descriptions of modern and contemporary Japan maintained that Japanese society after 1890 exhibits low levels of individuality relative to its European and North American counterparts, and that this is largely a consequence of exceptionally effective ideological production (DeVos 1985). In this volume I do not take issue with this, but I would add that for individuality to emerge, i.e., for there to be an affirmative acceptance in society of individual difference, a society has to overcome those state-sanctioned ideologies which are intended to harness collective energies and to subordinate the behavior of both groups and individuals in service to the state.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) traced the philosophical roots of the modern British respect for individual difference of perspective to René Descartes’ (1596–1650) dictum, “I think, therefore I am” (Je pense, donc je suis), which validated the notion that since each person has their own existence as the starting point for knowledge, each person’s basis for knowledge is different (Russell 1946: 579). This is consistent with what I am calling individuality in this volume, where I will argue that in Japan during the period under consideration such individuality was prominent and widespread but is not to be confused or conflated with individualism of the sort described above and that one might find in contemporary North America.

There are excellent analyses in English of ideological formation in Japan for the years 1570 to 1680 (Ooms 1985) and again for 1890 to 1912 (Gluck 1985), and the nearly two centuries from 1680 to 1870 on which I focus are bracketed chronologically by Ooms’ and Gluck’s contributions. But my interests are less in the state-sponsored and endorsed ideologies that form the topic of Ooms’ and Gluck’s brilliant studies, and more in the socially generated counter-ideological forces that both allowed for and reflected individuality’s emergence. In this volume I offer evidence of a new, more widely experienced and accepted individuality, the counter-ideological behavior it exhibited, and the values that supported it, by focusing on those intervening years which may have been individuality’s heyday in Japan. At least in Japan during the years on which this volume concentrates—and perhaps as a universal condition of modernity—individuality and state ideology coexist in an uneasy but creative tension as each seeks to improve its stature relative to the other. That the process remains ongoing is the subject of this volume’s Afterword.

Thinking for oneself—An explanation of the several associations of this volume’s subtitle, “Thinking for Oneself,” is also in order. In the Analects (2:15) Confucius is quoted, “Learning without thinking is wasted; thinking without learning is dangerous” (學而不思則罔, 思而不學則殆). Confucius’ gist is that learning—rote memorization and textual study alone—is by itself not worthwhile unless one reflects upon what one has studied and through this reflection is transformed by it. Alternatively, giving free rein to one’s thoughts without the grounding of knowledge rooted in a classical tradition can lead one astray into profoundly dangerous territory. Confucius of course was right: A balance between learning and thinking is optimal, since thinking for oneself is essentially counter-ideological and can easily become or at least appear to be subversive. However, learning to think for oneself is one of the founts of individuality: It questions and challenges received wisdom and is at the very heart of critical thinking.

Written sources make it clear that this kind of thinking for—and about—oneself is evident in all of Japan’s major metropolises by the end of the Genroku era and was supported by the same societal conditions that allowed for the emergence of a vibrant and self-sustaining popular culture: relatively high levels of literacy; surplus wealth distributed broadly if not equitably; cultural liberality of a sort that challenged the boundaries of what the state deemed acceptable; and high levels of urbanization that brought the best and brightest into cross-fertilizing contact with one another (Nosco 1990: 15–40). These same factors likewise provided a fertile environment for the construction of both individual and collective identity, for the nascent individuality that accompanied this construction, and for an abundance of heterodox thought in a marketplace of ideas. The dynamism that facilitated these social and counter-ideological transformations would not long remain constrained to these hyper-urban environments, and from roughly the mid-eighteenth century “thinking for oneself” would spread to regional centers in the countryside, using existing information and communications networks to spread the word (Ikegami 2005; Beerens 2006: esp. 195–219).

A second source for this volume’s subtitle derives from the work of my former teacher and mentor Wm. Theodore de Bary, and especially his 1991 Learning for Oneself: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought. Is there something different about Japanese individuality from individuality elsewhere in the world, and especially within the East Asian cultural orbit? Writing on traditional China, de Bary observed:

There is, first of all, the individualism of the hermit or recluse, who has largely withdrawn from society. This we might call a detached or “private” individualism… . By contrast, there is a more affirmative and socially defined individualism which seeks to establish the place of the individual or self in relation to others, to secure his status in some institutional framework or on the basis of widely declared and accepted principles.

(1991: 5)

Later in this volume we briefly examine the Japanese tradition of reclusion, which is among the most immediate antecedents for the subsequent emergence of eccentricity and strangeness, and we also more closely examine various rationales for self-cultivation in Japan, where the transparently self-ish aspect of the exercise required numerous apologists.

However, lest one conclude that Japanese individualism was merely a parochial version of a broader Confucian and hence East Asian phenomenon, let us continue with a second quotation from Prof. de Bary on how individuality was expressed in the cultural activities of a Chinese scholar during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. This individuality, he writes, is a reflection of “the special status and functions of the scholar-official class, the general affluence of the times, the influence of a religious atmosphere pervaded by Buddhist preoccupation with the problem of the self, and the interaction of these with a humanistic tradition that attached special importance to the cultural and political roles of educated man” (ibid: 69). The Japanese early modern context for the emergence of individuality shared this general social affluence and increasing prosperity but otherwise differed fundamentally from the Chinese context as just described: 1) there was no scholar-official class in Japan despite efforts at Bakufu and domainal (Han 藩) levels to represent the samurai (士) as an approximate counterpart; 2) the medieval Buddhist agnosticism regarding the self had to be overcome if individuality was to radicate in Tokugawa soil; 3) there was no comparably deep-seated humanistic tradition in Japan prior to the Tokugawa; and 4) education would only gradually emerge as a qualification for a political role, and this only among those already privileged by samurai birthright. Individuality in Tokugawa Japan does indeed emerge, but it does so in a very different context from its counterpart in China.

Yet a third source for this volume’s subtitle is the Japanese title for Tadano Makuzu’s (只野真葛 1763–1825) most important work, her 1817 Hitori kangae (独考), which has been rendered into English as “Solitary Thoughts.” Owing to the circumstances surrounding its composition—Makuzu’s service to a royal princess at 16, her ill-fated marriage at 25, and her subsequent move to Sendai following remarriage to a Sendai samurai whom she saw infrequently—this is an altogether appropriate rendering of the title and her life. But owing to Makuzu’s radical observations, which we return to in greater detail on several occasions in this volume, her title could equally as well be rendered “Thinking (kangae) for Oneself (hitori),” something of which she is a superb exemplar. Tadano Makuzu had an uncanny ability to comment on the mores of her own times as if she were a distant observer, reflecting her capacity to think for herself without regard for the consequences.

Good Meiji, bad Tokugawa—My interest in this subject of individuality and counter-ideological behavior and values has a genesis of sorts in the fact that Japanese history looked quite different when I began the study of modern Japan as an undergraduate in 1970. It was customary in those days for studies of Japan’s Meiji period (明治 1868–1912) to juxtapose it against a pre-modern Tokugawa, celebrating the former for its embrace of “civilization and enlightenment” while critiquing the latter as a time of backward feudal repression. As Philip C. Brown, the editor of Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal, has described this:

The predominant image of early modern Japan… was negative… [and] owed much to the self-justification of victorious parties in the Meiji Restoration. To legitimate their capture of political power they painted their immediate Tokugawa predecessors as backward and inept.

(Brown 2009)

Writing in 1872 just four years after the “restoration” of monarchical rule, Fukuzawa Yukichi (福沢諭吉 1835–1901), a paragon of and spokesman for Meiji civilization and enlightenment (bunmei kaika 文明開化),² set the tone for this perspective as follows:

In the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the distinction between samurai and common people was sharply drawn. The military families recklessly brandished their prestige. They treated the peasants and townsfolk as despicable criminals. They enacted such notorious laws as that which gave a samurai the right to cut down a commoner (kirisute gomen 切捨御免). According to these laws the lives of the commoners were not truly their own, but merely borrowed things (karimono 借物)… . [The Shogunate and the 300 Daimyo] treated the peasants and townsfolk despotically. They sometimes seemed compassionate to them, but they did not really recognize their inherent human rights (mochimae no kenri tsūgi 持前の権利通義).

(Dilworth and Nishikawa 2012: 14; Komuro and Nishikawa 2002: 20)

Fukuzawa’s influence and importance in the Japan of the 1860s and 1870s was such that works about the West came to be popularly known simply as “Fukuzawa-bon,” and we will return to him frequently throughout this volume (Blacker 1964: 27; Storry 1965: 428). For now let us simply note that the textbooks used in Japanese secondary schools in these early years of the twenty-first century continue to emphasize a contrast depicting the Edo (or Tokugawa) period as a dark time of oppressed and overly taxed peasants, famines, economic and social inequality, a general hostility toward science, and a general backwardness relative to the “brighter” (akarui 明るい) civilizations of Europe and North America (Nishio 2007: 10–26; Brown 2009: 73–75).

In Japan this view has been supported by two main tropes with quite different interests. On the one hand we find the Meiji oligarchs, who sought to represent the new state in ways that they hoped would conduce toward the revision of unequal treaties and Japan’s entry into the first rank of the world’s nations. On the other hand, we find Marxist historians for whom representing the new state as the culmination of revolutionary forces conformed more closely to their desired model of history (Dower 1975). These two combined to form a view of a “good Meiji, bad Tokugawa,” which has by no means disappeared, and especially when the topic of individuality arises. One of Japan’s most distinguished twentieth-century intellectual historians, Matsumoto Sannosuke (松本三之助 b. 1926), has written of how it was not until after the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 that one finds the rise of individual consciousness as something meaningfully distinct from national consciousness. Matsumoto maintains that prior to that war, individual and national consciousness were conflated in Meiji discourse as symbolized by such slogans as “rich country, strong army (fukoku kyōhei 富国強兵),” “respect officialdom above the people (kanson minbi 官尊民卑),” “be loyal to your lord and love your country (chūkun aikoku 忠君愛国),” and “achieve success by leaving self behind (risshin shusse 立身出世).” According to this view, one’s individual interests were perceived to be best served by promoting the collective interests of the nation-state (1996: 191–211), just as one finds expressed in the 1890 Rescript on Education, which asserted a subject’s filial obligation to loyally serve a paternalistic state.

As late as the 1960s the common wisdom regarding the Tokugawa remained that owing to a policy of national isolation and the Bakufu’s iron-fisted authority over the regional barons, or Daimyo, Tokugawa Shoguns maintained a remarkably orderly and stable polity for over two centuries. The Shoguns were eventually undone, the story continued, in the mid-nineteenth century by their inability to manage an eruption of internal pressures and a series of foreign policy crises. The subsequent collapse of the Tokugawa regime, in turn, was seen as opening the way for the liberal and humanistic reforms of the progressive Meiji state.

This view ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Creating a Context for Thinking for Oneself
• 2 Identity and Orientation
• 3 Self-Interest, Protest, and the Public Sphere
• 4 Secrecy and Privacy in Religious Faith and Practice
• 5 Self-Cultivation, Salon Culture, and the Private Academy
• 6 Well-Being and the Pursuit of Happiness
• 7 Values
• 8 Conclusions: Individuality in Early Modern Japan
• Afterword: Aspects of and Resistance to Individuality in Contemporary Japan
• Bibliography
• Index