One Good Deed, One Evil Less

Yesterday, I engaged in a private discourse, offering a modern interpretation of Wang Yangming’s concept of Bappon Sokugen [抜本塞源]. Today, standing at the genesis where the lineage of Yangmingism began to pulse continuously within Japan, I wish to re-examine the readings of Wang Yangming’s Shigenkyo [四言教] left to us in the form of lectures by Miwa Shissai (1669-1744). He was a Confucian scholar of the Edo period who did not merely consider the era in which he lived, but fulfilled a lifelong mission to firmly root and cultivate the treasure of Yangmingism for a future far beyond his own time. We shall look at this anew through the lens of a modern interpretation.

The “Lectures on Shigenkyo” [四言教講義], published by Miwa Shissai in 1727, was originally a transcription of lectures limited to his disciples. However, by perceiving the conditions of that era, its true significance becomes visible. At that time, both the Shogunate and the feudal domains had established the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi (from the Song Dynasty) as the official academic doctrine, constructing their regime upon it. Regarding the Japanese side, the Hayashi family is of the essence; they were one of the families boasting the highest authority in the Edo period, intimately involved with the Tokugawa Shogun house from beginning to end. The Zhu Xi philosophy espoused by this family is known in Japan as “Hayashi Family Zhu Xiism,” and it was this that created the fundamental architecture—the governing logic—of the Shogunate’s political administration. The origin of this Hayashi Family Zhu Xiism lies in the teachings of a 23-year-old youth, Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), whom Tokugawa Ieyasu welcomed as the brain for a new era, foreseeing the times to come.