It is with this that Shoeki then concentrates his stinging attack upon those in command of the secondary and tertiary industries (the city, i.e., an assembly of the idle), their thieves' bosses, the sages and clergymen (dominators), who are the very incarnation of plunder.
"Those who eat gluttonously without tilling the soil are the great criminals who steal the True Way of Heaven and Earth… Though they be sages and men of the cloth, scholars, or great wise men, they are still robbers.
"Sage is another name for criminal.
"The Confucian Gentlemen are the leaders of the highway robbers.
"Sage Emperor is another name for robber.
"Know ye that those of later ages will call them horse manure, but they will not call them the scholars and the clergy. This is because horse manure has more value." ("Scholars and the clergy" here refers to the dominators and their ilk — all harm and no good.)
It would not do to get rid of these worthless and harmful robbers and criminals (the leaders of the idle and gluttonous) with such half-baked methods as trying to educate them. It is impossible to change these inveterate robbers by talking with them, by persuading them, or by educating them. Shoeki here makes a timeless statement:
"They should simply be put to death" — there is nothing to do but to overthrow them. This is nothing other than a call to an heroic, unparalleled revolution.
Of Ando Shoeki Terao Goro says, "Shoeki is worthy of being called the Marx of the Genroku Period," but I think that Shoeki's theory is backed by thorough revolutionary thought and a penetrating view of society that far exceeds that of Marx, and is more highly developed. Shoeki was a more radical revolutionary thinker.
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