Thus encouraged by the now influential advocates of the teaching of Buddha, themselves admirers of the Chinese learning, Confucianism began with renewed vigour to exercise a great influence on the future of the Japanese. This took place during the seventh century, when the reorganisation of the Japanese government after the model of that of the Celestial Empire made our educational system quite Chinese. In addition to a university, there were many provincial schools where candidates for the government service were instructed. Medicine, mathematics, including astronomy and law, taught through Chinese books, along with the all-important teaching in the Confucian ethics and in Chinese literature generally, were the branches of study cultivated under the guidance of professors whose calling had become hereditary among a certain number of learned families. In the course of the next two centuries we see several private institutions founded by great nobles of the court, with an endowment in land for their support. The native system of writing which had gradually emerged out of the phonetic use of Chinese ideographs made it possible for Japanese thought, hitherto expressed only in an uncongenial foreign garb, to appear in purely Japanese attire. Thus we find the dawn of Japanese civilisation appearing at the beginning of the tenth century after Christ. The air was replete with the Buddhist thought of after-life and the Confucian ideas of broad-day morality. The sonorous reading of the Book of Filial Piety was heard all over the country, echoing with the loud recital of the Myôhô-renge-kyô (or Saddharma Pundarika Sûtra).
During the dark and dreary Middle Ages which followed this golden period, and which were brought about by the degeneration of the ruling nobles and by the gradually rising power of the military class, Chinese learning fled to the protecting hands of Buddhist priests; and in its quiet refuge within the monastery walls it continued to breathe its humble existence, until it found at the beginning of the sixteenth century a powerful patron in the great founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The education of the common people, too, seems to have been kept up by the monks—a fact still preserved in the word tera-koya, 'church seminary,' a term used, until forty years ago, to express the tiny private schools for children. It must be remembered that the education thus given was always of an exclusively secular character, basing itself on the Confucian morals.
Before passing on to the consideration of Laoism, let me say something about the so-called orthodox form of the teaching of Confucius, which is one of the latest developments of that doctrine. Orthodox Confucianism, as represented by the famous Chinese philosopher and commentator of the Confucian canon, Chu-Hsi (1130-1200), found its admirer in a Japanese scholar, Fujiwara-no-Seigwa (1560-1619), who in his youth had joined the priesthood, which however he afterwards renounced. He gave lectures on the Chinese classics at Kyôto. He was held in great esteem by Tokugawa Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns, who embraced the Chinese system of ethics as preached by Chu-Hsi. During the two hundred and fifty years of the Tokugawa rule, this system, under the hereditary direction of the descendants of Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), one of the most distinguished disciples of Seigwa, was recognised as the established doctrine.
According to the somewhat hazy ideas of Chu-Hsi's philosophy, which I ask your permission to sketch here on account of the high public esteem in which we have held them for the last three centuries, the ultimate basis of the universe is Infinity, or Tai Kieh, which, though containing within itself all the germs of all forms of existence and excellence, is utterly void of form or sensible qualities. It consists of two qualities, li and chi, which may be roughly rendered into 'force-element' and 'matter-element.' These are self-existences, are present in all things, and are found in their formation. The 'force-element,' or li, we are told, is the perfection of heavenly virtue. It is in inanimate things as well as in man and other animate beings, and pervades all space. The 'matter-element,' or chi, is endowed with the male and the female principles, or positive and negative polarities, as we might call them. It is, moreover, characterised by the five constituent qualities of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Hence its other name, Wu-hsieng, or 'Five Qualities.'
Things and animals, except human beings, get only portions of the force-element, but man receives it in full, and this becomes in his person sing, or real human nature. He has thus within him the perfect mirror of the heavenly virtue and complete power of understanding. There is no difference in this respect between a sage and an ordinary man. To both the force-element is uniformly given. But the matter-element, from which is derived his form and material existence, and which constitutes the basis of his mental disposition, is different in quality in different men.
Man's real nature, or sing, although originally perfect, becomes affected on entering into him, or is modified by his mental disposition, which differs according to the different state of the matter-element. Thus a second nature is formed out of the original. It is through this second and tainted human nature that man acts well or ill. When a man does evil, that is the result of his mental disposition covering or interfering with his original perfect nature. Wipe this vapour of corrupted thought from the surface of your mental mirror and it will shine out as brightly as if it had never been covered by a temporary mist.[10]
Synoptically expressed and applied to the microcosm Chu-Hsi's system will be as follows:—
MAN
{Force-Element = Original Nature of Man.
Different Human Characters.
Infinity
{Male-Principle }Wood-quality.
}Fire- "
{Matter-Element }Earth-"
}Metal-"
{Female-Principle}Water-"
Dispositions latent in Matter.
Such is, in its outline, Chu-Hsi's view, which received the sanction of the ruling Tokugawa family. But it was not without its opponents in Japan as well as in China. Already in his own time, Lu-Shang-Shan (b. 1140 A.D.) maintained, in opposition to the high-sounding erudition of Chu-Hsi, that the purification of the heart was the first and main point of study.[11] The same protest was more systematically urged against it by his great follower, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528 A.D.), who found warm and able admirers in Japan in such scholars as Nakae Tôju (1603-1678), Kumazawa Hanzan (1619-1691), and Oshio Chûsai (1794-1837). Among other great opponents of the orthodox philosophy, such names as Itô Jinsai (1625-1706) and his son Tôgai (1670-1736), Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714), Ogyû Sorai (1666-1728), are to be mentioned. These scholars, getting their fundamental ideas from other Chinese thinkers, and eager to remain faithful to the true spirit of Confucianism itself, pointed out many inconsistencies in Chu-Hsi's theory, and were of the opinion that more real good was to be achieved in proceeding straight to action under the guidance of conscience which was heaven and all, than in indulging in idle talk about the subtlety of human nature.
The philosophy of Chu-Hsi, although he calls himself the true exponent of Confucianism, is not at all Confucian. It is greatly indebted to Buddhism and Taoism, or better, Laoism, that is to say, to the philosophy originated by Lao-tze (b. 604 B.C.), one of the greatest thinkers that China has ever produced. Since Laoism, through the wonderful Tao-teh-king, a small book by Lao-tze himself, but especially through Chwang-tze, a work in ten books by his famous follower Chwang-chow, has exercised considerable influence on our thought for twelve centuries, a word about it may not be out of place before we go on to consider the doctrine of Shâkya-muni.