大塩中斎2Chusai Oshio, Part 2
History must never be reduced to a mere accumulation of the signified, nor a repository of reference links. I have always held this to be true; yet, looking at history today, I see only dead things everywhere, with no pulse of life in them. In an era where the number of people who do not know this living history—and have no desire to know it—is swelling, it is only natural that humanity loses its bearings. On top of that, the chances to experience history in its raw, living form have been lost for much longer than we imagine. In such a climate, no matter how earnestly those with a conscience may advocate for the importance of history, it seems to me that for humanity, it is already too late. That is how this world works: when a society is cut off from history, it loses its direction.
Let us begin with a single inquiry. If you were to gaze earnestly at the ground beneath your own feet, what would you see?
The density and depth of your answer are the very measure of your intellect, and indeed, the possibility of your future. However, now that people have so thoroughly lost the capacity for contemplation and thought, the act of filling the spirit through questioning one’s origins has become difficult in the extreme; it has become unrealistic. Meanwhile, the "universals" believed in until now have vanished in the blink of an eye, quickly revealing themselves to be nothing more than hollow falsehoods. This runs through the very core of the end of civilization.
Call it the end of the world or the end of civilization; the name matters little. But in the peculiar condition of this era, in which eight billion people wander in delusion, we must reignite a history that possesses life and vitality. The living history I have in mind does not begin by looking thoughtlessly, from a present-day standpoint, at the flow of a past era's society or economy. It begins, rather, with a radical observation of people. Historical views that discuss society and economics invariably fail to see the human; their eyes are captivated solely by systems. But history is not about systems. Only by looking at human beings does history come into view. Sadly, people today have lost the very ability to see a human being, and so this basic point has become hard for them to grasp.
That is why you need to choose a historical figure worthy of your respect, anyone at all, even just one, and train yourself to put that person's life into words from the standpoint of someone closer to it than anyone else. If possible it is best to begin with someone whose achievements, or places connected with them, you can visit, so I recommend starting with a figure you can find in the region where you live. The accumulation of this method becomes the power to truly understand history.
Then, everyone will realize: What, exactly, was the history we thought we knew, or the history taught in schools for university exams? The inquiry into true history begins only when one attains this realization. Personally, I believe it is best to arrive at this awareness as early as possible. The more time remains in one's life, the deeper the depths one can reach through that inquiring mind. After all, in the present day, with a system meant only to waste people's time woven perfectly around us, introspection itself has become extremely difficult. The older one gets, the more the brain becomes contaminated, rendering it uncontrollable.
In a sense, the theme is the search for true history. With this foundation laid, I will continue to write, closely following the life of the intriguing figure introduced in yesterday’s article. Everyone should realize that history is condensed within him.
As we saw yesterday, Chusai Oshio (1793–1837), a young man who had bitterly reproached himself for shifting responsibility onto the outside world, went from gate to gate in Confucianism like a seeker of the way, longing for the true path of human life. However, what awaited him was the spread of a hollow formalism that had taken on the shape of scholarship. Listening to the lectures, he found them grand in style but without substance. Neither teachers nor disciples ever spoke words born of their own introspection; instead, the air was filled with assertions that sought to secure social credibility by pasting citations from authoritative scholars and books all over their discourse. There were authorities who excelled only at long, ornate phrases picked up somewhere else and yet in the end said nothing. They would recite with confidence the words of Confucian sages like Confucius, yet without any practice or embodiment, the role of teacher had become a form only, one that is called "teacher" and revered.
A seeker of truth could not possibly endure such things. In the end Chusai had no choice but to give up knocking at gates to be taught and to resolve to live as a self-taught man. This, however, is a defining trait of Chusai and a crucial difference from the other prominent scholars of his time. He effectively received no teachings from anyone, yet began to exhibit a fierce vitality solely through his own power. Such Confucian scholars were rare at the time, and I always fall for people like this.
Then, at the age of twenty-four, fate presented an opportunity to this aspiring youth who, while grieving for the world and trying to establish himself, had reached an impasse, piling agony upon agony. For someone who means to walk the path of life through self-study, with neither master nor teacher, the greatest teacher is always history, which is to say, books. I, too, understand from experience that books often offer salvation; during a time when I decided to live as an autodidact yet wandered in delusion, I walked from one secondhand bookstore to another, seeking books as if starving for food. A close friend of mine, a brilliant translator who struggles with social interaction and spends almost the entire year alone, professes that she can survive as long as she has books, immersing herself in reading daily. You, the reader, may have had similar experiences, and Chusai was exactly the same.
Thus, by a strange turn of chance, Chusai encountered a precious book that had just been imported at the time, and from there, the gears of his life began to move drastically. The book was the Shingingo. Its author was a Chinese philosopher named Lü Xinwu (1538–1618).
The Shingingo is a work Lü Xinwu wrote over thirty years out of deep reflection on life. Its title likens the text to the groans of a sick man, and it is a fine book that serves as a signpost for life. It is estimated to have been first imported to Japan around the early 1800s. In other words, Chusai was fated to acquire it almost immediately upon its arrival. As soon as he read Lü Xinwu’s words, he intuitively sensed that this was the very scholarship he had been seeking. In fact, he recorded this encounter with Lü Xinwu’s book with great fervor in a letter written years later, in 1833.
I cannot translate the full text here, so I will proceed by partially presenting it through my own reading. The content brings to the fore a scathing critique of the scholars and educators of the time. It declares that their scholarship merely deceives the pure inner demands of the soul; they spend their days interpreting the signified without ever reaching the path of human life; they merely decorate the surface, serving no purpose other than career advancement. He writes that burying oneself in this causes the loss of human vitality, leading one to wander endlessly and lose sight of the essence of life. He then notes that precisely because he went through such experiences, he stopped looking for answers outside, faced himself through introspection, and set his mind on living as a truly free person. But looking back on his younger self, he writes that reality was far from fulfilling that aim, and he wandered in delusion, not knowing what to do, filled only with regret.
To sever such delusion, he wrote that he resolved to thoroughly excise the weakness within himself that sought answers from the outside or from others, and to accomplish everything through solitary study. He records that he applied himself to his studies with a suffering that could not be expressed in a letter. At that time, perhaps because his will to fulfill his ambition despite the agony reached the heavens, he recounts with emotion that Heaven had brought him Lü Xinwu's Shingingo. Upon reading it, he felt the power of unfeigned, true words—words of a man who, like himself, suffered from the illness of the heart yet never ceased to live earnestly. He says he read the book thoroughly, examining it again and again.
As he continued to immerse himself in reading, he gradually realized that the true path lies precisely within profound anguish. The moment he attained this realization, he felt, in a rapture, as if he had touched the light of self-awareness, and he says that he escaped, by a hair's breadth, becoming a corpse while still alive. Such was the extent to which Lü Xinwu’s words saved him from the abyss of delusion. From there, his fate, through the encounter with Lü Xinwu's book, led him to the thought of a certain figure. That figure is the Ming dynasty Confucian scholar Wang Yangming (1472–1529), whom I have touched upon recently in Shitsurae.
Lü Xinwu and Wang Yangming had no direct interaction, but since Lü Xinwu was born eight years after Wang Yangming’s death, they were contemporaries in the broad sense. Moreover, since the influence of Wang Yangming—who accomplished true living until the very end—was spreading with tremendous heat in certain quarters, Lü Xinwu fully received that influence and resolved to live truly himself, supported by the spiritual teacher who had passed away.
Ascertaining that the root of Lü Xinwu’s thought derived from Wang Yangming, Chusai learned Wang Yangming’s name for the first time. At that time, Wang Yangming’s name was not yet common in Japan, but it was already known among a few Confucian scholars of conviction, and the foundation for early Yangmingism in Japan had already been prepared. In fact, the first current of Japanese Yangmingism began in the Kansai region where Chusai lived, but the lineage had been extinguished once in the 17th century. From Chusai’s letters, we can understand that for about a century, there had been no place in Kansai that properly taught Yangmingism.
However, having learned that the source of the thought that saved his life lay in Wang Yangming, Chusai’s desire to learn grew at any cost. Thus, Chusai began by tracing the lineage of Japanese Yangmingism and spent his days searching for the works of Wang Yangming available in Japan.
The books he sought were the Kohon Daigaku, which Wang Yangming selected and wrote a preface for, and the Denshuroku, a compilation of Yangming's teachings by his disciples. Fortunately, these precious books had been translated and published by a single individual before Chusai was born. That man's name was Shissai Miwa.
Shissai Miwa (1669–1744), born into a family of doctors in Kyoto, was a representative Confucian scholar of the mid-Edo period. Indeed, it was the appearance of this figure that ensured Japanese Yangmingism continued without interruption to the present day. Moreover, Shissai was not merely a scholar. He was so devoted to Wang Yangming that he was deeply revered in his own time as a man of considerable character.
Chusai, having managed to find the books of Wang Yangming published by Shissai Miwa, was struck by an unbelievable emotion the moment he first touched Wang Yangming’s thought. In a letter, he writes with excitement about how Yangming’s thought changed his life: "Hitherto, I tended to run mechanically, idly forgetting introspection. But [on encountering Wang Yangming's thought] I was utterly changed. My objective is, in short, the pure freedom of the will, and I realized that as a means to this, I must expand the pure, inevitable demands of the inner self." When I encountered Wang Yangming’s teachings, I could not help but embrace the same emotion. I believe he is one of the supreme saints humanity has produced.
Immersing himself in Wang Yangming’s thought, Chusai realized something of immense importance. Yangming’s teachings differ fundamentally from generally known Confucianism. In particular, unlike the Zhu Xi school's way of separating knowing from acting, Yangming proposed the idea of the unity of knowing and acting (知行合一, chigyo goitsu). It is hard to put into English, but in a word it means "to know is for the sake of acting, and acting is the realization of knowing" (the two are not separate). Yangming also thoroughly rejected the armchair theorizing that scholars of any age fall into, emphasizing repeatedly that true learning lies in actual life. He preached to his disciples the practical attitude that true scholarship exists within the duties and responsibilities given to oneself.
Deeply impressed by this way of thinking, Chusai wrote that he ceased to lament his circumstances and "came to strive to thoroughly execute my current duties." Chusai cultivated Yangmingism through self-study, convinced that this spirit of Wang Yangming would save people from spiritual desolation. At thirty-one he opened a private academy at his home called Senshindo, the Cave for Washing the Heart, and began to teach Yangmingism.
Senshindo was known for its severe discipline. Chusai would rise at 2:00 AM every day, engage in astronomical observation, Yangmingism research, reading, writing, and perform one thousand swings of a sword, before gathering his disciples for lectures at 5:00 AM. Since he was carrying out his duties at the magistrate's office at the same time, his stamina must have been enormous. Chusai was, among the people of his day, a man of imposing build, like a sumo wrestler, of fierce passion and an intellect honed sharp. Anecdotes suggest that his disciples could never once look directly at his dignified face. One of the things he would habitually say to his disciples was: "Do not blur the boundary between justice and self-interest, between sincerity and falsehood. Do not merely preach goodness with your lips; you must practice it." These words cut deep, even for us today.
In these years Chusai embodied the fierceness of the self-taught, buying and devouring books one after another. His private academy seems to have grown quite large, and his home library is said to have held as many as 50,000 volumes. After accepting this fateful encounter bestowed by Heaven, resolving himself, and continuing to practice his convictions in his daily life, Chusai’s name unexpectedly became known in regions beyond Osaka.
Then as now, unexpected fame tends to make people proud. But Chusai, like the Confucian sages, believed that for a name without substance to spread, while his own character was not yet formed, was what Heaven most abhorred, and he made a decision. He adopted a successor, resigned from his post at the magistrate's office, and entered a quiet life of retirement. At this time, Chusai was already thirty-eight. Incidentally, Confucianism has long despised the spreading of "empty names" (reputation without substance). Yet how the modern age overflows with empty names! Since an empty name is useful only for making money or deceiving others, they pour forth endlessly, knowing no stop.
Thus, Chusai remained in retirement until the age of forty-one, polishing and nurturing his own heart, making daily efforts to elevate his character even a little. However, there was one thing he grieved over. Sadly, Chusai had neither an excellent teacher nor a friend. In Confucianism, a teacher, parents and siblings, and friends with whom to talk about learning are a very important element, and both Confucius and Wang Yangming stressed practicing within relationships with disciples and friends. But he had lost his parents in childhood, never found a good teacher, and lived in a time of such intellectual decay that knowledge was seen merely as a means to advancement or flattery, so he never met anyone with whom he could talk about truly living learning. This was the sole regret for Chusai.
Therefore, Chusai came to write the aforementioned letter to a certain individual. The recipient was a man known as the greatest Confucian scholar in Japan at the time, who famously had 3,000 disciples over his lifetime. What made this figure wonderful was not the mere magnitude of his fame, but that many men of character emerged from his disciples. The successors who inherited his spirit became the true driving force that actually moved history from the late Edo period to the end of the shogunate, saving many people and producing the individuals who bridged the Edo period to the new Meiji era. People today have completely lost sight of the fact that a good teacher is not defined by academic credentials or social standing. One is not admirable because one's own gifts are superior; true value lies in the character that successively produces good successors.
The name of this foremost scholar of the age, a man of character who stood unshaken in a society in decay, was Issai Sato (1772–1859). As a Confucian official of the Edo shogunate and the head professor at the Shoheiko, the highest institution for the education of samurai, Issai Sato sat at the very peak of the elite of his day. Outwardly he was a great teacher of the Zhu Xi school, which had been adopted as the official learning since the founding of the Edo shogunate. Inwardly, however, he was a heterodox Confucian who secretly transmitted Yangmingism only to those few disciples in whom he discerned potential.
Why did he transmit Yangmingism in this form? Because unlike the Zhu Xi school, with its all-purpose logic that anyone can follow, Yangmingism, if one lacks the grounding and aptitude, is bound to be misunderstood and lead to mistaken action. In other words, while the Zhu Xi school, which separates subject and object, is easy to teach, nothing is more difficult to teach than Yangmingism. I consider Neo-Confucianism of the Song dynasty, including the Zhu Xi school, to be a precursor to modernity; the Zhu Xi school is logical—akin to university studies in modern terms. Yangmingism, however, is a simple, lucid path of living that holds no logic. Therefore, the more logically people think, the more they inevitably misunderstand it. That is to say, the more strongly the habit of grasping things through logic is at work, the more one struggles to understand Yangmingism. The modern world is a place that prizes understanding through logic, so the places where Yangmingism can be received as it is are few.
I have read quite a few works on Japanese Yangmingism, and I feel that interpretations built on logic alone lack the living force of Yangmingism. Issai Sato knew this well, which is why he did not teach Yangmingism to all his disciples but transmitted it only to a select few. Considering that the top academic authority of the time practiced this, we can see what a truly great teacher Issai Sato was.
Chusai entrusted his last hope to a letter sent to Issai Sato, who was already over sixty, but the opportunity for Chusai, living in Osaka, to meet Issai, living in Edo, never came (though Issai evaluated Chusai’s talent highly, and they exchanged letters). At the end of the letter Chusai sent to Issai, he wrote in anguish: "Teacher [Issai Sato], surely you will accept this self of mine. Thinking this, I state my ambition and present this book [Chusai’s own work enclosed in the letter] first, to beg for your teachings." This shows that for Chusai, Issai Sato was his last living hope.
Cruelly, his wish to learn from Issai was never fulfilled. Chusai was swept into the most turbulent age of the whole Edo period, which was about to begin, and his short life came to an end.
I had meant to finish writing about Chusai Oshio in yesterday's article and today's. But the heat of my writing has risen far higher than I expected and it does not look like ending, so it will continue next time. Perhaps this is because something in Chusai’s life and sentiments resonates deeply with my current self. I sincerely hope that you, the reader, will find a light for a life that has stalled in the anguish, the concern, and the desperate resolve of one person, across countries, cultures, and ages.
As I wrote at the beginning, I believe history must not be a mere accumulation of the signified or reference links. Whenever I have the opportunity on my travels, I always visit the graves of the historical figures I revere. I offer thanks, with respect, for the writings they left and the hearts of the ages they lived in, and I read them closely and carry on conversations across time and space. Above all, I keep doing this in my daily life.
In any age, it is difficult to encounter living scholarship. But when one takes action oneself, the opportunity, however rare, will come around. It may be in one's own country, or in another. You might meet a good teacher, or a good friend. Or perhaps, in a used bookstore you entered by chance, there will be a fateful encounter with a book. These things will differ from person to person, but their essence and heat must be equivalent in this sense. And I have believed that such people, though few, exist in the world.
Just as Chusai was saved by the words of a Chinese philosopher. When humans writhe in agony at the abyss of distress, they are often saved by the words of someone unexpected. Unlike in their time, we live in a world that, for better or worse, has been through world wars and has passed through globalization. We should be able to be moved, even more than they were, by the lives and words of people from other countries whom we have never heard of, and to receive turning points that change our lives. I believe that living in an era where we can enjoy such new possibilities is, in a world where most things become distasteful, a beautiful thing.