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441 Miura Baien 三浦梅園 (1723–1789) Miura Baien lived in the small village of Tominaga (present-day Oita prefecture) on the island of Kyushu, where he taught and developed his philosophical ideas. In the meantime, he maintained contacts with neo-Confucian scholars, one of whom was his good friend the astronomer Asada Gōryū (1734–1799), who independently discovered the relationship of the length of a planet’s orbit to its distance from the sun. Baien’s major writings comprise a work on ethics called Daring Words, an exposition of his own metaphysics, Deep Words, and a companion volume, Additional Words. Baien wrote no less than twenty-three versions of Deep Words over twenty-six years. Unlike his other works, many passages of the final version of Deep Words are intelligible only in the context of the overall metaphysical system he strove to lay out, embracing the entire complex world around him in harmony with scientific discoveries. Yin-yang theory was to be replaced by a unique and intricate system of opposing pairs which he called źjōriŻ. Because this required a specialized vocabulary, Baien used jōri to generate hundreds of technical terms arranged in pairs of sinographs . Each member of a pair takes a precise meaning from the opposing member . When one member is paired with a different sinograph, its meaning changes accordingly. Each sinograph retains a trace of its normal usage throughout. For example, two of Baien’s pairs are “whole and side” and “whole and part.” The meanings of “part” and “side,” and therefore the meanings of “whole,” differ precisely. “Whole and side” is one of several pairs clarified below by the image of the brocade robe: one might say that one side is a world of trees, birds, and rocks and the other a world of sub-atomic particles. Yet they are two sides of one world. The following selections include a letter to one colleague and another to Asada. It is followed by extracts from the prefatory “Examples” to Deep Words, and the dense opening and later passages of its “Core Text.” [rdm] E rror s i n o l d yin-yang theories Miura Baien 1776, 748–9 I enjoyed talking with you the other day. I have not yet completed my explanation of yin and yang, so I take up my brush to refine it with some further remarks. The items yin and yang are first seen in the Book of Changes. However, their sense there was sometimes the Wayž, sometimes the Forms, and sometimes the Lines. Although the work is an account of divination, to look at heaven and 442 | c o n f u c ia n t r a d i t i o n s earth through that text is like scratching an itching foot without taking off one’s sandal.… Because I have borrowed them to convey a different meaning I write the sinographs differently. This study has a long history and the number of persons involved has not been few. However, when we looked at heaven and earth it is as though we were gazing across the ocean. It seemed as though we were gazing across the ocean because we did not understand yin and yang. In looking at heaven and earth, there are two things to avoid. We must avoid looking at other things in terms of ourselves. And we must avoid adhering to what we have been told when there are no signs of its truth. Although I cannot be compared with the ancients, I will not bow to them, because I understand yin and yang.… The number of heaven and earth is simply one. We meet it as one and one. The numbers from three onwards, even numbers and odd numbers, and ten taken as one again to make hundreds, thousands, myriads, hundred thousands, and so on, are not functions of nature. We expected to find in nature items that are not functions of nature. Three talents, four masters, five elements, six źkiŻ, nine mystic markings, ten mystic diagrams, that was all wisdom of the blind…. If the ancients were to have turned their doctrine on its head, so that left was yang and right was yin, man was yin and woman was yang, white was yin and red was yang, and if then we did not follow our own judgment, it would have taxed us to the extreme to sort out the confusion.… “One and one” is the name for “yin and yang...

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