In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582–1860 by Richard Bowring
  • Matthias Hayek (bio)
In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582–1860. By Richard Bowring. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. xii, 329 pages. $115.00.

Readers of Hergé's world-famous comic book Tintin have known for quite some time: "one must find the Way." Such is the imperative placed upon the Belgian reporter, in The Blue Lotus, by the madness-stricken Didi, supposedly quoting "Lao-tzu." The poor soul then offers to behead the young man and his dog Snowy in order to help them find their own Way. [End Page 217]

Although it was possible to lose one's head in Edo Japan, doing so to find one's way was probably rare. However, the ubiquity of the "Way," as envisioned by the many thinkers and schools University of Cambridge Professor Richard Bowring puts under close scrutiny in his book In Search of the Way, may very well justify the use of radical measures to "clear the mind."

In his own words, Bowring has tried to "write a history of religion and thought that covers, in European terms, the whole span of time from Elizabeth I of England to the Communist Manifesto, running through the Thirty Years War, the Mayflower, Oliver Cromwell, Isaac Newton, Rousseau's Contrat social, and the French Revolution on the way" (p. 304). Even though such an endeavor might seem vertiginous when put in this perspective, it is far from unreasonable, provided one adopts a point of view that makes it possible to see the continuities within the flow of ideas, while avoiding their presentation in a teleological way, as a "steady progress towards an inevitable end" (p. v).

Following his previous work in The Religious Traditions of Japan, 500–1600, Bowring has once again picked up a challenge: to produce a comprehensive overview on the intellectual and religious landscape of what we are accustomed to calling "early modern Japan," that is, the almost three centuries separating the early fall of Oda Nobunaga (or Toyotomi Hideyoshi's subsequent rise to power) in 1582 and the reopening of Japanese ports beyond just Nagasaki to international communication in 1859–60. In this case again, although the field has matured and evolved since the end of the last century from what was mainly a history of political ideas to an intellectual history focused on individuals, institutions, media, networks, and other contextual elements, there has been a need for a synthesis, especially in a Western language, that would bring together the recent scholarship on early modern Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintō. Bowring's book clearly aims to address such a need, and does so successfully.

The chronological order of the book's content, although it leads to a few repetitions and does not try to renew the classical, ternary periodization, is easy to follow. The book's 20 chapters are unevenly distributed among three sections covering about one hundred years. Each section starts with an introductory chapter listing the different rulers of the period. There, the author offers a clear overview of the political, economic, and social context that saw the evolution of discourses and institutions related to intellectual and religious pursuits. At the end of these introductory chapters, chronologies list the important events relating to the discussion in the following chapters.

The first part deals with the first century of early modern Japan, from the establishment of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's rule over the country to the end of Ietsuna's rule in 1680. It starts with a careful consideration of the last years of "official" Christianity in Japan. Having considered Hideyoshi's rulings [End Page 218] against the Jesuits, probably inspired by their "too self-assured" attitude and the potential fanaticism, reminiscent of the Ikkō (Pure Land) sect, that Hideyoshi and later Ieyasu might have perceived them as possessing, the author shifts to the decisive case of Fukansai Habian, convert then apostate, who produced a fascinating defense of the Christian "Way" against regional or local ones: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintō. Habian's dialogue, Myōtei mondō, of which Bowring published the first English...

pdf