Tetsugaku Companion to Ogyū Sorai ed. by W. J. Boot and Takayama Daiki (review)

The title of this volume may give prospective readers pause. The book is part of a larger series of "Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy," which, according to a statement preceding the title page, is intended to demonstrate "the rich potential" and enhance "the academic status of Japanese philosophy." Why then the faintly orientalist redundancy of tetsugaku? In that tetsugaku is a modern word coined to render the European philosophy/Philosophie, why not call the series simply "Companions to Japanese Philosophy" and this volume Philosophical Companion to Ogyū Sorai? The volume editors are presumably not responsible for its title, but the series editors or Springer could have provided an explanation of the rationale for the tetsugaku designation.

It would be a pity, though, were the title to put off readers. Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) occupies a central place in the history of Japanese thought. In English there are more studies of him and more translations of his writings than for any other Tokugawa thinker, with the possible exception of Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801). He is also a singular figure within the larger Confucian tradition, as indicated by a growing body of publications on him by researchers based in Taiwan, China, and Korea as well as Japan and the West. This book provides a framework within which to situate both Sorai and the scholarship on him. The contributors include many of the leading researchers on Sorai active today, most of whose perspectives have not previously been available in English. For all these reasons the book is a timely and welcome addition to the existing English-language literature on Sorai. W. J. Boot, who together with Takayama Daiki organized and edited the volume, deserves particular credit for translating the contributions written originally in Japanese into readable English. Below I will first give a brief overview of the book's organization and contents and then take up a few issues it raises.

The book is divided into two parts, preceded by Boot's general introduction. Part 1, "Kaidai/Introductions," consists of nine chapters by six authors that discuss upwards of fifteen individual works, ranging from Sorai's articulations of methodological approaches and miscellaneous ruminations to commentaries on texts such as Lunyu (Jp. Rongo, Analects); writings on military matters, government, and the contemporary state of affairs; and works setting out his own interpretation of the Way (dao, Jp. dō) and notions fundamental to Confucian discourse. With the exception of John A. Tucker's discussion of Sorai's major works Bendō (Distinguishing the Way) and Benmei (Distinguishing Names), which Tucker has previously translated into English,¹ these introductions are all brief three- to four-page pieces. (Tucker's introduction of Bendō and Benmei occupies ten pages, but a considerable portion of it is devoted to the comparison of these treatises with works by other figures.)

Part 2, "Essays," comprises seven longer treatments of a variety of aspects of Sorai's life and perspective and of responses to his views. This section begins with two broadly ranging pieces, "An 'Intellectual-Historical' Biography of Ogyū Sorai" by Sawai Keiichi and "Sorai's Theory of Learning" by Kojima Yasunori. It concludes with an appraisal by Takayama of the different approaches to Sorai pursued in postwar Japan. Between the bookends that these essays provide are two pieces on particular dimensions of Sorai's writings (Olivier Ansart's "Gods, Spirits and Heaven in Ogyū Sorai's Political Theory" and Tucker's "Ogyū Sorai and the Forty-Seven Rōnin") and two surveys of the reception of Sorai's ideas, one by Boot on the response to Sorai in the latter half of the Edo period and the other by Lan Hung Yueh on Sorai's position in East Asian thought. Depending on their interests, readers may find it useful to gain a general orientation by reading the essays in part 2 by Sawai, Kojima, and Takayama before turning to the textual introductions in part...