Master Sorai's Responsals: An Annotated Translation of Sorai Sensei Tomonsho

Ogyū Sorai: His Life, Context, and Interpreters

Ogyû Sorai: His Life, Context, and Interpreters 3 Sometime around 1720, a Confucian scholar named Ogyû Sorai began to correspond with two young warriors in a small feudal domain in northwestern Japan. The two men, Mizuno Genrò and Hikita Yakara, sent him letters filled with queries about a range of topics—courage, military tactics, the meaning of key Confucian terms, finding talented individuals for the domain’s bureaucracy, economic profit, Buddhism, spirits, and, above all, how to study the Confucian classics—and Sorai obligingly responded, writing what were more like scholarly disquisitions than letters. The correspondence lasted for nearly five years, and Sorai’s letters—thirty-five in all—were published in 1727 as Sorai sensei tòmonsho, which I am translating here as “Master Sorai’s Responsals.” Ogyû Sorai: A Biography Sorai was a native of Edo, born there in 1666, the second son of Ogyû Hoan, personal physician to Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, lord of the Tatebayashi domain and later shogun. He grew up in comfortable surroundings near the shogun’s castle and sometimes accompanied his father on his rounds and on one occasion even met the shogun’s wife. Sorai was first educated at home by his father, who taught him to read and write classical Chinese, and then he studied briefly at the Confucian academy run by the Hayashi family. His education at the Hayashi school was interrupted when the Ogyû family was summarily banished from Edo in 1679 for reasons that still are not clear. They were taken in by relatives who lived about seventy miles away in Honnò, a remote coastal village in Kazusa province. Conditions in Honnò, a community of farmers, fishermen, and woodcutters, were primitive, and the family found themselves without the amenities of urban life, without elegant and learned company, and, above all, without books. Sorai’s mother died in 1680. In 1692, the shogun pardoned Hoan, and the family, after a decade or so away from Edo, was allowed to return. Hoan once again served as the shogun’s physician.@ 3. Imanaka Kanshi, Soraigaku no kisoteki kenkyû (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kòbunkan , 1966), p. 253; Nakamura Yukihiko, “Kaidai,” Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1966), 94:26 (hereafter cited as NKBT); and Shimada Kenji, “Kaidai-hanrei,” Ogyû Sorai zenshû, edited by Maruyama Masao and Yoshikawa Kòjirò (Tokyo: Mizusu Shobò, 1974), 1:620 (hereafter cited as MOSZ). 4. Hiraishi Naoaki, Ogyû Sorai nempukò (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984), pp. 172– 174. This is the best and most authoritative source of biographical information on Sorai. See also Olof Lidin, The Life of Ogyû Sorai: A Tokugawa Confucian Philosopher , Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, no. 19 (Lund, Sweden: Student Litteratur, 1973). 6 Ogyû Sorai Exactly when Sorai returned to Edo is unclear. He may have returned with his father in 1692 or, as Hiraishi Naoaki and others suggest, two years earlier, in 1690. Certainly the latter date is a possibility , since the authorities often allowed families of those banished from Edo to return early. This may have been the case with Sorai.^ Once back in Edo, he moved to the Shiba area in the southern suburbs of Edo and tried to make a living as a teacher. He gave lectures on the Chinese classics and, although virtually unknown, slowly attracted a following. In 1696, when he was still struggling to establish himself, he came to the attention of Yanagisawa Yasuaki (known as Yoshiyasu after 1704), chamberlain and confidant of the fifth shogun , Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. When Yanagisawa house Confucians interviewed the young teacher, Sorai impressed them with his knowledge and was hired on the spot. Joining the platoon of poets, artists, and scholars serving Yoshiyasu, he performed a variety of tasks for his new employer ranging from punctuating Chinese texts to giving public lectures on Confucian topics. He often was present when the shogun visited Yoshiyasu and frequently was asked to lecture or to join the poetry meets held on these occasions. Sorai was also a regular auditor at the shogun’s lectures on the Chinese classics. After he had served Yoshiyasu for fourteen years, he retired from active service in 1709. After his retirement, Sorai opened a school, the Miscanthus Patch Academy (Ken’en-juku), in Kayabachò, not far from Nihonbashi, and over the next decade established himself as a leading Confucian teacher. Thus by the time he began corresponding with Mizuno and Hikita, he was well known as a teacher and...