Imagining Harmony : Poetry, Empathy, and Community in Mid-Tokugawa Confucianism and Nativism

Many intellectuals in eighteenth-century Japan valued classical poetry in either Chinese or Japanese for its expression of unadulterated human sentiments. They also saw such poetry as a distillation of the language and aesthetic values of ancient China and Japan, which offered models of the good government and social harmony lacking in their time. By studying the poetry of the past and composing new poetry emulating its style, they believed it possible to reform their own society. Imagining Harmony focuses on the development of these ideas in the life and work of Ogyu Sorai, the most influential Confucian philosopher of the eighteenth century, and that of his key disciples and critics. This study contends that the literary thought of these figures needs to be understood not just for what it has to say about the composition of poetry but as a form of political and philosophical discourse. Unlike other scholars of this literature, Peter Flueckiger argues that the increased valorization of human emotions in eighteenth-century literary thought went hand in hand with new demands for how emotions were to be regulated and socialized, and that literary and political thought of the time were thus not at odds but inextricably linked. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 14 1. Nature, Culture, and Society in Confucian Literary Thought: Chinese Traditions and Their Early Tokugawa Reception 46 2. The Confucian Way as Cultural Transformation: Ogyū Sorai 74 3. Poetry and the Cultivation of the Confucian Gentleman: The Literary Thought of Ogyū Sorai 103 4. The Fragmentation of the Sorai School and the Crisis of Authenticity: Hattori Nankaku and Dazai Shundai 129 5. Kamo no Mabuchi and the Emergence of a Nativist Poetics 158 6. Motoori Norinaga and the Cultural Construction of Japan 186 Epilogue 223 Character List 228 Notes 246 Bibliography 276 Index 292 0804761574,9780804761574 Stanford University Press This study contends that the literary thought of these figures needs to be understood not just for what it has to say about the composition of poetry but as a form of political and philosophical discourse. Unlike other scholars of this literature, Peter Flueckiger argues that the increased valorization of human emotions in eighteenth-century literary thought went hand in hand with new demands for how emotions were to be regulated and socialized, and that literary and political thought of the time were thus not at odds but inextricably linked. --Book Jacket Imagining Harmony explores the diverse roles that poetry played for eighteenth-century Japanese intellectuals as an embodiment of human emotion, a form of linguistic and philological training, and a means for accessing the ancient cultures that they turned to as the source of their political ideals