Distinguished Legalist politician and historian of late Japan’s feudal society — Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725)
As the title suggests, the following is an introduction to Arai Hakuseki’s Legalist思想.
The life experiences of Arai Hakuseki in Japan were long overshadowed and rarely studied due to the severe influence of bourgeois reactionary idealist historiography and Confucian思想. During China’s socialist period, because of the cover-up by Japanese bourgeois reactionary historians, Arai Hakuseki’s works and related思想 were long ignored and not translated into Chinese. It was not until capitalism was restored in China that Chinese bourgeois scholars like Zhou Yiliang went to Columbia University in New York to obtain Arai Hakuseki’s autobiography “Zhe Fen Chai Ji” and translated it into Chinese for publication, that research on Arai Hakuseki appeared in China. However, only a few people like Zhou Yiliang paid attention to it, and naturally, no one in Japan or China, both reactionary imperialist societies, would study his Legalist思想 in detail.
But regardless, Zhou Yiliang at least introduced Arai Hakuseki’s思想 based on his works. Combining his introduction with Arai Hakuseki’s works, one can glimpse his Legalist思想. Arai Hakuseki’s思想 shows that Japan, like China, also experienced a struggle between Confucianism and Legalism. The history of Japanese Legalism opposing Confucian思想 is not only existent but also quite intense. Through analyzing Arai Hakuseki’s Legalist思想, an important part of the Confucian-Legalist struggle in Japan can be seen.
Shinrei Hakushū (1657-1725) grew up during the period of Genroku culture (1688-1704). In 1709, after his lord Tokugawa Ienobu succeeded as the sixth shogun, he was entrusted with important responsibilities and implemented a series of Legalist (Fajia) policies.
During his tenure, Shinrei Hakushū carried out some progressive Legalist policies, which alleviated some of the sharp class contradictions in Japan at the time, promoted commodity economy, and allowed the feudal society to continue progressing. He also defended Japan’s national sovereignty externally, fought against Western missionaries’ colonial activities, established equal diplomatic relations with Korea, and used Western missionaries to actively learn about advanced Western natural sciences and other research achievements, pioneering Japan’s “Rangaku” (Dutch learning or Western learning). Some of Hakushū’s main policies include:
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Recasting gold and silver currency, opposing the minting of undervalued coins, eliminating inflation, and dismissing Ogihara Shigehide, who was responsible for coinage and involved in corruption. This also targeted the speculative activities of feudal merchants backing him, stabilizing Japan’s economy and providing a stable environment for the budding development of capitalism.
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Restraining land annexation by large landowners, cracking down on land-grabbing landlords, and preventing them from falsely accusing farmers of land encroachment, thus somewhat alleviating farmer poverty.
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Easing harsh criminal laws, adopting reformist policies toward rebels such as farmers and townspeople, focusing on punishing the ringleaders while fining others. Although still repressive, this was an improvement over the indiscriminate executions under Confucian policies.
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Proposing the abolition of the long-standing policy of sending princes and princesses to monasteries, which significantly increased the shogunate’s financial burden. The Tokugawa shogunate, aiming to weaken the emperor’s power and restrict his influence, mandated that all princes and princesses (except crown princes) become monks or nuns, thus banishing them from politics and preventing them from vying for power. However, this required large amounts of temple land and financial support, which burdened the already strained finances of the shogunate. Hakushū argued that princes and princesses marrying was “a natural human condition” and advocated abolishing this system in the name of ethics and morality, which ultimately improved the shogunate’s financial situation.
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Combating Western missionaries’ aggression by detaining Dutch missionaries and forbidding them from freely gathering intelligence or returning home. However, as a Legalist landlord, Hakushū did not fully understand the colonial ambitions of missionaries and was skeptical of their role as the vanguard of Western colonization, merely detaining them objectively.
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Actively learning about Western scientific achievements. Hakushū believed that the detained Italian and Dutch missionaries should not be executed but used to gather Western intelligence. He valued these opportunities highly, calling his meetings with missionaries “a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.” He personally visited the prisons, inquiring about Western political and economic conditions, having Western missionaries draw geographical maps, and obtaining scientific research results, social systems, and lifestyles from them. To understand these, he learned hundreds of Dutch words, gaining a rough understanding of the language. As a result, Hakushū is regarded as the founder of Rangaku in Japan. Unfortunately, later Japanese Rangaku degenerated into a form of xenomania that disparaged Japanese culture, betraying Hakushū’s original intent of studying Western knowledge.
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Establishing friendly and equal diplomatic relations with Korea. At that time, Korea sent envoys to Japan seeking stable diplomatic relations. Hakushū believed Korea was belittling Japan and considering it a vassal state, so he argued strongly for equal status and succeeded. Korea also criticized Japanese diplomatic envoys for violating taboo words in documents, but Hakushū refuted their unreasonable demands with legalist materialist ideas, criticizing Confucian “taboo” ideas.
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From 1709 to 1716, Hakushū served during the reigns of the sixth and seventh Tokugawa shoguns, implementing an eight-year Legalist policy that continued and developed the economic and cultural prosperity of the Genroku era. However, after the death of the seventh shogun Tokugawa Ienobu, the eighth shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune restored Confucianism to serve the interests of large landowners and merchants, dismissed Hakushū, and he retired. The rest of his life was dedicated to historical and linguistic research, making significant contributions to history and clarifying some progressive Legalist views.
In terms of historiography, Hakushū’s Legalist ideas are reflected in:
1. Opposing Confucian Mandate of Heaven and Shinto mythological views that promote idealism in history.
Hakushū believed that history was neither determined by the mysterious Mandate of Heaven nor by mythological figures in Shinto, but had its own “situations” and “timing” of change. His view was basically evolutionary, believing that history developed according to fixed laws and that each generation was more advanced. He divided Japanese history into nine phases of imperial “nine transformations” and five phases of samurai “five transformations,” asserting that Japan’s history had nine stages from ancient times, reaching the shogunate era after nine changes, and within that, five stages leading to the present. Although somewhat unscientific and limited to internal conflicts of ruling classes, his ideas carried a materialist tone. His most notable work, “Denshi Yuron” (Readings on History), argued that Japan’s political transition from imperial rule to shogunate was an inevitable historical process driven by internal class struggles, making him a major figure in Japanese Legalist historiography.
2. Opposing superstition and advocating materialism.
Hakushū believed that era names (nengō) had no relation to dynastic rise or fall. During his time, Japan’s Shogunate changed era names, such as to Shōtoku, but Confucian landlords claimed that eras with “Zheng” (正) in their names were unlucky. Hakushū rebutted that both China and Japan used era names with “Zheng” without misfortune, and that these claims were mere speculation. He pointed out that neither China nor Japan had era names in ancient times, and that the length of life or the rise and fall of states depended on human affairs, not era names. He also cited Western political systems learned from missionaries, noting that few Western countries used era names, and many experienced wars and chaos despite lacking era names. The decline and rise of nations could not be explained by era names but by human factors, reflecting his broad knowledge and materialist thinking.
Furthermore, Hakushū attempted to interpret Japanese mythology with a materialist approach. He challenged the long-standing view that the emperor’s ancestors were the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and that the imperial family was divine. He pointed out that “gods are humans” and that mythological gods were glorified humans, expressing atheistic views. This was a radical stance in a society dominated by Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shinto superstition. In his history writing, he regarded myths as reflections of social realities, using human logic to interpret ancient Japanese history. Although his conclusions seem naive today, he was the first in Japan—and perhaps the world—to propose such ideas, predating scholars like Bachofen who used myths to explain primitive societies and matriarchy by two centuries.
3. Advocating “practical learning” in historiography.
Hakushū believed history should serve practical purposes and opposed mere textual research, similar to the “practical” approach of Yan Yuan (Yen Yuan). He studied neglected but useful histories, such as those of the Ainu and Ryukyuans, and Western social systems and history.
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Besides history, Hakushū was accomplished in other fields, as evidenced by his self-taught Dutch language skills. His achievements in linguistics included research on language families, features of different languages, and a progressive view at the time. In East Asian cultural circles, Chinese characters (kanji) were regarded as the most advanced writing system, unchangeable and superior. Hakushū, influenced by Legalist dialectics and materialism, argued that phonetic scripts were more advanced than Chinese characters, challenging Confucian orthodoxy. This view was not widely accepted in China until the socialist era, and even now, many linguists do not agree, making Hakushū a linguistic pioneer. Besides the debate over scripts, he believed that languages reflected cultures and that languages like Korean, Chinese, Sanskrit, and Japanese influenced each other. To understand Japanese language history, one must study foreign influences. He opposed metaphysical views, believing language evolved over time (Old Japanese vs. modern Japanese) and that dialects (formal and colloquial) differed between social classes. He also explored etymology, despite some speculative results, which was remarkable for a feudal scholar. This reflects Hakushū's materialist view of linguistic evolution.
Another aspect was his materialist view of natural phenomena. In his autobiography, he recounted an earthquake in 1703 in Kanto. Instead of praying or panicking, he calmly checked on his family and lord, prepared for fires, and tried to understand the earthquake’s规律. This experience shows his naturalist, materialist attitude, not believing earthquakes were caused by divine will.
Finally, Hakushū was also talented in literature. He read Tang poetry extensively, composed poems himself, and his literary style was realistic and lively, reflecting his Legalist literary ideas. His autobiography “Shōtansen-ki” is a work of both historical and literary value, often used as a language textbook in the Meiji era.
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Zhou Yiliang’s introduction to Arai Hakushi and Arai Hakushi’s autobiography “The Record of Burning Firewood” can be referenced:
Why is it said that phonetic writing is more advanced? This is the first time I see this statement. What are the related materials from the socialist China period?
Since language is meant to facilitate communication between people, naturally the simpler and easier to master, the better. The easier it is to learn, the lower the difficulty. Pinyin script has only about twenty-some letters, and once learned, you can spell out various words through certain arrangements and combinations. However, Chinese characters have several thousand square characters, and objectively, mastering them is more complicated than Pinyin. For people learning Chinese, this is indeed a significant difficulty. Therefore, Chairman Mao said: “The script must be reformed, and we should follow the common phonetic direction of world scripts.”
Thank you! You have answered a long-standing question of mine. When I was reading Lu Xun’s works, I came across his views on script reform, where they advocated for spelling out characters with Pinyin and fighting against conservative demands to preserve traditional characters. I was quite confused at the time because even after the founding of New China, only simplified Chinese characters were introduced, along with the use of Pinyin. So I thought Lu Xun’s full Pinyinization was a bit excessive. Now, after reading your explanation, I understand that Lu Xun and others who advocated for Pinyinized characters were engaged in a struggle between progress and conservatism—progressive reform versus traditional preservation.
Unilateral Pinyinization también es incorrecta, Lu Xun no abogaba por una unilateral pinyinización, sino que exigía la simplificación de los caracteres chinos, considerando los caracteres simplificados como una etapa de transición en el movimiento de simplificación, con el objetivo final de lograr una pinyinización completa. La pinyinización unilateral solo propone reemplazar forzadamente los caracteres chinos con pinyin, sin cambiar el significado de los caracteres ni la gramática correspondiente; en términos formales, se transforma en pinyin, pero sigue siendo inadecuada para un idioma que aún está en la etapa de logogramas, y representa una línea de oportunismo formalista y ‘izquierdista’. Corea del Sur, por ejemplo, sufrió las consecuencias de una pinyinización unilateral. Por ejemplo, Corea del Sur dice que es una llamada ‘deschinesización’, pero en realidad todo el contenido sigue siendo en caracteres chinos, solo que formalmente ya no usan caracteres cuadrados. El resultado final es que los nombres de personas, lugares y conceptos en Corea del Sur deben usar caracteres chinos, y la ‘deschinesización’ termina siendo su opuesto, incluso en la forma no se realiza completamente. Se puede ver que la pinyinización unilateral es una mezcla de un plan de servilismo a lo extranjero y de conservadurismo retrógrado, que aprende la esencia de ‘el método debe ser nuevo, pero el pensamiento debe ser antiguo’, con contenido todavía en clásico chino y forma en pinyin denso, lo que duplica las dificultades para aprender el idioma. Por lo tanto, este es el problema: hay que oponerse tanto a la rígida insistencia del conservadurismo confuciano en que los caracteres chinos permanezcan inmutables por siempre, como a la filosofía de servilismo a lo extranjero de la pinyinización unilateral, combinando la fase de pinyinización y la discusión continua. Este ha sido el camino que China socialista ha seguido siempre.
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Regarding the romanization of Chinese characters, although this article has a strong bourgeois perspective, it does not discuss Zhao Yuanren’s shortcomings and overly idealizes him (for example, it does not point out his tendency towards one-sided romanization). However, it does introduce Zhao Yuanren’s research results on the romanization of Chinese and opposition to the idea of keeping Chinese characters unchanged. Some of Zhao Yuanren’s ideas are based on extensive investigation and research, consistent with linguistic logic, but ultimately do not go beyond bourgeois frameworks and are also very detached from the masses. They cannot be combined with the laboring masses who use the language, thus only remaining as utopian ideas, and can be regarded as the bankruptcy of the national bourgeoisie’s language plan.
\n\n【王开扬，彭泽润】赵元任的“狮子”不能乱“吃”——不要误会赵元任对汉语拼音的支持_《赵元任三段同音字“奇文”的语言学阐释》
The Japanese katakana loanword system makes me think of how extremely overpowered it is; in fact, it’s just a one-sided method of removing Chinese characters. In the end, it results in Japanese people not being able to understand, Europeans and Americans not understanding, and it being completely useless for Westerners—just a bunch of useless foreign slaves.
It seems like it directly turned into a linguistics discussion, and we can continue discussing these later.
Later, a dedicated post can be made to discuss linguistic issues.
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Indeed, it is possible