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Exploring late Ming Taizhou philosophies within Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu monogatari: a comparative study of two contemporaneous “heresies” in early modern Japanese and late imperial Chinese intellec...

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Exploring late Ming Taizhou philosophies within Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu monogatari: a comparative study of two contemporaneous “heresies” in early modern Japanese and late imperial Chinese intellec...

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Content Exploring Late Ming Taizhou Philosophies Within Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari: A Comparative Study of Two Contemporaneous “Heresies” in Early Modern Japanese and Late Imperial Chinese Intellectual History BY YUNFEI SHANG THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in   East Asian Area Studies University of Southern California August 2016 2 Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3 Literature review .......................................................................................................................... 6 Part 1 Akinari’s Life and His Time ............................................................................................. 9 The intellectual exchange of Tokugawa Japan with China and Dutch Learning around 18 th century ................................................................................................................................ 9 Akinari as a Kokugaku/ National Learning Scholar ........................................................... 11 Akinari’s Monogatari Theory ................................................................................................ 15 Akinari and Kogaku/The School of Ancient Learning in Tokugawa Japan ..................... 17 Part 2 the Taizhou Movement: Heterodox Neo-Confucianism in Late Ming China ............ 19 Taizhou Movement as Left Wing of Wang Yang-ming School and Heresy of Neo- Confucianism ........................................................................................................................... 19 Late Ming Huaben (Colloquial Novels) and Taizhou Philosophy ...................................... 22 Part 3 Taizhou Philosophy within Akinari’s Stories ............................................................... 24 The Convergence of Confucianism, Ch’an Buddhism and Taoism/Shintoism in Wang Yang-ming’s School of Mind and Akinari’s Mysticism ...................................................... 24 Travelling and Nostalgia: the Emancipation and Repression of Human Desire .............. 30 Japanese Ninjo ⼈人情 and Giri 義理 vs. Chinese Xing 性、Qing 情 and Li 礼 ................... 35 Females Ghosts in Ugetsu: From a Male-Female Relationship Perspective ..................... 40 In Pursuit of Fortune .............................................................................................................. 50 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 57 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 59 3 Abstract Born in 1734 Tokugawa Japan, Ueda Akinari 上⽥田秋成 has mostly been celebrated for two identities: firstly, the author of the fantastic ghost story collection Ugetsu Monogatari/The Tale of Moonlight and Rain ⾬雨⽉月物語 , and the second is his accomplishment in Japanese kokugaku /national learning 国学 scholarship. As the belief in mysticism and Japanese mythology run through most of his masterpieces, he has been classified as a kokugaku scholar which naturally led to his anti-Confucianism, 1 for the reason that Confucian tends to rationalize every phenomenon using its dualistic ideologies. However, it may be too general to label Akinari as an anti-Confucianist as well as a “typical” nativist. In this thesis, I explore how his interests in the supernatural and Japanese mythology should not overshadow his rational view towards life on the whole. Particularly, the stories in Ugetsu Monogatari mirror his ideas that are in accordance with the late Ming heterodox Taizhou Neo-Confucian philosophies. I view Akinari’s compilation of ghostly fictions and kokugaku scholarship on the one hand, the rational and realistic implications which could be found in the same works on the other, were influenced by meanwhile embodied the great intellectual diversity in middle-late Tokugawa Japan. Introduction Ugetsu Monogatari maybe better known through Kenji Mizoguchi’s award-winning film in 1953 to most people. It may be true to some extent that it is only after the film won a 1 For example, in Donald Keen’s World Within Walls Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1868. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999., in p378 he concludes that “unlike the yomihon writers, Akinari had no Confucian philosophy to expound…his attitude was anti- Confucian, as we might expect of a kokugaku scholar”, and in p388, “Akinari’s devotion to kokugaku…seems to have originated in his dislike of Confucian philosophy”. 4 celebrated international award that many people came to know its original work, the Ugetsu Monogatari by Ueda Akinari. The title Ugetsu Monogatari, literally “rain-moon tales,” originated from the phrase “misty moon after the rains” in the preface of the collection, which created a mysterious environment in a cloudy, rainy night under the dim moonlight, in which the strange and marvelous then appear. Composed of five volumes and nine tales, Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari is a collection about supernatural anomalies. Ueda Akinari was born in 1734 in Osaka, then the commercial center of Japan. He was born in a pleasure house and his father’s identity remains unclear. When he was four, Akinari was adopted by a prosperous merchant family and henceforth had a comfortable childhood and received good education. Akinari’s literary accomplishments mainly consist of three parts: as haikai 俳諧 poet during his youth, a yomihon 読本 (Japanese fiction) writer in his twenties to thirties, and as a kokugaku 国学/National Learning scholar afterwards. However, he never made his living as a writer nor scholar. After his adoptive father’s death in 1761, he inherited the family business only to lose it and all the family belongings in a fire in 1771. After that, he learned and worked as a physician until 1787 and then retired from medicine and fully devoted into the kokugaku scholarship. Ugetsu Monogatari probably was finished in 1768 when Akinari was 34 and the manuscript was only published eight years later in 1776. During these eight years, Akinari’s life and literary pursuits experienced large changes and adjustments, which might have rendered him to postpone his Ugetsu Monogatari collection. The life experience and scholar achievements of Akinari is crucial if we try to develop an objective aspect in addition to the subjective interpretation of his works. Only in this way we could figure out the very sources of his philosophical inclinations, such as his views concerning the pursuit of wealth, gender relationships, etc., which I will unfold mainly in part one. 5 Much has been written about Akinari’s adaptation from Chinese sources in Ugetsu Monogatari—according to Noriko T. Reider, the number is more than sixty. 2 Quite a lot of them are from Ming vernacular tales, such as San Yan ( 三⾔言 , 1625) and Gujin Xiashuo ( 古今⼩小说, 1620-1621) by Feng Meng-long 冯梦龙, Jiandeng Xinhua ( 剪灯新话, 1378) by Qu You 瞿佑. Given that these Chinese sources of Akinari’s stories emerged under the background of the vibrant Taizhou movement, I recognize that Ugetsu Monogatari not only borrows the story lines and character settings from those Ming stories, but there must exist an ideological correspondence between Akinari’s stories and the intellectual movement behind the emergence of those Ming stories, i.e., the Taizhou movements and its philosophies. Japanese literati who wisely adapted from Chinese literature must have found in those Chinese texts an ideological agreement with their own intention of writing. Therefore, a brief introduction of Taizhou movement will be deployed in the second part, which also includes an explanation for the “contemporariness” between Taizhou movement and Akinari’s era, how did Taizhou ideologies have been regard as the “heresy” in late Ming China, just as Akinari has been treated as the “eccentric one” in the literature circles of his time. In the third part I will explore the similarities and potential connections between Akinari’s work and Taizhou philosophies, mainly focusing how do both of them perceive: first, the convergence of major schools of learning of their time; second, the validity of human desire on one hand, why should and how could it be controlled within a reasonable extent on the other; thirdly, the male-female relationship, the significant role played by women within the society (which even have an overtone for female emancipation). 2 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 13. 6 Therefore, in this thesis, my focus will not be to compare the literary presentations and do the text analysis between the adapted work of Akinari and its Chinese origins, but try to explore the ideological implications behind Akinari’s story and see how they echo with the late Ming China intellectual movement, namely the heterodox Neo-Confucian Taizhou School. Given the celebrated reputation of Taizhou movement as “The Enlightenment in late imperial China”, the ghostly collection of Akinari is by no means a simple work of sensational excitement but a masterpiece concerning the author’s standpoints towards human nature, human feelings and human desire, which also embraces profound modern implications of humanitarianism and individualism. Literature review The studies of Akinari and his works within Japanese, Chinese, Taiwan, Korean and American academia Due to the high reputation of Ugetsu Monogatari as a literary classic, the studies of Ueda Akinari and his works in Japan already began around the mid-late Tokugawa period. 3 According to a relatively comprehensive study done by Du Yang of those Japanese researches about Akinari, those scholarly works were at the beginning mostly focused on the Akinari’s personal life and novels, especially Ugetsu Monogatari and Harusame Monogarari, and it was not until the 1960s that scholars began to emphasize Akinari’s role as a distinct kokugaku 国学/national learning scholar and systemize his works from a broader perspective of Tokugawa intellectual history. “It was not until the 1990s that all the works, including waka poetry, kokugaku compositions, literature works and casual essays of Akinari have been officially compiled, in which, to some 3 Du, Yang. “The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari ( 上⽥田秋成思想研究 )”, PhD diss., Beijing University, 2010, pp.8. <http://thesis.lib.pku.edu.cn/Usp/apabi_usp/?pid=book.detail&db=own&dt=TASIMETA400&m etaid=META10539825&cult=CN> 7 extent, intervened the profound and comprehensive study of Akinari.” 4 There are even less works focusing on the ideological correspondence between his novels and their late Ming Chinese origins. Although everyone knows some of Akinari’s novels were adapted from Chinese huaben ( 话本 , colloquial literature) and admits the Chinese counterparts largely inspired Akinari’s works, nevertheless, they tend to refrain from touching on the apparent plot similarities and do not identify which Chinese huaben stories Akinari has actually borrowed from. The studies of Akinari and his works have been rather standardized and systemized in Japan, but Chinese, Korean, and Taiwan academia, were still limited to the translation and introduction of Akinari’s novel before the new millennium, especially his Ugetsu Monogatari. 5 In Korean scholarship, according to Du, the studies on Akinari were mostly about the arguments of Akinari and another kokugaku scholar Motoori Norinaga ( 本居宣长 1730-1801), in terms of the attitude towards the influence of Korea on Japan and Korea as the medium within Sino-Japan culture-political exchanges. For the Chinese counterpart, according to the author’s researches, the comparative studies of Akinari’s novel and Chinese literature could be traced back to the 1980s (notably done by Wang Xiao-ping in 1987, a History of Literary Exchanging Between Pre-Modern China and Japan 近代中⽇日⽂文学交流史稿 and Li Shu-guo in 1998, Japanese Yomihon and Chinese Ming-Ching Colloquial Novels ⽇日本读本⼩小说与明清⼩小说 ), and, imaginably, were exclusively focused on Akinari’s single piece of Ugetsu Monogatari. It is after 2000 that the exploration of Akinari has entered a new era, with scholarship focusing on creative discourses. In terms of academic writings, during the first decade of the new century quantitatively there are 2 master thesis, 2 doctoral dissertation and 8 journal articles about 4 Ibid., pp.12. 5 Ibid., pp.13. 8 Akinari, and the discussion began shifting from the literary analysis and cultural traditions to the exploration of Akinari’s underlying philosophy and ideologies within Ugetsu Monogatari. But the Chinese translation of Akinari’s works was available only for Ugetsu Monogatari and Harusame Monogatari, and this may be the reason for the absence of an overall discussion of Akinari’s works and philosophy. In the 2010s, two Chinese doctoral dissertations firstly embraced a much larger scale of Akinari’s works, Du Yang from Peking University in 2011 The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari 上⽥田秋成思想研究 and Yue Yuan-kun from Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2014 the Literature of Ueda Akinari and Late Ming Ideological Trend 上⽥田秋成⽂文学与晚明⽂文学思潮 . These two works began to include relatively comprehensive studies of Akinari’s works and more noticeably for the latter, firstly trying to explore the ideological correspondence between late Ming ideologies and Akinari’s novels and other works, which is a rather inspiring development that encouraged the appearance of this thesis. The studies of Akinari in American follow a similar track of those non-Japanese academic discourses. Before the 1960s, the studies of Akinari’s were mostly about translating Ugetsu Monogatari and the appreciation of the its ghost figures and anomalies, and even though the life and scholarship of Akinari have usually been brought up in the preface of these translations, they were mostly in a general and introductive manner; in 1978 a work called World within Walls: a History of Japanese Literature, Donald Keene firstly gave a comprehensive analysis of Akinari’s life experience and works, concerning not only Akinari as a novelist and his most studied Ugetsu Monogatari but also his role as a kokugaku scholar and related scholarships; in 1982, the first biography of Akinari, complied by Blake Morgan Young, called Ueda Akinari examined almost every detail in Akinari’s life, his personalities and the influence of his life 9 experience on his works, which nowadays an essential work for anyone whose doing research on Akinari. Published in 2003, Susan L. Burns’s work Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan has put Akinari’s nativism kokugaku work within a broader intellectual history and emphasizes his contribution to the ideological development of early modern Japan. Surely there are much more academic works similar to those I mentioned above, and the broadness and profundity of them are rather inspiring. However, compared to the research written in Chinese, which were more focused on the indebtedness of Akinari’s novels to their Chinese counterparts, American scholars tends to treat Akinari as an “original” novelist and discuss him from an exclusive Japanese historical environment. Meanwhile, given his role as a renowned Japanese nativist scholar, one may naturally overlook the possible ideological overlap between Akinari’s novel and its Chinese sources. Certainly studies around one particular author under different cultural backgrounds and in different languages have their own inclinations and focal points, especially for Akinari, in which the scholarly and writing accomplishments involve transcultural topics and sources. Therefore, it is inspiring to learn lessons from each of them and to present inclusive discussions. Part 1 Akinari’s Life and His Time The intellectual exchange of Tokugawa Japan with Chinese and Dutch Learning around the 18 th century When speaking of foreign policy in Tokugawa Japan, one may come up with the imagination of the national isolation policy of sakoku 鎖国, a series policies enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu from 1633 to 1639 which remained in effect until 1853 with the arrival of the American Black Ships. The foremost intention of sakoku of 10 Tokugawa government was to keep western Catholics and missionaries outside the national boundary and to maintain the peace and order within the nation, as well as to prevent the outflow of the large amount of silver from Japan into the world market. However, the image of an isolated Japan whose trade was cut off from the outside world also conflicts with a second image we have of Tokugawa intellectuals and state policy: it is a period of which the state policies and intellectual interests all directed towards the language and culture of the Chinese continental civilization. It has long been accepted that Chinese influence rose to a peak in the Tokugawa years. 6 Record shows that the import of books from China was a major part of the Nagasaki trade. Only for the year of 1711, among the 54 ships that came from China that year, 5 of them carried books, which was nearly 10 percent. 7 Bakufu also to some extent supported such imports for their encouragement of Confucian studies and even initiated direct purchase of Chinese book from China. During the time of great upheaval when the Manchus invaded the Ming and with the literary inquisition 8 ⽂文字狱 afterwards, many Chinese people and literati fled to Japan and carried with them Chinese books. 9 In addition to Confucian monographs, among these books were also those splendid colloquial novels of China, such as Water Margin ( ⽔水浒传), Romance of the Three Kingdom ( 三国演义), New Tales After Trimming the Lamp ( 剪灯新话), some of which contained progressive and liberal thinking and which exerted great influence on the works of Tokugawa writers. Akinari is among those who was fond of these books, and a lots of his early writings could find their prototypes from those Chinese counterparts. 6 Jansen, Marius B. China In Tokugawa World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992, 72. 7 Ibid. 8 A persecution of intellectuals for their heterodox writings lead by the Manchu government. 9 Jansen, Marius B. China In Tokugawa World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992, 72. 11 Rangaku ( 蘭学)/Dutch Learning/Western Learning is a trend of knowledge which we must not neglect if we want a well-rounded understanding of the ideological standpoint of Akinari, especially the rational elements in his kokugaku studies. Rangaku developed in Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima Nagasaki, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western science and technology in the period of Sakoku (1630s–1853). Through Rangaku the Japanese people learned many aspects of the scientific and technological revolution occurring in Europe at that time. For example, during the well-known kokugaku debate between Akinari and Motoori Norinaga ( 本居宣长 1730-1801), Akinari emphasized the value of the European map and questioned Norinaga’s assertion of Japan’s cosmic centrality. Given how small Japan is on the world map, he saw no likelihood for Japan to be the first country created or the source of all civilization, nor for Japan’s superiority over all other countries because the sun goddess was born in Japan. 10 This also had an overtone of rejecting the similar discourse concerning sino-centrism. The rationalism through the studies of Rangaku in Akinari’s thinking is as crucial as he is a mystic, which represented in his creation of Ugetsu Monogatari. The two seemingly irreconcilable characters both embodied in Akinari’s thinking and writing and made him stand out from any other literati and scholars at the time. This, perfectly mirrored his dual identity as a merchant-scholar as well as the great intellectual diversity in middle-late Tokugawa. Akinari as a Kokugaku/ National Learning Scholar Besides mostly known as the author of the fantastic collection of ghost stories Ugestu Monogatari, Akinari was also a distinctive Japanese kokugaku 国学/National Learning scholar. Kokugaku 国学, literally “the study of the country,” appeared in late 18 th century, refers to an 10 Burns, Susan L. Before The Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003, 387. 12 academic movement in Tokugawa period which focused on Japanese philology and domestic philosophy by referring to Japanese classics. According to the definition of kokugaku in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the emergence of kokugaku movement was in direct opposition to “Kangaku” 漢学 or “Chinese Studies,” the study of Chinese Confucianism. 11 Conventional kokugaku scholars reject the study of the Chinese Confucian classics and turning into the studies of the ancient Japanese works, such as Nihon shoki and Man’yoshu in that removed of Chinese Confucian infiltration, those works represented the true Japanese spirit. The emergence of kokugaku studies has its specific sociocultural background, which is crucial for us to understand Akinari being a “heterodox” kokugaku scholar and how the uniqueness in his kokugaku studies has influenced his writings and embodied in his Ugetsu Monogatari. The major theme of most kokugaku scholars were to recover the past, i.e. Shintoism, meanwhile fiercely rejecting the other foreign culture and religion’s invasion into the pure Japanese spirit “Yamato-Damashii” ( ⼤大和魂 ), particularly the Chinese Confucianism. Although Confucianism has been introduced into Japan as early as A.D.285 by the Korean and the ideas of Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi) in the early thirteenth century, for centuries they were institutionally within the shade of Zen Buddhism and its function as a statecraft has been largely dismissed. 12 With the end of the Sengokujidai ( 戦国時代, Age of Civil War, c. 1467 – c. 1603), Japan transformed from a loose confederation of semiautonomous fiefdoms into a more centralized feudal system and stepped into the early modern period. Where the predominant concerns of the medieval period had dealt with such Buddhist themes as human suffering in the world and the quest for personal 11 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kokugaku-school/ 12 there were numerous similarities between the two modes of thought, Zen advocates were quick to assert that such Chu Hsi contemplative practices as “holding fast to seriousness and sitting quietly” were less developed stages of what they knew as “sitting in meditation (zazen)” 13 salvation or enlightenment, the discourse of the Tokugawa was concerned more with the achievement and maintenance of a stable and harmonious society, placing the responsibility for maintaining that delicate equilibrium at the heart of both man and the cosmos squarely on the shoulders of man. 13 Under such a circumstance, Chu Hsi’ Neo-Confucianism could best serve the need of the newly established government, Shoguns and daimyo largely patronized and maintained Confucian scholars at their administrative centers: study, moral cultivation, and reflection were taken very seriously. During the early Tokugawa period, literacy and education were focus excessively on teaching students Chinese classics and the proficiency in Chinese was considered the foremost requirement for a higher level of scholarship. However, when it comes to the eighteenth century, with psychological problems raised among scholars and writers, they began to doubt their duty in the event of a Chinese invasion led by Confucius, the sage they had been taught to venerate. 14 Against this historical context, the Japanese kokugaku 国学 movement emerged. The two major objectives of kokugaku studies are: first, to revive the Japanese Shintoism and recovery the past; second, to exclude foreign cultural and religious invasions, especially Confucianism and Buddhism. While Akinari admits the indigenousness and distinctiveness of Japan as a community as well as its culture, he accused some critical standpoints of mainstream kokugaku scholars, especially those of Motoori Norinaga. Between Akinari and Norinaga there were several celebrated debates and confrontations, which has been viewed as “the most decisive debates” in early modern Japanese intellectual history. 13 Nosco, Peter. Confucianism And Tokugawa Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, 7-9. 14 Ibid. 14 The details of their debates are beyond the topic of this paper, but there’s still some points to be clarified given their significance in exploring Ugestu Monogatari. In Norinaga’s hands, kokugaku discourse was organized around the reading and interpretation of the ancient texts Kojiki 古事記 in the belief that they could reveal the nature of a pure and unmediated “Japanese” experience. In this way, Norinaga’s starting point belongs to the past, the revival and recovery of the past; in contrast, Akinari consistently rejected the claims of using exegesis of flawed texts to reveal the reality of the past and argued that the past never be a construct through deliberated fabrication. 15 Akinari’s starting points of building Japan into an indigenous and distinct community lies in the present and future, establishing national memories within the “private realm” by the creativity and efforts of the Japanese people, rather than the authorities from the “public realm”. Akinari agreed with Norinaga that the introduction of Confucianism and Buddhism had transformed Japanese society. But he did not portray China as the source of malignant influence, nor Confucianism and Buddhism as inherently inferior to indigenous Shintoism beliefs. 16 Akinari’s concern was to understand the attraction of Confucianism and Buddhism and their effect upon the emotions and sensibilities of the Japanese people in the ancient period. Addressing the status of Chinese influence on Japan, Akinari argued that Buddhism and Confucianism must have been appealing and useful to the Japanese people, otherwise the influence of these foreign theories would have been as ephemeral as that of Christianity. 17 In this 15 Burns, Susan L. Before The Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003, 119. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid, 121. 15 way, Motoori Noninaga has been called the “quintessential kokugaku scholar” ( 国粹派国学) and Akinari as the “rational/realistic kokugaku scholar”( 合理派/ 现实派国学). 18 Akinari’s Monogatari Theory During the well-known kokugaku debate between Akinari and Motoori Norinaga (which also be called “the most significant debate in early modern Japan”), Akinari deduced his own understanding concerning the literary genre of monogatari/novels or fiction. Unlike the poetic form of writings in ancient times, “narrative” belongs to a “private realm” and contains the possibilities of a new kind of social experience, serving as a site of critical production. 19 In contrast to the poetic writings in “public realm” (such as Kojikii 古事記 and Nihon Shoki ⽇日本書紀 ), which are largely defined by political power from above and refer to the orthodox history, people writing in “private realm” could use the label of “fiction” and “play” to mask the potential threat from the authorities, while still preserving the power to influence the present world, contesting official representations and fight against the reality. “It is always the authors’ intention to deplore the fickleness of the world. They lament the poverty of the country, ponder the inability to restrain the changing times, to fear the evil of the powerful. They write by taking up the things of the past and thereby strike out in a general way against the reality of the present.” 20 18 Du, Yang. “The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari ( 上⽥田秋成思想研究 )”, PhD diss., Beijing University, 2010, pp.5. <http://thesis.lib.pku.edu.cn/Usp/apabi_usp/?pid=book.detail&db=own&dt=TASIMETA400&m etaid=META10539825&cult=CN> 19 Burns, Susan L. Before The Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003, 119. 20 Ibid. 16 In terms of the infusion of Chinese (also the Korean) writings into Japan, Norinaga discredited them as “vehicles bringing into Japanese culture alien modes of organizing experience”. However, Akinari has established them within a broader scheme of cultural exchange and valued them as “shaping a new historical consciousness of Japanese people”. 21 He argued that the authors of monogatari, inside them there arise a sensibility and social exigency, could now reflect and cry out against the public world that restrains him. Fighting against the authorities, expressing personal resentment, remembering the past and reflecting on the present: all these should be considered potential themes of Akinari when we appreciate his monogatari works, particularly the Ugetsu Monogatari. If we perceive Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpeice Ugestu as representing to the world what is distinctively “Japanese” and establishing the Japanese film as distinguishable among the world film market, then almost two hundred years ago, the writer of its original work, Ugetsu Monogatari, Ueda Akinari, as a nationalist scholar, already tried to achieve the similar goal in his collection of ghost stories. Unlike other yomihon writers of his time, Akinari adapted so exquisitely from his Chinese sources, he gives his protagonists unique Japanese backgrounds, characters and behaviors, so that ordinary readers could barely recognize any Chinese models. Building on Susan Burn’s study and proposition of Akinari’s monogatari theory in his kokugaku scholarship, I view Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari an early attempt for him to create a new sense of “community”, which is exclusively Japan, as well as a social experience and national memory for the Japanese people, which is different from the “official” history that is inescapably under the shadow of Chinese influence. 21 Ibid. 17 Akinari and Kogaku/The School of Ancient Learning in Tokugawa Japan Many may perceive that Akinari’s devotion into kokugaku was due to his dislike of Confucian studies, in which Confucian scholars tried to interpret everything and phenomena in the name of reason, using their dualist approach of “heavenly principle” (li, 理) and “material forces”(qi, ⽓气 ). On the contrary, kokugaku insists that many things lie beyond the ability of human beings to understand, analyze and explain—a belief based on an unquestioning acceptance of Japanese mythology. Surely, aiming to revive the Shintoism in Japan, the kokugaku studies were innately endowed with the sense of mysticism and a belief in mythology, and as a kokugaku scholar Akinari surely shares this common ground with other kokugaku scholars, as he did believe in supernatural manifestation and took issue with those who denied their occurrence. 22 Nonetheless, this does not necessarily equate to anti-Confucianism. What he disagrees with is the general rationalism of the Chu Hsi School; in Japan, the orthodox Shushigaku ( 朱⼦子学 ), was also known as a rigid follower of Chinese Chu Hsi Neo-Confucianism. In China, the single most important Neo-Confucian alternative to the school of Chu Hsi were those of Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528), whose heterodox philosophy emphasized the primacy of human mind. In Japan, however, the most forceful challenge to orthodox Neo- Confucianism Shushigaku was The School of Ancient Learning /Kogaku. 23 The basic proposition of the kogaku movement is that if one wished to understand the essence of ancient Confucian teaching, then he should read the ancient texts by the “early kings”, instead of studying the exegesis on those texts written by Chu Hsi or others, i.e. the Four Books and the 22 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 49 23 Nosco, Peter. Confucianism And Tokugawa Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, 13. 18 Five Classics 四书五经. 24 They established a systematic methodology in studying the original texts of the “early kings”: the Six Classics 六经, including the Book of Poetry 诗经, Book of Rites 礼记, Book of Music 乐经, Book of Changes 易经, Book of Documents 尚书, and the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋. Their aim was to make the Confucianism in Japan more recognizably “Japanese” while rejecting the influence of the Chinese rationalistic Confucianism of Chu Hsi—an aim partly in accordance with Akinari as a kokugaku scholar. I found in Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari several major discourses of kogaku, such as the defiance of the rational dualism of Chu Hsi school and their belief in the spirit, the reverence of human nature and approval of human feelings and desires. Although Akinari could never be recognized as Neo-Confucian, but defining him as anti- Confucianism, and thereby excluding every Confucian idea within his writings, is also unnecessary. Especially given his dedication into the kanbun ( 漢⽂文 ) writings and works adapted from Chinese classics. In my idea, Akinari just epitomizes the complicated sentiment of Japanese intellectuals towards Chinese Confucianism of the time. In conclusion, unlike other kokugaku scholars, Akinari dismisses the total abandonment of the Confucian doctrine, and he is not anti-Confucianism as a whole. Rather, some of his ideologies are in accordance with the kogaku Neo-Confucianism, especially concerning the topic of celebrating human desire and feelings, and within this topic also contains the comparability of Akinari’s ideologies with the Taizhou movement in late Ming China. 24 Ibid. 19 Part 2: The Taizhou Movement: Heterodox Neo-Confucianism in Late Ming China The late Ming period of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century China is a period of great social change with the rising commercial activities and urban bourgeois embodied the economic affluence of the time. Intellectual diversity also reached its climax in late imperial China. Meanwhile, the social tension and stratification have increased considerably at the same time, rendering constant conflict between different classes, especially the lower class intellectuals and the authorities. Taizhou Movement as Left Wing of the Wang Yang-ming School and Heresy of Neo- Confucianism The Taizhou school has been called the “left” or radical wing of the Wang Yang-ming school of Neo-Confucianism, or The School of the Mind ⼼心学 , and exerted a wide influence on sixteenth-century late Ming China. The name of the school uses the hometown of its founder, Wang Ken ( 王⾉艮 , 1483-1540), a city situated near present-day Jiangsu Province. Wang Yang- ming’s School of Mind ⼼心学 is in opposition to Chu Hsi’s School of Principle 理学, as it denies the rational dualism of the orthodox Neo-Confucian philosophy of Chu Hsi. Instead of holding steadfast to the “heavenly principle” 天理 and suppressing human desire, Wang Yang-ming emphasizes the supremacy of the mind of human beings and views “the mind” as the only principle of the world. Due to his rejection of the “heavenly principle” orthodox Neo- Confucianism of Chu Hsi, Wang Yang-ming and his followers have been called the heterodox Neo-Confucianism. Taizhou scholars further interpret Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy in a radical and extreme way, and people call them the “left wing” of Wang Yang-ming for the revolutionary nature of their ideas. For example, the discourse of the “Childlike Mind” ( 童⼼心说) 20 of Li Chih 李贽 (one of the most renowned Taizhou Scholars), could best exemplify the radical respect of the school. In his idea, the “childlike mind” is originally pure, but it can be lost if received opinions come in through the senses and are allowed to dominate it. 25 By here, we may assume that Li Chih is still in accordance with Chu Hsi and Wang Yang-ming, admitting human nature as originally good and that it may change as one grows up and interacts with the surroundings. However, in terms of how the innate good has been reversed, neither Chu Hsi nor Wang Yang-ming has a clear interpretation because the focal point of their theory wrestles with the methodology of how one returns back to that pure and good nature--that is to cultivate oneself, either following the heavenly principle (Chu-Hsi) or the mind of one’s own (Wang Yang-ming), thus creating a harmonious world. While Li Chih clearly accuses the Confucian moral doctrine of causing the greatest harm and resulting in the decadence of the “childlike mind” 童⼼心 , viewing them as “speaking the phony words, writing phony writings and doing phony things”, and even calling into question the authenticity of the Confucian Classics while charge them as authoritative sources of the Sage’s teachings. 26 The emergence of Taizhou “heresy” epitomized the profound social change of late Ming China and the tendency of affirming individualism and human secular lives. The awareness of the individual represented by the School of Mind reached maturity in the Ming with Wang Yang- ming, and its left wing Taizhou School been labeled as the climax of advocating individualism the late Imperial China. The notion of individualism has to be clarified here. If we define “individual” from the sense of “one’s relation to the group, one’s role in the society, one’s rights one deserves as a 25 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 130. 26 Ibid. 21 human being”, then the problem of individualism has existed long ago in Chinese tradition since Confucius and Mencius. 27 When it comes to the Ming period, the question and exploration of individual became the primary concern among the intellectuals, which could be largely epitomized by the emergence of The School of Mind. And by then, the definition of the Chinese individualism came closer to that of the modern West, in which they both emphasis human individual as the foundation of the stability and affluence of society, the importance of individual desire and self-realization. Based on this common ground while taking into consideration of the Chinese particularity, WM. Theodore de Bary has defined The School of Mind of Wang Yang- ming as “social”/ “public” individualism, for it seeks to establish individual “in relation to others” within the society, and to protect individual’s rights or status in some “institutional frame work or on the basis of widely declared and accepted principles”, and the Taizhou School individualism as “private individualism/individualism” of the hermit or recluse that withdrawn from society. 28 Unlike Chu Hsi School and Wang Yang-ming School, whose advocates were mostly scholars and government officials, the Taizhou movement distinguished itself with its large mass base involving people from the lowest status within the society. Its founder Wang Ken was a peasant and only attended school for three years, and its activists mostly had no interests in serving official positions in the government. Thus, in a more thorough and tough way the Taizhou movement fought against the Chu Hsi’s orthodoxy and his Confucian doctrine, further narrowing down the “public individualism” promoted by Wang Yang-ming to the total abandonment of the political institutions, focusing exclusively on individual’s freedom and personal value. This aspect of Taizhou philosophy reminds us of the Chinese Taoism and Ch’an 27 Ibid., 146. 28 Ibid. 22 Buddhism, and also the reason for its reputation as the “Wild Ch’an” and the heresy of Wang Yang-ming Neo-Confucianism. The idea of “private individualism” could see its analogue in Akinari’s philosophical inclination as well as his Ugetsu Monogatari, which I explain below. Late Ming Huaben (Colloquial Novels) and Taizhou Philosophy Another distinguished feature of the Taizhou movement is the way it disseminated its ideas. In the various forms of public lectures and discussions, namely “jiangxue” 讲学, the Taizhou movement popularized its ideas and received a large mass base which was described by Huang Zongxi ( ⻩黄宗羲 ) in his Mingru xue’an ( 明儒学案) as “popular everywhere under heaven”. 29 Public lecturing and discussions contributed greatly to the intellectual diversity of the time, especially bringing forth a fresh spirit into the world of the Ming literati. Against the backdrop of Taizhou movement, there emerges a particular theme of qing 情 which emphasizes the expression of human feelings and the nature flow of emotions. 30 For example, Tang Xianzu ( 汤显祖 1550-1616) and his The Peony Pavilion ( 牡丹亭) and San Yan by Feng Meng-long ( 冯梦龙), which serve as the predecessors of some stories in Akinari’s Ugetsu Monotari, all appeared exactly under this context. There are clear evidence and records concerning the close contact and interaction between those literati with Taizhou scholars. 31 Reciprocally, Taizhou scholars also have particular interests in the promotion of late Ming colloquial literature, since they see in this genre a more spontaneous expression of inner 29 Cheng, Yu-Yin. “Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) Peony Pavilionand Taizhou Philosophy: A Perspective From Intellectual History.” Ming Studies 2013, no. 67 (2013): 3–29, pp. 6. from < http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0147037X13Z.00000000010 > 30 31 Ibid., pp 4. 23 feelings which is less moralistic and rationalistic. Li Chih had once proposed in his fen-shu ( 焚书) the criterion/decorum (li 礼) of true literature: “what comes forth from within maybe called decorum (li); what comes from without is not decorum. What comes without studying, deliberation, premeditation, effort, intellection, or knowledge is called decorum; what comes through the eyes and ears, deliberation and calculation, what involves talk first and action later, or is based on some comparison with others, is not decorum.” 32 Thus, late Ming colloquial literature was largely inspired by Taizhou philosophies ， especially concerning its advocacy of human feeling and its rationalization of human desire. Moreover, a lot of stories in Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari could find their predecessors and origins from the colloquial literature of this period, such as San Yan of Feng Menglong and The Peony Pavilion of Tang Xianzu. Surely Akinari also adapted from other earlier Chinese literature, such as Shiji and The Water Margin, in his fictions, but considering the contemporariness, breadth and profundity of the influence of those late Ming colloquial novels on Akinari’s novels, we should not neglect the Taizhou philosophical guidance behind them. Although there is no clear record of Akinari’s acquaintance with and direct comment on Taizhou philosophy and the movement per se, I recognize that Ugetsu Monogatari not only shares some of the plots and character settings with those late Ming colloquial literatures, but there is also an ideological correspondence between them. Akinari must have found in those Chinese novels a philosophical agreement with his own intention of writing, at least in terms of how he perceived them. I will develop this argument in part four. 32 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 197. 24 The adaptation and introduction of those Chinese colloquial novels of Ming into early modern Japan were of great significance, since apart from entertaining the Japanese townspeople, its emphasis on the desire and needs of the individual. The underlying implications of humanitarianism and individualism within those Ming works, further encouraged the already bourgeoning Japanese townsman and merchant class, which has an unneglectable modern implication. Part 3 Taizhou Philosophy within Akinari’s Stories The Convergence of Confucianism, Ch’an Buddhism and Taoism/Shintoism in Wang Yang- ming’s School of Mind and Akinari’s Mysticism The convention concerning Confucian doctrine is in opposition to Buddhist nonattachment and Taoist vacuity, since it despises one’s isolation from the moral imperatives of Heaven as well as social environment. In other words, it was unrealistic, wrong and selfish to conceive of human existence apart from the concrete relationships and obligations inescapably involved in the production and sustaining of human life. 33 One should not renounce his social obligations. However, the convergence of the three teachings - Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism - has already show its sign as early as the Sung Confucianism. 34 For example, quiet- sitting 静坐, as a means to meditate on the Way 悟道/heavenly principle 理, was approved and encouraged by Chou Tun-I 周敦颐 and Chu Hsi, is comparable to Buddhist meditation and enlightenment; the “desirelessness” ⽆无欲 idea by Chou Tun-I 周敦颐 in order to purge human desire has a strong Taoist implication. Only that for Chu Hsi’s Confucianism, the convergence of 33 Ibid., 12-15. 34 Li, Zongwu, Zhao An Xin, and Marilyn Zhang. Thick Black Theory. Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 2009. 25 the three schools still ends at the Confucian rationalism discourse and was an unconscious practice. When it comes to the Ming period, Wang Yang-ming’s School of the Mind ⼼心学 , the convergence of the three schools intensified and Neo-Confucianism falls into a broader category of mysticism. Wang Yang-ming insists that sagehood could not be taught through moral doctrine but lies within one’s own nature, individuals could perceive and understand the world intuitively through introspective meditation. For examole, his own personal experience of attaining sagehood was exactly through a silent and solitary meditation which is now well-known as “Sudden Enlightenment at Longchang” 龙场顿悟. 35 It is in substance a flash illumination and quite mystical phenomena. Ray Huang once charged Wang Yang-ming’s School of the Mind “threatening the independence of Neo-Confucianism as an established institution” for the reason that “the huge body of the Confucian canon, so carefully prepared to coordinate the manners and social norms of the scholar-gentry-official class and to enable its members to remain conversant with one another, could be tossed out”. 36 We may assume Wang Yang-ming’s belief of every man’s potentiality for sagehood and the exaltation of the self and individual were originated from the Ch’an Buddhist’s belief that the Buddha-nature is inherent in all beings and individuals could be their own masters. 37 Moreover, once the supremacy of the mind was accepted, the 35 At first Wang Yang-ming was the follower of Chu Hsi’s philosophy and only found himself frustrated and cast out from the center of the politics. Thus day and night he stayed in silent mediation. Then one night he suddenly had a “great enlightenment” and learned that the way to sagehood lies within one’s own nature, and this is the foundation and origin of The School of Mind, which nowadays been called “Sudden Enlightenment at Longchang”. 36 Huang, Ray. 1587, a Year of No Significance: the Ming Dynasty in Decline. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, 204. 37 Ibid. 26 harmoniousness/great unity ⼤大同 of the universe as the ultimate goal of human beings advocated by Confucius could be turned on and off within mind. 38 It ceased to be objective truth attained through human efforts. This in fact made “the Confucius ‘great unity’ ⼤大同 indistinguishable from the tao 道 of the Taoists and the void 空 of the Buddhists”. 39 When all those “individualistic” and “quietist” aspects of the Wang Yang-ming school were pushed to an extreme, the Taizhou movement naturally earned themselves the reputation of “wild Ch’an” 狂禅. In general, Buddhist ideals of nonattachment and pursuit of the peace of mind along with Taoist meditative practices were attractive to Neo-Confucians of both Sung and Ming. However, the Confucians of Sung avoided any explanation concerning the religious overtones within their philosophy in order to maintain the authenticity of their philosophy. Wang Yang-ming, as the advocate of “the unity of knowledge and action” 知⾏行合⼀一 philosophy, made him a pragmatic philosopher or “man of action”, also barely referred to the religious overtones in his school of studies. Nonetheless, he admitted the value of Buddhism and Taoism and recognized that Buddhism and Taoism could “be used” by the School of Mind to validate its philosophy. 40 Finally, when it comes to the late Ming Taizhou movements, with Taizhou scholars’ frequent interaction with Buddhist monks and Taoists and their public recognition of the Ch’an Buddhism and Taoism’s influence on their ideas, the convergence of the three schools has been widely discerned and studied. For example, Li Chih in his masterpiece Cang Shu 藏书 openly brought 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 He, Jing. “The Confusion of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism Within The Idea of Innate Knowing of Wang Yangming” ( 论王阳明的致良知说对儒释道三教的融合), Zhejiang Social Science 2007, no.3 (2007): 120-126, pp.122. 27 forward the idea that “the three teachings converge in Confucianism” and “ the three teachings are one because they all originated in the expectation of ‘hearing the Way’ 闻道”. 41 The idea of the convergence of Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in the late Ming is crucial when we trying to analogize the late Ming Taizhou philosophy with Akinari’s work Ugetsu Monogatari. Akinari’s actual belief in “the other world”, the supernatural beings, although helpful for his literary accomplishment, was surely not the decisive reason for his writing of Ugetsu Monogatari. In other words, Akinari neither lose control of his ghosts nor simply expressing the “horror” itself; rather, by creating such terrifying and eerie beings and atmosphere, he is trying “to enhance the idea and sensibility that he wished to stress”. 42 The superficial mysticism embodied in Ugetsu Monogatari is by no means simple agnosticism nor fatalism, but implicated Akinari’s perspective towards the coexistence of three major religious in Japanese society of the time: namely the Confucianism, Zen Buddhism and Shintoism. I recognize that the three teachings of Tokugawa Japan also witnessed a convergence in Akinari’s Ugestu Monogatari, the idea to preserve human nature and value human desire, represented Akinari’s approval of kogaku Confucianism; meanwhile he seems constantly alerting his readers to the severe consequences rendered by “unrestrained” desire, and in order to put one’s desire under rational control, one needs Buddhist salvation and Shintoistic cultivation. In other words, unlike other kokugaku/nativist scholars such as Kamo no Mabuchi 賀茂真淵 and Motoori Norinaga 本居宣⻑⾧長 , Akinari never means to deny the very substance of Buddhism nor 41 This is from Confucius Analects: if he could hear the Way in the morning, he could die content in the evening. 朝闻道⼣夕死可矣 . 42 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 53. 28 Confucianism. On the contrary, he admires the essence of the two “foreign” religions, harboring a selective and rational attitude and seeing their great potential to cultivate Japanese people. For example, “The Blue Hood” story of Ugetsu Monogatari may best exemplify my point of view. One night, the Zen master Kaian was searching for shelter while being told that an abbot of a local temple just turned into a horrible demon and now terrorizes the village people. In fact, the abbot was in love with a young boy, but after the sudden death of the boy, the abbot was so desperation and even began to eat the decomposing flesh and bone of the boy, until there was nothing left. In order to instruct the demon back to his original mind, the virtuous master Kaian heads to the temple. The demon abbot appears as expected, and intends to devour Kaian, only finds out that he cannot even see nor catch the master. Now the demon abbot surrenders to the master’s virtue, listens to the guidance and accepts the purification. The master Kaian takes off his own blue hood and puts it on the demon abbot’s head, leaves him a Zen question to resolve and says he will ask for the answer when he comes back. The next year, when Kaian return back to the temple, he found the temple collapsed and with weeds overgrown, while the demon abbot still sits at the original spot in meditation. Kaian sees the scene and strikes the abbot on the head in a sudden, asking for the answer to the problem. One moment, the monk attains enlightenment and dissolves into air, leaving only the blue hood and a pile of bones. In this story, the maxim of the Zen master Kaian “he who fails to control his mind becomes a demon he who governs his mind attains to Buddhahood” 43 applies equally well to the retired Emperor Sutoku in “Shiramine”, Hidetsugu in “The Owl of the Three Jewels”, Isora in “The Kibitsu Cauldron”. Also, in “The Kibitsu Cauldron”, those who pay no reverence to (Isora’s parents) or violate (Shotaro) the guidance of the Shinto God will be punished. Also at the end of “The Kibitsu 43 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 189. 29 Cauldron” it is said: “as people passed the story down, that the accuracy of the yin-yang master’s divination, and the ultimate rightness of the cauldron’s unfavorable oracle were truly precious and sacred.” 44 Moreover, by recalling Akinari’s personal experience of shunning the society, shaving his head in the style of a Buddhist monk and living a secular life for a time, which not necessarily means his devotion of Buddhist doctrine, but a “psychological withdrawal”, “a proclaim to break with his past as a tradesman and provide him a quieter life as a writer and scholar”, 45 and we can find exactly the same experience happened to Li Chih and many other Taizhou scholars, and to them the withdraw from the world, was not into inactivity, but into an independent life of study and contemplation. Just like the unification of the three schools in Taizhou philosophy converges at emphasizing the human mind, Akinari’s stories conveyed similar standpoints: dependent on the human mind to control their desire and action, the Confucianism (here referring to Japanese kogaku Confucianism instead of the orthodox shushigaku) instructs us to revere our nature and desire. It is the Buddhist and Shinto doctrines that discipline them within a reasonable extent, lest they explode and cause destructive consequences, just like what happens in the end of the story of “Shiramine”, “The Blue Hood” and “The Kibitsu Caldron”. In this way, the mystical quality of Ming thought as well as in Akinari’s fictions are endowed with implications for both self- cultivation and man’s proper activity in the world, the so-called “ethical mysticism”. 46 44 Ibid. 45 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 42. 46 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 16. 30 Travelling and Nostalgia: the Emancipation and Repression of Human Desire While admitting that human desire could not be repressed, Akinari also proved that to leave it without restraint may also cause undesirable disasters, through his stories. Almost every story in the Ugetsu Monogatari collection involves the activity of the protagonists’ departure from their “roots”, for example the former empire’s banishment to a remote island in Shiramine, the travelling father and son in “The Owl of The Three Jewels”, and the husband leaving for the capital in “the Kibitsu Cauldron”. If we perceive the disengagement from the bonds with family/hometown/original lives and pursuing individual freedom as human “desire”, then the sense of nostalgia and responsibility for the family, as well as missing the easy and acquainted lives, emerged after the action of departure is the “doctrine” and “principle”. These two feelings are naturally irreconcilable while intertwining, which people tend to break through the restraint from the established doctrines while on the other hand, they still rely on the protection and comfort offered by the original lives. Given the miserable and even horrific experience of the protagonists who leave the family/hometown, we may presume Akinari’s view towards such actions: he rejects any unnecessary travelling/travelling in the pursuit of pure “pleasure” and the action of leaving one’s “roots”, accusing it as rendering personal misfortune and misery. In the story “The Owl of the Three Jewels,” the main characters are the two travelers: the father Muzen and his son Sakunoji. The father originally owns his own business but just transferred it to his son and shaves to become a monk, travelling across the nation. At the beginning of the story, Akinari mentioned twice of the father’s health condition: “he has suffered no particular misfortune”, “being robust and free of any disease”. One night while spending the 31 night on Mt. Koya, the two encounter the ghostly retinue of Toyotomi Hidetsugu 47 and his retainers. Mt. Koya is a sacred and eerie spot where those warriors committed suicide, and it is accompanied by the weird cry of the unseen bird bupposo which creating an even more horrifying atmosphere. Following the appearance of the ghost warriors, they started a lengthy discussion on the correct interpretation of a poem, which is quiet digressive. Here readers may find no interest in the discourse itself but care only about the destiny of the father and the son while anticipating any intimidating actions of the ghost warriors. Finally, before departing, the ghost of Hidestugu intends to take the father and the son to the asura realm, one of the Buddhist Six Realms filled with arrogant and jealous demons of indulged in fighting, but only be stopped by his retainers. The father and the son then went totally fainted and later seek treatment with medicines after they get home. The same tension could be found in another story “The Carp of My Dreams”, a story about a priest Kogi master of painting carp who actually transforms into a carp during his bad illness, swimming freely in the Lake Biwa, enjoying the life being a fish. One day lured by fish bait, Kogi in the carp form is caught by his friend. He cries loudly but no one listens. Only when the cook is about to cut him, Koji awakens from the dream and tells all of his experience to his friend. Although involving no direct departure from one specific place to another, this story could still be perceived as a “travelling” story, only in the sense of transcending from one realm to another. The experience of the priest Kogi transforming into a carp is his travelling from the accustomed human realm to the appealing and cheerful realm of the nonhumans. Leaving his 47 Toyotomi Hidetsugu 豊⾂臣秀頼 was the nephew and retainer of Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊⾂臣秀吉 . Hidetsugu was the son of Hideyoshi’s elder sister, but due the childlessness of Hideyoshi, Hidetsugu supposed to be the successor of Hideyoshi. However, in 1593, Hideyoshi’s concubine gave a birth to a new heir and the relationship between Hidetsugu and Hideyoshi began to deteriorate. Finally, in 1595 Hidetsugu was accused of plotting a coup and ordered to commit ritual suicide at Mt. Koya. Together with his retainers. 32 original realm of human beings, Kogi found joy and relief being a fish, a similar feeling when one travels freely away from their “roots”. Not before long, however, he found himself unable to communicate with humans when caught by his friend. Being a carp he is powerless and desperate, and could do nothing to stop himself from being cooked. The mid-late Tokugawa era in which Akinari lived was a peaceful and affluent period, although Akinari was sharply critical of his time, he barely advocated political reform to change the current situation for the better. He even wrote a short piece praising the Tokugawa government and the peace enjoyed under its administration. 48 Under this peaceful social context and with the development of the transportation system, people began to travel a lot more than ever, and the activities of leaving home for adventure can also be regarded as part of the discovery and release of one’s desire. However, Akinari shows no approval for such activities. He defends for the validity of human desire but criticizes the unchecked wills, such as abandoning one’s “roots” and escaping from family responsibilities to fulfill the selfish desire, and accusing such activities with being the causes of personal tragedies and family miseries. Akinari’s ideology is actually in accordance with his contemporary Tokugawa kogaku scholar and reformist Ogyu Sorai’s (1666-1728) political advocacies. As a kogaku scholar, Sorai was celebrated for his rejection of Chu Hsi’s idea of cutting out human desires and holding onto the “heavenly principle”, instead he maintains that “what follows human nature is called the Way”. By this, however, he never means to liberate human desire without control, which is the same standpoint as that of Akinari. For example, Sorai’s policy of “Dochaku ( ⼟土着 )”, which formed the core of his recommendations to the Bakufu, was designed to bring about the social stabilities by the means of controlling people from leaving their “roots” and travelling. “During 48 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 45. 33 the Three Dynasties and in later ages in China, as well as in the period of antiquity in Japan, the basis of all good government has consisted essentially in ensuring that the people shall be settled permanently on the land.” 49 Further, the policy of ensuring that the entire population be permanently settled on the land was enforced by a new system of registration (koseki ⼾戸籍 ), and a repressive measure to control the movement and transfers of population was included in his political ideologies. The starting points of Akinari and Ogyu Sorai are the same: appreciate the secured and stable life of the day, encourage the government to maintain control over the country and let people return back to daily production - only in this way the future stability of the country could be preserved. This reminds us of the idea of “settling the body and establishing a livelihood” 安⾝身⽴立命 and “clear wisdom and self-preservation” 明哲保⾝身 , which characterized the Taizhou wisdom and philosophy of life. Wang Ken, as the leader of Taizhou movement, firstly put forth the idea of “everyday needs of the people is the Way” 百姓⽇日⽤用即是道 , emphasizing the importance of fulfilling the ordinary desires and wants of the people to the stability of the nation as a whole. In his idea “those who know how to preserve the self will love the self like a treasure. If I can love the self, I cannot but love other men; if I can love other man, they will surely love me; and if they love me, my self will be preserved…if by this means I rule a state, I can love the whole state; if I love that state, the state will love me; and if the state loves me, my self is preserved. Only when my self is preserved can I preserved the state” 50 , “to regulate the family, order the state and pacify the world rests upon making the self secure” 安⾝身 . The Book of Changes says: if the self is secure, 49 Ogyū Sorai, and J. R. McEwan. The Political Writings of Ogyū Sorai. Cambridge: University Press, 1962, 58. 50 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 164. 34 then the empire and state can be preserved. But if the self is not secure, the root is not established.” 51 The Wang Yang-ming school of Neo-Confucianism put great attention on the “self”, instead of Chu Hsi’s “heavenly principle”. But Wang Ken’s perception of the self is strongly physical—the bodily self or person (shen, ⾝身 ), compared to Wang Yang-ming’s emphasis on the “innate knowledge” 良知, the mind (xin, ⼼心 ), especially the identity of mind with principle or nature. 52 Akinari and Ogyu Sorai’s idea in terms of settling the body and repressing the desire to leave one’s roots is comparable to Wang Ken’s such discourses. Moreover, when the Book of Changes speaks of the preservation of the state depends on the security of the individual, it refers to the “gentleman” 君⼦子 , the elite class. Wang Ken, however, broadened the meaning of “individual” to include the common individuals. This is crucial when we take into account Akinari’s identity as a merchant-scholar, and the protagonists of Akinari’s stories are mostly common people underlying the social hierarchy. Therefore, from Akinari’s story and Taizhou scholar Wang Ken’s ideologies, we could find similar ideas emphasizing the physical settlement and self-preservation in the peace time. Although both of them applaud human desires, but if desire become rampant and uncontrollable, it may risk one’s secure and even life and causing undesirable consequences. Under such circumstances, the unchecked desires should be repressed and they both encourage one to focus on materialistic needs and return back to daily lives. 51 Ibid., 163. 52 Ibid., 165. 35 Japanese Ninjo ⼈人情 and Giri 義理 vs. Chinese Xing 性、Qing 情 and Li 礼 Giri 義理, or “social obligation”, is an ethical imperative required by the society when one is involved in some meaningful or particular relation to the other; Ninjo ⼈人情 represents individual's sentiments and desires, a person’s instinct and expression of feelings and inclinations. Giri and ninjo in Japanese academia is intimately tied to the play making theory of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s 近松⾨門左衛⾨門 . The conflict between the giri and ninjo is essential to his kabuki plays, usually in the form of a man struggling between his interior desires and exterior social duty. It is the complicatedness of the conflict between giri and ninjo that gives rise to the greatness of his tragic kabuki plays. When critics refer to the motif of giri in Chikamatsu’s plays they would speak of the sentiment, such as a fear of what the surrounding might think, or a feeling of obligation to another person, forcing someone to abandon what he really desires. 53 However, in close analysis these standpoints fail to cover the entire situation: giri was not necessarily the harsh duty in opposition to a man’s nature that suppresses one’s inner feeling and desires. Rather it was often “a natural, internal response, directed toward another person primarily out of gratitude.” 54 The proposition of “giri not softened by ninjo may seem inhuman: it denies the individual’s right to be happy at the expense of society. Ninjo unchecked by giri, however, is not only self-indulgent but can in the end destroy human society” 55 in Chikamatsu’s play has perfectly succeeded in Akinari’s stories. Examples include “The Chrysanthemum Vow” and “Shiramine” (White Peak) in his Ugestu Monogatari. 53 Keene, Donald. World Within Walls Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1868. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 260. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 260-261. 36 The protagonist of “The Chrysanthemum Vow” Samon is an ideal Confucian scholar of the time. He lives a simple and virtuous life: despises any material pursuit, concentrates on scholar achievements and values sincere friends. One day Samon encounters the other protagonist Soemon, who is then badly sick. Even has been told that Soemon’s disease is contagious and may attack himself as well, Samon generously takes care of this stranger until his fully recovers. After a long time living together, the two young men find that their thoughts and feelings were almost in harmony on every subject, so they soon pledge brotherhood. Before long, Soemon has to leave because he has unfulfilled duty to his former master. Soemon promises he will return back for Samon on the Chrysanthemum festival. However, the journey for Soemon was full of chaos and uncertainty, and he is unfortunately kept in captivity by his immoral new master. As the appointed day is about to come and knowing that he cannot fulfill his word to Samon, Soemon decisively kills himself. Now freed from mortal bonds, he makes his way to Samon’s house as a spirit. Upon learning what has happened, Samon fulfils his brotherhood duty to Soemon by avenging his death. There are mainly three “giri” or duties in this story: Soemon’s master-warrior giri to his respected former master, which made him leave Samon and caused him confinement by the new master; Soemon’s brotherhood giri to Samon, which rendered his suicide in order to fulfill their vow; Samon’s brotherhood giri to Soemon to avenge Soemon’s death, for which Samon leaves his family and risks his life to fulfill his loyalty to his brother. All these giris generated from the protagonists’ natural feelings, such as gratitude, the sense of loyalty and esteem toward one another. In other words, they are the giri which “softened” by ninjo, rather than the “cold” giri which go against people’s natural feelings and force people to do what they are reluctant to do. The author paid great admiration to the behavior of the two protagonists in the opening words of 37 the story: “Lush and green is the willow in spring; plant it not in your garden; In friendship, bond not with a shallow man. Though the willow comes early into leaf, will it withstand the first winds of autumn? The shallow man is quick to make friends and as quick to part. Year after year, the willow brightens in the spring, but a shallow man will not visit again.” 56 In Akinari’s idea, giri is not always inhumane and ruthless, especially when it generates from one’s heart and out of true feelings. Just as the giri is not always in confrontation with ninjo, in Akinari’s idea, ninjo unconstrained by giri is also destructive. In the other story “Shiramine” (White Peak), Akinari expressed his concern about the inflation of selfish desire. “Shiramine” is a story of the poet- monk Saigyo encountering with the spirit of the exiled former Emperor Sutoku (his exile was a result of his insurrection after his forced retirement from the throne) at the remote mountain side. Between them there appears a debate concerning whether it is appropriate, based on Japanese convention, to revolt against the official government, instead of following the Chinese Mencius’ doctrine, which legitimatizes for such an action. At first the former Emperor Sutoku strongly argues for his justice to take the action of rebellion and contends his insurrection is by no means “out of selfishness” but “follows the way of the Heavenly Deity’s oracle”. In Saigyo’s view, however, Sutoku’s plan rendered the turmoil throughout the country, is a wayward attempt to satisfy personal ambition regardless of the life and death of his people, thus is immoral and culpable. Moreover, Saigyo argues that insurrection itself is not appropriate for Japan despite the Chinese Mencius’ legitimization of such a political action. Gradually, the former Emperor Sutoku confesses that his insurrection was out of resentment and dissatisfaction due to his forced retirement from the throne. However, far from feeling any repentance, the he hatefully places a 56 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 77. 38 curse that thirteen years later, there will be a great uproar sweep the country, which only further illustrated his selfish desire to seek revenge for personal dissatisfaction. At the end of the story, the retired Emperor’s curse came true, a terrifying nationwide upheaval breaks out thirteen years later and leaves the people destitute and dying. In the story, Akinari is using the monk Saigyo as his alter ego and expressing his own historical and political ideas. 57 He rejects the “continental philosophy” of Mencius while holds strongly to the Japanese tradition of an “unbroken imperial line”, which we could expect for a national learning scholar as Akinari. In this way, “giri” in this story means to follow the Japanese convention, to support the lineal Emperor to bring forth stability and prosperity for the people, as what has been argued by Saigyo, rather than indiscriminately obey the Mencius’ ideology of “revolting against the bloodline authority” 异姓⾰革命 , the ideas of the former Emperor Sutoko. It is the greediness of the retired Emperor to return back to power that caused the first insurrection, and the urgent desire of him seeking for revenge that caused the second far-reaching turmoil within the nation. In other words, the “unchecked ninjo” is destructive and should be restrained by giri. Given the on’yomi ⾳音読み way of reading, which follows the original pronunciation of the Chinese characters, we may assume that the origin of the ninjo-giri ⼈人情 - 義理 discourse is from the Chinese Confucian tradition, namely the xing 性, qing 情, and li 礼 debate. Xing 性 refers to inborn human nature; qing 情 refers to one’s “feeling”, the outer response to external objects, such as joy, anger, sorrow, jealousy; li 礼, literally the “ritual propriety”, “decorum”, is the codes used to order the communal life by defining one’s formal social rules and conducts. 57 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 54. 39 The Confucian tradition of Chu Hsi perceives xing as tranquil and positive while qing was perceived negatively as “the sources of desire and disorder”, and it is through the purification of desires by “li” that the human could retrieve the inborn goodness of “xing”. Thus, the phrase xingshan qing’e ( 性善情恶, human nature is good while feeling is evil) 58 by Chu Hsi has been maintained until Wang Yang-ming’s era. While xing and qing witnessed a convergence under the discourse of late Ming Taizhou movement, which the definition of qing has been transformed and no longer be perceived as negative. Xing and qing have become inseparable and generalized into qing. For example, Taizhou scholar Yan Jun 颜钧 asserts that xing and qing are “one-in-two and two-in-one” ⼀一⽽而⼆二⼆二⽽而⼀一 , indicating they are interchangeable and even identical. 59 The convergence of xing and qing in late Ming also generated the great literary theme of “qing” in Chinese history of literature, such as Tang Xian-zu’s Peony Pavilion. I perceive the Chinese literary theme of qing 情 in late Ming precisely corresponds to Japanese “ninjo” ⼈人情 ,which both of them represent a notion based on human nature to explore the possibilities of human response to the external objects, namely their “feelings”. Harumi Befu has defined giri as “the normative force which attempts to maintain social institutions in a smooth-running condition, behaving properly in an egalitarian as well as hierarchical relationship”, “a normative or ethical imperative requiring Japanese to behave as expected by the society in relation to another individual with whom one is in some meaningful or 58 Cheng, Yu-Yin. “Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) Peony Pavilionand Taizhou Philosophy: A Perspective From Intellectual History.” Ming Studies 2013, no. 67 (2013): 3–29, pp 18. from < http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0147037X13Z.00000000010 > 59 Ibid., pp19. 40 particularistic relation”. 60 In this way, Japanese giri 義理 more resembles the Confucian “ritual propriety” li 礼 within the “xing-qing-li” 性- 情- 礼 debate of Taizhou discourse rather than the “heavenly principle/rationality” li 理 of Chu Hsi (which Taizhou fiercely fought against with) although it used the same Chinese character of 理. With the adverb “gi 義” 61 to define this ri 理, giri has been endowed with the sense of humanity, and put under the context of interpersonal ties and social relationship. Similarly, this “humanitarian” implication of giri could also be found within the Taizhou li 礼, which “the foundation and essence of li 礼 is ren 仁(humanity)”. 62 Therefore, the motif of Japanese ninjo-giri may find its resemblance in Chinese late Ming Taizhou philosophy and the literary theme of qing emerged under its influence. This further made Akinari’s stories approachable through Taizhou philosophies, or say, his stories may exemplify the close relationship between the two similar themes among Japanese and Chinese literati. Females Ghosts in Ugetsu: From a Male-Female Relationship Perspective Female ghosts probably are the most talked-about motifs in Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari. Quite a lot of studies have been done around the female ghost figures within Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari, comparing them to the similar figures in earlier and later Japanese novels as well as those within Chinese contemporary fictions, and observing how they embody the yin-yang ontology’s application onto sexual relationship; some also intend to rationalize the 60 Befu, Harumi. Japan: An Anthropological Introduction. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co., 1971, 169. 61 義, literally one’s moral duty to another within a social relationship, either a hierarchical (father-son/master-samurai) or egalitarian (between friends) one. 62 Cheng, Yu-Yin. “Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) Peony Pavilionand Taizhou Philosophy: A Perspective From Intellectual History.” Ming Studies 2013, no. 67 (2013): 3–29, pp.20. from < http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0147037X13Z.00000000010 > 41 existence of female anomalies by referring to traditional Chinese medicine. 63 Those studies were rather inspiring and make good sense to me. However, instead of focusing on unilateral gender analysis, i.e. the female ghosts, in the following paragraphs I would like to explore the correspondence between Akinari and a renowned Taizhou scholar Li Chih in terms of their views towards male-female relations. I argue that both Akinari and Li Chih put emphasis on the man- women relationship and celebrate the value of women. In order to guide people how to behave properly in the society and fulfill their duties, Chinese Confucian traditions have defined human relations into five groups: the primacy has been given to the ruler-subject relation and followed by the relation of father and son, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife, friend and friend. Meanwhile within all but the last relation of the five relations involve an authority of the former over the latter, that is, the older people over younger people, men over women. This hierarchical system of human relation and morality has been regarded as the foundation of an ordered society and passionately propagated by both Chinese and Japanese rulers in order to rule their subjects. Unlike other mainstream Confucians who put much more emphasis on the ruler-subject and father-son relationship rather than the other three, many Taizhou scholars have reevaluated and rearranged the order of the system, notably, Li Chih, who proceeded to a more fundamental reexamination of all five relations than had been attempted by anyone before. 64 Not only did he see the rapid social change in sixteenth-century China, but he also anticipated the modern dilemma of 63 Works see such a Judith Zeitlin’s The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and gender in Seventeenth- Century Chinese Literature, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007 and Charlotte Furth’s A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 950-1665, CA and London: University of California Press, 1999. 64 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 197. 42 Confucianism: “how can a moral philosophy based essentially on human relations survive in a world of rapid social change and mobility?” 65 Traditionally, based on the concept of “principle”/li 理, Confucianism constructed a “rationalistic-moralistic mentality” within society. 66 It addressed the irreducible discrepancy between male and female in terms of yin and yang and thus legitimize the male dominance within society. To attack this view, in one of Li’s writings Chu-tan-chi 初潭集, he suggested the primacy of five relations should be given to the husband-wife relationship and explained how this relationship has philosophical importance transcending the concrete relationship. He argues that the genesis of all human life depends upon the male-female relationship and all other relations derive from this because “procreation is their precondition”. Li disputes any conventional paternalistic/masculinist system of social morality and stresses a relationship of equality or complementarity. In his idea, female represents the intuitive mentality and is complementary to the rational mentality, as represented by the male. 67 In another writing of him Fen Shu 焚书, he discussed the male-female equality and argues that the difference between the sexes is only one of degree and that “each possess both types of intelligence”, which “each should be allowed to develop”. 68 Also, he contends that women could remarry after their husbands’ death, 69 which is very progressive and represented the early stage of women emancipation in late imperial China. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 198. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Du, Yang. “The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari ( 上⽥田秋成思想研究 )”, PhD diss., Beijing University, 2010, pp.121. <http://thesis.lib.pku.edu.cn/Usp/apabi_usp/?pid=book.detail&db=own&dt=TASIMETA400&m etaid=META10539825&cult=CN> 43 We could see from the compilation of Ugetsu Monogatari that almost every single story could be seen as one kind of relationship within those five. “Shiramine”(The White Peak) is about the legitimacy of subverting the official regime, and “The Owl of the Three Jewels” is about the commoners’ preference for peaceful lives and their fear of the war cast by the Daimyo- -the major relationship in these two stories is between the ruler and the ruled; “The Chrysanthemum Vow” and “The Blue Hood” contains the relation between two male friends which even has homosexual implications; three are about male-female relationships: “The Reed- Choked House”, “The Kibitsu Cauldron” and “A Serpent’s Lust”, all focusing on women’s passion towards love, with men always being labeled with undesirable qualities. Although the remaining two stories are outside the Confucian doctrine of five relationships, we can still find the topic of “relation” there: “The Carp of My Dream” is about the relation and interaction between humans and nature, “Poverty and Wealth” is about man’s pursuit of profit and love for money, which could be seen as the relationship between human and fortune. Thus from the selection of subjects we could see Akinari’s interests in the topic of male-female relation, which occupies the largest proportion than any other relations. Within those three stories about male-female relations, from the behavior and characters of heroes and heroines we may perceive Akinari’s attitude towards gender and given none of the three stories end up with happy endings—in this way, Akinari seems trying to make us to reconsider whom to blame within the tragedy of love. “The Reed-Choked House” is about the ghost of wife waiting for her husband’s return. The husband Katsushiro is a speculative man whose poor perception and lack of earnestness have cost him much of his family’s fortune. Attracted by prospects of the substantial profit he invests everything of his family in fabrics and then departs for the Capital to make a profit. His 44 wife Miyagi is a devoted and wife of great virtue who recognizes his weakness and feels uncomfortable about this risky venture but still connives his husband’s departure. After the husband leaves the village, war starts and soon famine and hardships hit the village, the wife Miyagi stays on while others flee. She is faithfully awaiting her husband’s return. When the husband finally makes his way home seven year later, he finds his wife waiting for him in their house, which appears just as it did before he left. They had a lovely reunion that night, but the next morning the husband Katsushiro awakens and finds himself in the middle of weed and ruins, and his wife already gone. He realizes that the women last night is the ghost of his wife. “The Kibitsu Cauldron” is about the spirit of a jealous wife killed her unfaithful husband and his mistress. Shotaro is a husband of a dissolute and amorous nature, and Isora, the wife, is an ideal wife, diligent and selfless. Not long after they get married, Isora discovers her husband’s infidelity and affair with a prostitute. Shotaro, the husband, redeems the prostitute’s contract and installs her in a place nearby. After his father becomes aware of his betrayal of his wife, Shotaro is confined at home. Then Shotaro cheats on Isora and promises that it was just out of pity for the prostitute and he needs money to send her back to her hometown, after that he will return back to her. Isora has been sending things to the mistress during her husband’s confinement and this time she sells all she has and gives everything to her husband. Once Shotaro has the money, he slips out of the house and flees with the mistress. The wife is so overwhelmed with resentment and distress that her spirit becomes possessed and kills the mistress and then her unfaithful husband. The prologue of “The Kibitsu Cauldron” concerning the harm of the jealous woman deserves attention in terms of the author’s view towards women, especially given the story follows is actually in the exactly opposite way with which we may expect from the prologue. “Even if the harm she (jealous woman) does is mild, she interferes with making a living and ruins everything, 45 and the neighbor’s censure is hard to escape...and when the harm is severe...everywhere becomes a laughingstock.” 70 The first several sentences declare a woman of jealousy endangers her family’s reputation within the society, in other words, it is the wife’s duty to safeguards the good reputation of her husband’s family. “The kind who, after death, vents her wrath by returning into a serpent or a violent thunderbolt will never rest...but such cases are rare.” 71 This sentence seems forecasting the following plots, and the story of Isora is exactly one of such “rare cases”: after her transition into a ghost, she cruelly paid revenge to her husband and his mistress. Then prologue turns into the duty of the husband and focuses on his education and influence on his wife, “The husband who behaves uprightly and instructs his wife carefully can surely escape this affliction...what controls a wife is her husband’s manliness.” 72 Thus one may, from the prologue, anticipating a story telling about how a husband of stateliness and integrity regulates his perverse and jealous wife and turns her into an obedient and virtuous one in order to avoid the tragedy of the household. The actually story, however, is exactly in an opposite way: the husband Shotaro, a son of a farmer, is an immoral figure and “disliked farming and disobey his father’s precepts, indulging in sake and sensual pleasure” and “nothing could get around his willful, dissolute nature”. 73 The wife Isora, instead, is a woman of “admirable devotion and fidelity”, “accommodating her husband’s nature” and “served them (her husband’s parents) with all her heart...always ready to help her parents-in-law”. In other words, she is a woman of true Confucian virtue. Jealousy and the evil conduct of Isora were not her inborn nature, but rather originated from her treacherous and immortal husband. Also, one may not feel antipathy but 70 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 141. 71 Ibid., 142. 72 Ibid., 145. 73 Ibid. 46 rather sympathy to Isora throughout the story, since she is the victim of this marriage from the start. After Isora turns into a horrible ghost and finally kills her immoral husband and his mistress, it makes us, to some extent, feel the pleasure of revenge given the bad has been eradicated. Therefore, I presume that the discrepancy between the prologue and the main text just represented the opposite opinions towards woman morality between the mainstream Confucian ideologies and that of Akinari’s. “A Serpent’s Lust” is the longest story in the whole collection. Although the heroine is not literally a female ghost but a female serpent, it also involves similar themes as the previous two stories. Its major origin was from the Chinese vernacular tale, “Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda” ⽩白娘⼦子永镇雷峰塔, in Jingshi tongyan 警世通⾔言 by Feng Meng-long 冯梦龙. Traditionally in China, the tale has been recognized as celebrating the virtue of the heroine female serpent and her prowess in the pursuit of true love. In other words, the focal point of the Chinese version is to represent the female serpent. However, Akinari makes no attempt to deliberately glamorize the female serpent image, maybe due to the familiarity of the Dojoji story and the stereotype of the horrifying serpent among his Japanese readers, and the behavior of the male character becomes the central of the story. Due to his lax disposition and erotic pursuit, the male protagonist Toyoo is haunted and bothered by the fierce serpent Manago. The climax comes at the end of the story, when no one could subdue Manago, Toyoo eventually shakes off his passive nature decides to sacrifice himself to protect the others, ironically only then the master Hokai arrives right away and subdues the evil serpent. It seems that the doom could only be solved when Toyoo truly confronting his own problem and control his erotic desire, thus illustrating Akinari’s viewpoints that living a disciplined life one will be all well, but if one 47 indulges in endless pleasure and blows his desires the consequences will be serious and unimaginable. In the three stories, Akinari tends to depict his heroes in a negative way: speculative, prodigal, amorous, unfaithful and lacking sincerity; the female figures are much more virtuous, exhibiting true passion towards love, being loyal to and tolerant of their undesirable husband. However, the female protagonists of Akinari are by no means deferential and meek, but express their anxiety and anger according to their will. Although sometimes they act in an extreme way, as in the case of the wife Isora in “The Kibitsu Cauldron”, who becomes a ghost, haunting and killing the husband who betrayed her, and this only makes us feel her desperation and anguish for love. From Akinari’s personal experiences, we can examine his unusual viewpoints towards women of the time. Akinari was originally the son of a courtesan with a merchant and only was later adopted by a well-off merchant family at the age of four. After being adopted he has been treated nicely by the family members, acquired proper education and lived a happy childhood. This is crucial so that he never felt upset and suffered due his background as the son of a prostitute. His youth was misspent and always away from home patronizing the pleasure houses. As examined by Young, sometimes such places serve as “a social gathering place and the courtesans of higher rank were better educated and more refined in tastes and manners than the average young woman”. 74 This is especially the case when we consider the good education Akinari received and how he loved literature from his youth. The bond with those high-ranking courtesans sets the tone for the admiration of Akinari towards women. Maybe Akinari’s view towards women was also influenced by his love for his elder sister, the daughter of his 74 Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982, 9. 48 stepmother. Examined by Young, from Akinari’s writings we could tell that when he was twenty-two, his elder sister carried on a secret love affair with a man of whom her parents disapproved. Finally, she left home and supported herself at some disreputable occupation— perhaps by running a pleasure place. 75 His father was infuriated and repudiated the kinship with his daughter but Akinari spoke in her defense and continued to act as negotiator between them. It turns out that his sister had been very successful in her business and able to make her own way in the world which sharply contrasts Akinari’s inability in being a merchant. He must have been proud of his sister and felt ashamed of his being the head of the family yet unable to even maintain the family property. Concerning the character settings of the male figures in the three “love stories”, we may explore their origins from Akinari’s life experience. I assume that there is an overtone of confession and self-mockery within his design and selection of the male characters. In his early years, Akinari was a prodigal young man, neglecting his responsibilities, frequenting the gay quarters and wasting his father’ money. According to Young, Akinari’s early stories showing a familiarity with the pleasure houses were based on his personal observations. 76 These are the exact dispositions shared between him and the heroes in his fictions, especially those three stories involving male-female relationships. It has reached a consensus that Ugetsu Monogatari has been finished at the year of 1768 (which the footnote of the preface indicates) but it was not until 1776 that the collection has been published. During these eight years, many say that he became more and more immersed in classical/kokugaku scholarship, and came to despise popular literature as well as the works he has done in his early years. For that reason, he once gave up on his fictions and rejected to publish the Ugetsu Monogatari lest them destroying his 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 49 fame as a classical scholar. 77 I admit this must be one of the reasons for the delay of the publishing, however, it may be the collapse of the family business in 1771 due to the big fire in Osaka that he further postponed the publishing and the almost identical characters of the heroes and himself are not merely coincidence. The big fire in 1771 destroyed everything of his business and made him accuse himself for falling short of his father’s expectation. According to Young, the disaster has totally changed the course of Akinari’s life and caused his family’s unsettled life for over two years. They drifted from one temporary place to another, changing their residence more than ten times. 78 The frequency with which Akinari mentioned the fire in his later writings also suggests the degree to which the loss upset him. During the year of uncertainty and trepidation, as the head of the family Akinari felt deeply the burden of responsibility and troubled by the livelihood. However, “unlike any other bankrupted merchant would at least be expected to attempt a fresh start, there is no evidence whatever that Akinari tried to re-establish his business. On the contrary he apparently determined to use the fire as an avenue of escape from a way of life in which he had never felt comfortable, “the loss gave him the excuse he was searching for in his desire to leave the merchant life”. 79 The ambivalence of the guilty for the family on one hand and the feeling of relief on the other has always existed within Akinari. Thus, I see there is a sense of confession and self-mockery within his settings for his male figures within the three stories concerning male-female relations. After many years’ reedition and selection, the merchant’s sons in these three stories have been endowed with similar characters just exactly as the young Akinari. 77 Ibid., 8. 78 Ibid., 37. 79 Ibid., 38. 50 To conclude, the ideas of Taizhou scholar Li Chih concerning male-female equality and women emancipation are of great sense of modernity, although still far from mature and systematic. His gut to reset Confucian doctrine also to a great extent epitomized the heterogeneity of Taizhou philosophy from other mainstream Confucians. Similarly, in Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari, I found similar discourses concerning women morality, only Li Chih expressed them in a didactic manner and Akinari in an implicit way which he integrated his viewpoints towards women into his stories of Ugetsu Monogatari. In Pursuit of Fortune The last story of the collection is quite a logical discourse on the capricious nature of fortune. The protagonist Sanai has been depicted as the “most eccentric” warrior whose “desire for fortune and honor far exceeded that of the ordinary samurai”. 80 One night the spirit of gold comes to visit him and they had a night-long talk around the topic of fortune. Unlike the polemic conversation between the two characters within the first story “Shiramine”, this last story of the collection was more of a preachy manner, with the mortal samurai interrogates and the spirit of gold responding to his inquiries. The ideas put forth concerning the nature and importance of wealth by the two characters are those of Akinari, who condemns Confucian doctrine that “virtue outweighs fortune” and Buddhist “one can be happy without wealth”. Akinari’s standpoints towards fortune mirrored his merchant identity as well as the socio-economic settings of the late Tokugawa period: the growing urban bourgeois and increasing social tension and stratification, which exactly the same situation was taking place in late Ming China. In this section, I would discover the similarities between Akinari’s story and Taizhou philosophies mainly from the following aspects: first, the pursuit of fortune as human nature and frugality as an admirable 80 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 204. 51 virtue, the love for wealth is the kind of desire that should be fulfilled; second, wealth is indispensable for individual happiness and thus lays the foundation of the state; last but not the least, the acquisition of fortune has nothing to do with one’s virtue and good deeds, but only depends on to what extent one is fawn over it. Therefore, either from the nature of the fortune, its importance, or its origins, we could find correspondence between Taizhou philosophy and Akinari’s ideas, which also reminds us of the constantly changing while comparable socio- economic backgrounds of the late imperial China as well as the early modern Japan. In the beginning of the story, the protagonist Oka Sanai is depicted as samurai who strays from the stereotype of “accentuating the fame and defy the wealth” and meanwhile different from other intellectuals who enjoys noble spiritual practices, rather, he is a “strange” warrior who never conceals his love for fortune, “when he rested from military training, he would take pleasure not in savoring tea or plating with incense, but in lining up a great many gold coins on the floor of a room, a pastime he savored even more than other might enjoy the moon and blossoms”. 81 Unlike conventional wicked wealthy, however, “he does not accumulate gold out of insatiable greed”, but “ruled his house on the principle of frugality”. 82 Also when he finds out one of his groom also loves money and secretly carried a gold piece with him, Sanai generously rewards the groom with money and status to praises his deeds. The overtone here is that one’s love for fortune does not necessarily appoints him a deteriorated and gluttonous character, but just like those who enjoys the moon and blossoms, one’s fondness for fortune is also irreversible temperament since his born. Taizhou philosophies also tackled directly with human material desires as human nature. From Wang Ken’s emphasis on the physical needs of the people to Ho Hshi-yin’s intention of liberate man from traditional forms of self-repression to Li Chih’s 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 205. 52 justification for human selfishness, Taizhou scholars have constantly advocated the validity of human material desire meanwhile refuse to identify it with immorality and evildoings. They dispute the concept of “desirelessness” ⽆无欲 of Chou Tun-i 周敦颐 and “having no mind of one’s own” ⽆无私⼼心 of Ch’eng Hao 程颢. To them, these doctrines from the orthodox Neo- Confucianism of Chu Hsi school maybe the worst self-deception and directly contrary to Wang Yang-ming’s School of Mind which emphasis the activism of mankind. It is not possible for a true man to be without desire, for “even the wish to be without desires is a desire”. 83 Man’s material desires and sensual lust are rooted in his inborn nature. 84 The second level of the conversation between the samurai and the spirit of the gold concerns with the importance of money to the individual livelihood as well as the welfare and safety of the nation. In Akinari’s story, the spirit of the gold says “it is said by Mencius: ‘Without a constant livelihood there will be no constant heart’ ⽆无恒产者⽆无恒⼼心 , farmers work to produce grain, artisans work to assist them and merchants work to distribute their production. Each manages his own livelihood enriches his family, venerates his ancestors and plans for his prosperity—this principle follows the natural course of heaven”. 85 In Akinari’s idea, every class of the society, from farmer, artisan and merchant, to samurai, all should return back to daily production and accumulate fortune of their own, which is “the Way”. This stand point resemblance to Taizhou scholar Li Chih and Wang Ken’s idea that “people’s daily needs are the very substance of the Way” 百姓⽇日⽤用即是道 . They have drawn on the deeds of the early sages, 83 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 182. 84 Ibid. 85 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 206. 53 “when Shun 舜 inquired into the desires of the people as a basis for his rule, he learned about their desire for goods, for sexual satisfaction for study for personal advancement for accumulation of wealth, their desire to lands and homes for the sake of their posterity…all of things which are productive and sustain life in the world, everything which is loved and practices in common by the people, and what they know and say in common.” 86 Moreover, for the rulers, in Akinari’s idea, people gather around those who emphasis individual prosperities and people’s daily livelihood, for the reason that fighting for such rulers also means fighting for themselves. Only in this way, the foundation of the state could be consolidated. “‘Poor yet happy’, these words have been a source of confusion for men who forgetting that wealth is the foundation of the state, even warriors with their bows and arrows, train in senseless tactics, smash things kill people, lose their own virtue and let their progeny die out—all because in their confusion they belittle wealth and prized fame. But the desire for them is the same, whether for fame or for wealth”, “Oda Nobunaga 織⽥田信⻑⾧長 …in wisdom was no match for Shingen and in courage was inferior to Kenshin. Nevertheless, he acquired wealth and was entrusted with control of the whole country.” Neither Akinari and Taizhou scholars care and directly involve in the politics per se, what they really concern about is the livelihood and welfare of the ordinary people and the stability of the country and is necessary in achieving this goal. Although most of the Taizhou scholars chose to participate in no official position due to the undesirable late Ming political turmoil and even withdraw from social lives, they still see the the welfare of the individual as the primary basis of the social order. “The self and society were one continuum, with the self as the root or base and society as the branch or superstructure”; “To wear clothing and eat food 吃饭穿 86 Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, 182. 54 ⾐衣 —these are the principles of human relations. Without them there are no human relations (not to mention the ruler-subject relationship)… the essential thing in any social relation is to let people satisfy their own desires, to let them find their own natural place in the world.” 87 The overtone in Li Chih’s assertion is resemble to those of Akinari—rulers emphasis on the national wealth earn the people and only in this way a consolidated social relationship could be established; those who despise the national wealth and people’s welfare loss the people and are just hypocritical exploiters. The major inquiry of the samurai Sanai to the spirit of the gold is why the morally upright man seldom rich and why is the wicked man often prosperous. In other words, it is about the “capriciousness” of the gold. Confucian doctrine says “righteousness far overweighs profit” 义重于利 and the Buddhist karma maintains that one’s fortune of this life is the result of the good deeds of former life. In Akinari’s story, however, the spirit of the gold confesses that neither the Confucian doctrine nor the Buddhist karma could define the virtue of the gold: “I know nothing of the Buddhists’ karma in a former life, nor do I concern myself with the Confucianists’ Mandate of Heaven. I roam freely in a different realm … we only gather around people who fawn over us”, 88 “I am neither a god nor a Buddha, simply a thing without feelings. I have no reason to weigh the good and bad in people and act accordingly. It is heaven, the gods and the Buddha who praise good and punish badness. These three provide Ways. We are no match for them”, “The rich of ancient times became wealthy by managing their affairs in conformance with heavenly time and their observations of benefits of the land. Since this strategy followed the natural course of heaven, it also followed the natural course of heaven that wealth gathered 87 Ibid., 163. 88 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 212. 55 around these people.” 89 Therefore, the accumulation of wealth has nothing to do with moral deeds nor Buddhist karma but only depends on whether one’s “nature” is in accordance with “the virtue of the gold”. Some may doubt these quite rationalistic views towards wealth of Akinari inconsistent with his mystic and mythological standpoints in the literature realm, I view these ideas of him might derived from the temporal popular teachings of Kaitokudo 懐徳堂, 90 which Akinari may engaged during his young ages. During his lifetime, only three people were referred to as “sensei” 先⽣生 by Akinari, and one of them is Goi Ranju 五井蘭州, a renowned instructor of Kaitokudo. 91 Two points have to be clarified concerning the teachings in Kaitokudo: first, their engagement with Chu Hsi’s Confucian epistemologies did not simply make them pedantic moralists. 92 Although their teachings mostly involved the Shushigaku Neo-Confucian doctrines, the virtue and righteousness one should strictly observe, but their emphasis on human capacity and Western/Dutch learnings have a strong and obvious modern implication, which also contributed to Akinari’s rationalistic aspects in his thought and writings afterwards. Second, merchants have developed “a consciousness of politics” through Kaitokudo teachings, 93 which also could be seen in Akinari’s “Wealth and Poverty” story concerning the welfare of the subjects as the roots of the prosperity 89 Ibid. 90 Kaitokudo ( 懐徳堂), literally means “to reflect deeply into the meaning of virtue,” was in the eighteenth century Japan a proud and thriving educational institution of higher learning that was mainly open to merchants of the Osaka area. 91 Du, Yang. “The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari ( 上⽥田秋成思想研究 )”, PhD diss., Beijing University, 2010, pp.31. <http://thesis.lib.pku.edu.cn/Usp/apabi_usp/?pid=book.detail&db=own&dt=TASIMETA400&m etaid=META10539825&cult=CN> 92 Najita, Tetsuo. Visions Of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: the Kaitokudō Merchant Academy of Osaka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, 50. 93 Ibid. 56 of the nation. Although many scholars may argue that Akinari has explicitly criticized Kaitokudo for its advocacy of orthodox Confucian teachings, I recognized that Akinari has been more or less influenced by its economic ideas which could be obviously discerned from his story. Thus, it is necessary to combine the economic ideologies of Kaitokudo with the story itself in order to explore the similarities between the Taizhou philosophies and Akinari’s viewpoints towards “Wealth and Poverty”. Finally, what should one do if he has no blessing of the gold and cannot attain any wealth? The answer to this has been made quite clear by the spirit of the gold in Akinari’s story: “a wise man of old escaped from society to the wooded hills, where he lived out his years in peace just as he wanted to do, seeking wealth when the search was fruitful and not seeking when the search was not fruitful.” 94 If we consider fame and wealth of the same kind, then this wisdom of life is surprisingly in accordance with the “utilitarian thought” of the late Ming statesman (although many may refer to it as “fatalism”), especially for most of the Taizhou thinkers. Except for Wang Ken, most Taizhou thinkers have been originally serving official positions of the Ming government, until they encountered with political difficulties. What they considered as the “right action” under such circumstances is the so-called “political disengagement” and turning into the pursuit of a life as Confucius teacher and scholar. Some may hence doubt whether the conventional idea of “Confucianist active involvement within and Buddhist inactive detachment from the secular lives” 儒⼊入世佛出世 still applicable to the Taizhou thinkers, while in my idea, it is exactly the action of “political retirement” of Taizhou thinkers that constitutes the vigorous and energetic spirit of Taizhou thought, although not in the sense of political involvement but in terms of their ideological pursuit and academic lives. 94 Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, 210. 57 All in all, “Wealth and Poverty” is more of a didactic story compared to other ghostly stories in the collection, so that instead of focusing on the spot and characters, a direct textual analysis would be more straightforward when we trying to examine the correspondence of Akinari’s story to Taizhou philosophies concerning their perspective towards wealth. Conclusion Realizing the conflict between humanity and Shushigaku morality (“The Chrysanthemum Vow”), Akinari rejects the orthodox Neo-Confucianism of his time and argues for the liberation of human nature (“The Kibitsu Cauldron”), the free expression of human feeling (“A Serpant’s Lust”) and the pursuit of human desire (“Wealth and Poverty”). Just as the Chinese literati Feng Meng-long ( 冯梦龙) once said: “human feeling and desire is fundamental in protecting the morality. If there are no feeling nor desires, there exists no morality, even there is any, it is the pretended morality. The loyal, filial and faithful deeds in this world all stimulated from human feeling and desires.” 95 Akinari’s stories embody similar ideologies. Meanwhile, unlike other kokugaku scholars, he dismisses the total abandonment of the Confucian doctrine, alerting people with the severe consequences rendered by the unchecked human desire (as in the “Shiramine”, “The Carp of My Dreams”, “The Blue Hood” story). On the whole, Akinari remained a rational view towards life and what he repudiates is the rigid imposition of the doctrines onto human nature, instead of the Confucian virtue and morality per se. He still admires the virtue of filial piety, cherish the wholehearted loyalty and see the value of Buddhism as a way of self-cultivation for the Japanese people. 95 Zuo, Dongling. Wang Yang-Ming and Ideologies of Late Ming Intellectuals 王阳明与晚明⼠士⼈人⼼心态, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2014, 503. 58 Late Ming China was an era of strict autocratic monarchy. On the other hand, there emerged a great intellectual diversity along with the rising urban economy and folk culture. Similarly, in Tokugawa Japan, although the orthodox Shushigaku dominated the official realm, the uninterrupted connection of Japan with China during this period of seclusion still brought Japanese intellectuals with ideological inspirations, namely the spirit of humanitarianism, in which affirming the validity of human nature, human feeling and human desire. In late Ming China, the orthodox Chu Hsi’s Neo-Confucianism has been largely challenged by the Wang Yang-ming’s School of Mind, especially its “left wing” Taizhou movement. However, when it comes to the Qing era, with the Manchu’s invasion from the north into the central plains, the sprouting tendency of ideological emancipation has witnessed a great repression, such as the “literary inquisition” ⽂文字狱 by the Qing government. However, in Japan the similar trends inherited from the late Ming China kept on burgeoning and thus laid a solid ideological foundation for its socio-political revolution in the nineteenth century. Just as the nativist of the day asserted: “China had degenerated while Japan remained pure…it no longer made sense to refer to China as the central efflorescence and Japanese as the inheritors of Chinese civilization now will carry it to new heights.” 96 96 Jansen, Marius B. China In Tokugawa World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992, 76. 59 Bibliography Befu, Harumi. Japan: An Anthropological Introduction. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co., 1971. Bellah, Robert N. Tokugawa Religion: the Cultural Roots of Modern Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985. Burns, Susan L. Before The Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Cheng, Yu-Yin. “Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) Peony Pavilionand Taizhou Philosophy: A Perspective From Intellectual History.” Ming Studies 2013, no. 67 (2013): 3–29. Du, Yang. “The Studies of the Thoughts of Ueda Akinari ( 上⽥田秋成思想研究 )”, PhD diss., Beijing University, 2010. He, Jing. “The Confusion of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism Within The Idea of Innate Knowing of Wang Yangming” ( 论王阳明的致良知说对儒释道三教的融合), Zhejiang Social Science 2007, no.3 (2007): 120-126. Huang, Ray. 1587, a Year of No Significance: the Ming Dynasty in Decline. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Jansen, Marius B. China In Tokugawa World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992. Keene, Donald. World Within Walls Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1868. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Li, Zongwu, Zhao An Xin, and Marilyn Zhang. Thick Black Theory. Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 2009. Maruyama, Masao. Studies In the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. A History of Japanese Economic Thought. London: Routledge, 1989. 60 Najita, Tetsuo. Visions Of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: the Kaitokudō Merchant Academy of Osaka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Nosco, Peter. Confucianism And Tokugawa Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Ogyū Sorai, and J. R. McEwan. The Political Writings of Ogyū Sorai. Cambridge: University Press, 1962. Theodore, De Bary William. Self And Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Ueda, Akinari, and Anthony H. Chambers. Tales Of Moonlight and Rain: a Study and Translation by Anthony H. Chambers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. Yue, Yuankun. “The Literature of Ueda Akinari and Late Ming Ideological Trend” ( 上⽥田秋成⽂文学与晚明⽂文学思潮 ), PhD diss., Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2014. Young, Blake Morgan. Ueda Akinari. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982. Zuo, Dongling. Wang Yang-Ming and Ideologies of Late Ming Intellectuals 王阳明与晚明⼠士⼈人⼼心态, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2014.

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Creator Shang, Yunfei (author)

Core Title Exploring late Ming Taizhou philosophies within Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu monogatari: a comparative study of two contemporaneous “heresies” in early modern Japanese and late imperial Chinese intellec...

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

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Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 07/07/2016

Defense Date 07/07/2016

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Tag heresy,intellectual history,OAI-PMH Harvest,Taizhou school,Ueda Akinari,Ugetsu monogatari

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Advisor Lippit, Akira Mizuta (committee chair), Bernards, Brian (committee member), Shimazaki, Satoko (committee member)

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