Toju Nakae
Encyclopedia
was a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese Confucian
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...

 philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 known as "the sage of Ōmi
Omi Province
is an old province of Japan, which today comprises Shiga Prefecture. It was one of the provinces that made up the Tōsandō circuit. It is nicknamed as .Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake, is located at the center of the province...

".

Nakae was a feudal
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

 retainer who lived during the Tokugawa shogunate
Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

. He taught that the highest virtue was filial piety
Filial piety
In Confucian ideals, filial piety is one of the virtues to be held above all else: a respect for the parents and ancestors. The Confucian classic Xiao Jing or Classic of Xiào, thought to be written around 470 BCE, has historically been the authoritative source on the Confucian tenet of xiào /...

 (), and acted upon this, giving up his official post in 1634 in order to return to his home in Takashima
Takashima District, Shiga
Takashima was a district located in Shiga, Japan.In 2003, the district had an estimated population of 55,348 and a density of 108.24 persons per km²...

, Ōmi to care for his mother. He distinguished, however, between sho-kō and dai-kō: lesser and greater filial piety. Sho-kō involves the normal care owed by children to their parents; dai-kō involves the notion that our human parents are themselves the children of the divine parents — thus, if one's parents are wrong, then one should encourage them to return to virtue.

He was unusual in believing that his teaching would be useful to women as well as men. While accepting the then standard view of women as usually lacking such virtues as compassion and honesty, he argued: "if a wife's disposition is healthy and pious, obedient, sympathetic and honest, then ... every member of her family will be at peace and the entire household in perfect order."

Nakae originally followed the teachings of the Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 neo-Confucian
Neo-Confucianism
Neo-Confucianism is an ethical and metaphysical Chinese philosophy influenced by Confucianism, that was primarily developed during the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, but which can be traced back to Han Yu and Li Ao in the Tang Dynasty....

 philosopher Zhu Xi
Zhu Xi
Zhū​ Xī​ or Chu Hsi was a Song Dynasty Confucian scholar who became the leading figure of the School of Principle and the most influential rationalist Neo-Confucian in China...

, but eventually became more influenced by Wang Yang-ming (1472–1529), who argued for the primacy of human intuition or conscience over intellect: moral improvement arises out of conscience-based action (compare Aristotle's ethics). Nakae added a more religious aspect to Wang's "School of Intuition of Mind", calling the human conscience the "divine light of heaven". Nakae's works also supplied his followers (such as Kumazawa Banzan [1619–1691]) with "the moral foundation for political action".

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Toju Nakae, OCLC
OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is "a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs"...

/WorldCat
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...

 encompasses roughly 130+ works in 200 publications in 5 languages and 740+ library holdings.
  • 1650 -- Dialogue with the elder (Okina mondō).
  • 藤樹遺稿 (1795)
  • 翁問答 (1831)
  • 藤樹全書: 中江藤樹先生遺稿 (1893)
  • 中江藤樹文集 (1914)
  • 孝經五種 (1925)
  • Nakae Tōju sensei zenshu (1928)
  • 鑑草; 附・春風; 陰騭 (1939)
  • 藤樹先生全集 (1940)
  • 中江藤樹・熊沢蕃山集 (1966)
  • 中江藤樹 (1974)
  • 中江藤樹・熊沢蕃山 (1976)

External links

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