Paper short abstract:

The way Andô Shôeki安藤昌益 described the nonhuman world in his encyclopedic work kinjû kan禽獣巻 provides insights into how he blended his original ideas and well known concepts from Ancient China, which also proves that he was not the idiosyncratic thinker of the Tokugawa period he was presumed to be.

Paper long abstract:

Even after more than a century following his rediscovery, Andô Shôeki 安藤昌益 (1703-1762) raises more questions than answers. He spent most of his life in northern Japan, where he worked as a doctor while writing numerous treatises on medicine, metaphysics, and natural philosophy as well as texts on political and social issues. In his most prominent work the Shizen shin eidô 自然真榮道, he criticizes the authorities, denounces rulers as robbers, advocates farming, and establishes his cosmology and metaphysics. Recent attempts were made to put Shôekis thinking within the broader scale of East Asian Thought, which made him less of a standout and more of a reinterpreter of less popular ideologies of Chinese philosophy, such as Primitivist and Yangist Daoist views found in the outer chapters of the Zhuangzi, nongjia 農 家 (“agriculturalists”) concepts, the minimalism of Mozi and the intellectual ideas found in the Huainanzi. This blending of traditional Chinese concepts and Shôeki’s own spin on them and preference for the reinterpretation of Chinese characters poses a great challenge to the translators of his work.

In my presentation, I would like to present one chapter from my dissertation project of Shôeki’s attempt of an encyclopdia, the kinjû kan禽獣巻 (Volume on birds and beasts), in which this mixture of handed down knowledge of Chinese sources and its reinterpretation of those narratives become apparent in his description of various nonhuman animals. Within my doctoral thesis, I argue that without a solid understanding of Neoconfucian concepts and their Chinese origins, Shôeki’s reference book and other Japanese premodern leishu like Ekken’s Yamato honzô 大和本草or the Wakan Sansai Zue 和漢三才図会 are almost impossible to understand. This also means that Shôeki was by no means an “outsider” but very much following the traditional path of other Neoconfucians of his time.

Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I focus on Eto Tekirei’s nōjō mandara, highlighting several elements in his philosophy that are relevant for environmental ethics. I argue that these elements can provide us with useful hints for a re-evaluation of the relation between human beings and nature.

Paper long abstract:

Eto Tekirei 江渡狄嶺 (1880-1944) was a rather enigmatic figure in the intellectual landscape of the first half of the 20th century in Japan. After abandoning his studies in law at Tokyo Imperial University, in 1910 he moved to the outskirts of Tokyo in the village of Takaido, where he became a farmer and founded the so-called Hyakushō Aidōjō 百姓愛道場. With his family, he endeavoured to follow what he later dubbed a “non-religious religion”, i.e. a life which included physical labor, philosophy, art, society, religion, politics, all combined together in a grand, experimental project.

Tekirei’s first two books, "Aru hyakushō no ie" (1922) and "Tsuchi to kokoro wo tagayashi tsutsu" (1924), detail the ups and downs of his first ten year as a farmer and, at the same time, contain the keystones of his socio-(non)religious vision. Coagulating together a variety of influences ranging from Tolstoy to Andō Shōeki and from Buddhism to Christianity, Tekirei crystallizes a system of thought revolving around nature, agriculture and humanity.

One of his most fascinating ideas is the so-called “Agrayana Orbis Mandrus” (nōjō mandara 農乗曼荼羅), a mandala-like, synthetic representation of his philosophy. In it, Tekirei gives a central place to kashoku nōjō 家稷農乗 (“the wheel of household grain farming”), which he further divides into eight categories of equal importance, from nōhō 農法 (farm methods) and nōsei 農制 (farm organization), to nōsō 農想 (farm thought) and nōgyō 農行 (farm practice), etc..

In this presentation, I focus on an analysis of this mandala, in an attempt to highlight several elements in Tekirei’s philosophy that can make a valuable contribution to recent developments in environmental ethics. Thus, I argue that Tekirei’s emphasis on the household as the locus of livelihood, as well as his concept of ba 場 (place, or locus) can provide us with useful hints for a re-evaluation of the relation between human beings and nature.

Paper short abstract:

This paper situates Tanaka Shōzō – the leader of Japan’s first modern environmental movement – in a forgotten intellectual network in the early twentieth century. It showcases a competing vision of civilisation that was locally circulated in juxtaposition to Meiji’s modernisation discourses.

Paper long abstract:

With the rise of environmental concerns and doubts cast on the existent linear mode of progression in human history, recent scholarship has turned to the ideas of Tanaka Shōzō (1841–1913), known as the leader of Japan’s first modern environmental movement. Tanaka famously criticised the Establishment’s pursuit of industrialisation and human-ecological exploitation. Therefore, existing literature often depicts Tanaka as a heroic political-environmental activist – almost like a martyr. In doing so, it tends to somewhat isolate him from the rest of the sociocultural and intellectual currents of his time. This paper situates Tanaka and his critique of the culture-nature hierarchy in a much larger intellectual context of early twentieth-century Japan. It does so through a new, extensive intellectual network that I am uncovering, namely a web of the grassroots thinker Arai Ōsui (1846–1922) and his comrades. In stark contrast to renowned Tanaka, Ōsui’s resonating critique of civilisation has been almost completely forgotten in historiography. And yet, it was this Ōsui whom Tanaka intellectually and spiritually relied on and revered as his master, even though Ōsui was younger than him. Through the scope of the Ōsui network, this paper argues that Tanaka’s environmental activism well manifested the wider concerns of hierarchy, morality, and civilisational advancement, which were locally circulated outside of the state and academic institutions in early twentieth-century Japan. The examination of this cultural-intellectual web will interconnect previously disconnected historical actors, and showcase an anti-imperial vision of civilisation and progress that was variously supported in juxtaposition to the established narrative of Meiji’s imperial modernisation.