Short Abstract

The “turn to nature” developed by intellectuals in the Edo period did not only concern the use of the land’s resources. For thinkers like Honda Toshiaki or Kaiho Seiryō, it also involved a “naturalization” of politics and economics—which they articulated in traditional “Confucian” terms.

Long Abstract

At least among intellectuals, the Edo period saw a fundamental “turn to nature” in the way the environment was named, conceived and treated. This involved not only the understanding, exploration, and exploitation of the land as a well-spring of resources that was highlighted by Marcon in his influential study on the Knowledge of Nature, but also a new perspective on politics and the economy. Remarkably in light of the endemic equation between modernization and Westernization, it was possible to articulate this new approach to the world in traditional terms.

Marcon highlighted how Satō Nobuhiro 佐藤信淵 (1769-1850) understood the land as an inexhaustible source of wealth and harvesting its riches as a primary task of good government. Nobuhiro was neither alone nor the first one to posit such endeavors as a central duty of those governing the realm, and the most expedient means to provide for its people. Honda Toshiaki 本多利明 (1744-1821), a slightly older theorist, had furthermore proposed that government along these interventionist lines meant to “grasp the nature” (shizen o toru 自然を採る) of social and political dynamics, much as the dexterous control of money supply meant to “grasp the nature” of the economy. His phrasing makes explicit a conviction that we find also in other philosophers such as Miura Baien 三浦梅園 (1723-1789), Yamagata Bantō 山片蟠桃 (1748-1821), or Kaiho Seiryō 海保 青陵 (1755-1817): the conviction that there is a “natural” order not only of heaven and earth, but also of society and the economy; and that it is the task of scholars to understand the patterns of this order and how they translate into processes that may be directed toward human ends. This shared conviction in the abstract appears to converge with the modern understanding of nature—which may suggest inspiration by contact with European science. But a closer look at the sources reveals that all these philosophers draw on older East Asian traditions, each selecting and rewriting them in his particular way.