Hayashi clan (Confucian scholars)

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The Hayashi clan (林氏 Hayashi-shi?) was a Japanese samurai clan which served as important advisors to the Tokugawa shoguns. Among members of the clan to enjoy powerful positions in the shogunate was its founder Hayashi Razan, who passed on his post as hereditary rector of the neo-Confucianist Shōhei-kō school to his son, Hayashi Gahō, who also passed it on to his son, Hayashi Hōkō; this line of descent continued until the end of Hayashi Gakusai's tenure in 1867. However, elements of the school carried on until 1888, when it was folded into the newly organized Tokyo University.

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[edit] Critical analysis

The Hayashi family's special position as personal advisors to the shoguns gave their school an imprimatur of legitimacy that no other contemporary Confucian academy possessed.[1] This meant that Hayashi views or interpretation were construed as dogma.[2] Anyone challenging the Hayashi status quo was perceived as trying to challenge Tokugawa hegemony; and any disagreements with the Hayashi were construed as threatening the larger structure of complex power relations within which the Confucian field was embedded.[3] Any disputes in the Confucian field in the 1650s and 1660s may have originated in personal rivalries or authentic philosophical disagreements, but any issues became inextricably intertwined with the dominating political presence of the shogun and those who ruled in his name.[1]

In this period, the Tokugawas and the fudai daimyō were only the most powerful of the nearly 250 domain-holding lords in the country. By filling the high offices of the shogunate with his trusted, loyal daimyō, the shoguns paradoxically increased the power of these office holders and diminished the powers which were once held by Ieyasu alone.[4], which caused each to more zealously guard against anything which might be seen to minimize intertwined power and prestige; and the varying characters of the shoguns further exacerbated this development.[5] The Edo period power structure itself discouraged of dissent from what became the accepted Hayashi othodoxy.

In the spectrum of the Tokugawa retainer band, the Hayashi family head himself was a high-ranking hatamoto (thus coming under the jurisdiction of the wakadoshiyori), and possessed an income of 3,500 koku.[6]

[edit] Notable clan members

Colonnade at the reconstructed Yushima Seidō.
Colonnade at the reconstructed Yushima Seidō.

The twelve hereditary rectors of the Yushima Seidō (later, the Edo Daigaku) are identified below.

  • Hayashi Nobutoki, father of Hayashi Razan.
  • 1st rector: Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), formerly Hayashi Nobukatsu, also known as Dōshun (1st son of Nobutoki).[7]
  • 2nd rector: Hayashi Gahō (1618-1688), formerly Hayashi Harukatsu (3rd son of Razan).[8]
    • Hayashi Dokkōsai, formerly Hayashi Morikatsu (4th son of Razan).
  • 3rd rector: Hayashi Hōkō (1644-1732), formerly Hayashi Nobuhatsu (son of Gahō).
  • 4th rector: Hayashi Ryūkō (1681-1758).
  • 5th rector: Hayashi Hōkoku (1721-1773).
  • 6th rector: Hayashi Hōtan (1761-1787).
  • 7th rector: Hayashi Kimpō (1767-1793), also known as Hayashi Kanjun.
  • 8th rector: Hayashi Jussai (1768-1841), formerly Matsudaira Norihira, 3rd son of Iwamura daimyo Matsudaira Norimori -- Norihira was adopted into Hayashi family when Kimpō/Kanjun died childless; explained shogunate foreign policy to Emperor Kōkaku in 1804.[9], also known as Hayashi Jitsusai.[10]
    • Torii Yōzō, 2nd son of Jussai -- adopted into Torii family[11]
  • 9th rector: Hayashi Teiu (1791-1844).
  • 10th rector: Hayashi Sōkan (1828-1853).
  • 11th rector: Hayashi Fukusai (1800-1859), also known as Hayashi Akira, chief Japanese negotiator for the Treaty of Kanagawa[12]
  • 12th rector: Hayashi Gakusai (1833-1906), formerly Hayashi Noboru, head of Yushima Seidō in 1867.
    • Hayashi Shunsai (1618-1680).
    • Hayashi Shuntoku (1624-1661).
    • Hayashi Baisai.
    • Hayashi Kansai.
    • Hayashi Jo.
  • Satō Issai (1772-1859), adopted into Hayashi family from Iwamura, becomes professorial head of academy in 1805.[13]
    • Hayashi Kakuryō (1806-1878), Confucian scholar who never gave up his top-knot.[14]
    • Hayashi Ryōsai (1807-1849).[15]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Yamshita, Samuel Hideo. "Yamasaki Ansai and Confucian School Relations, 1650-1675," Early Modern Japan. 9:2, 3-18 (Fall 2001).
  2. ^ Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680, pp. 107-108.
  3. ^ Bourdieu, Pierre et al. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 106.
  4. ^ Totman, Conrad. (1967). Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600-1843, p. 208.
  5. ^ Yamashita, p. 16; Bourdieu, p. 106.
  6. ^ Ogawa, Edo no hatamoto jiten, p. 85.
  7. ^ Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822, p. 65; Cullen, L.M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds, p. 59.
  8. ^ Screech, p. 65.
  9. ^ Cullen, pp. 117; 163.
  10. ^ Asiatic Society of Japan. (1908). Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, v36:1(1908), p. 151.
  11. ^ Cullen, p. 159.
  12. ^ Cullen, p. 178 n11.
  13. ^ Cullen, p. 163.
  14. ^ Mehl, Margaret. (2003). Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline and Transformation of the "Kangaku juku," p. 49.
  15. ^ Mehl, p. 92.

[edit] References

Flags mark the entrance to the reconstructed Yushima Seidō (Tokyo).
Flags mark the entrance to the reconstructed Yushima Seidō (Tokyo).

[edit] Further Reading

[edit] See also