Abstract/Sommario: In 1765, when Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769) wrote Kokuiko (Reflections on the Meaning of Our Country), he was already an accomplished scholar of the Japanese classics. He was also a prominent poet. Kokuiko is the most ambitious of his essays, presenting an utopian vision of ancient Japan as a society governed in accordance with nature, which was then corrupted by the introduction of foreign philosophies, especially Confucianism. Mabuchi construction of a Japanese cultural identity throug ...; [Leggi tutto...]
In 1765, when Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769) wrote Kokuiko (Reflections on the Meaning of Our Country), he was already an accomplished scholar of the Japanese classics. He was also a prominent poet. Kokuiko is the most ambitious of his essays, presenting an utopian vision of ancient Japan as a society governed in accordance with nature, which was then corrupted by the introduction of foreign philosophies, especially Confucianism. Mabuchi construction of a Japanese cultural identity through reference to an idealized past, as well as his framing of this identity in terms of the difference between Japan and China, and between Japan's native values and Confucianism, are approaches commonly associated with Kokugaku. In Kokuiko Mabuchi presents a powerful image of Japanese cultural identity as deriving from a primal unity with the forces of nature and a form of community based on complete honesty and transparency. His image of Confucianism is an integral part of this construction of Japan, as Confucianism is for him the force that corrupted Japan's original simplicity and harmony, introducing duplicity and fragmentation by subjecting all things to the constraining categories of human reasoning. Mabuchi was one of the many thinkers, but before and after him we should not automatically assign Kokuiko canonical status within the Tokugawa discourse on Japanese identity. To do so runs the risk of losing sight of the contingency of Mabuchi's vision of Japan and the diversity of the responses it evoked, much as Bendosho had before it. At the same time, we may also acknowledge that the force with which Mabuchi expressed his view of Japan and his critique of Confucianism served to stimulate such responses as well as the ultimate enshrining of Kokuiko as one of the seminal text of Kokugaku