was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Edo period. scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of research into the early Japanese classics.Earl, David Margarey, Emperor and Nation in Japan, Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period, University of Washington Press, 1964, pp. 66 ff.
History
What later became known as the tradition began in the 17th and 18th centuries as kogaku ("ancient studies"), wagaku ("Japanese studies") or inishie manabi ("antiquity studies"), a term favored by Motoori Norinaga and his school. Drawing heavily from Shinto and Japan's ancient literature, the school looked back to a golden age of culture and society. They drew upon ancient Japanese poetry, predating the rise of medieval Japan's feudal orders in the mid-twelfth century, and other cultural achievements to show the emotion of Japan. One famous emotion appealed to by the kokugakusha is 'mono no aware'.
Kada no Azumamaro (1669–1736), a Shinto priest at Fushimi Inari Shrine, is traditionally credited as the movement's founder, a status the scholar Ōkuni Takamasa later formalized by naming him first among the "four great men of kokugaku" (kokugaku yondaijin), alongside Kamo no Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane. This attribution rests chiefly on the Sō gakkō kei, a petition calling for the Tokugawa shogunate to establish a school of national studies; the document only came to light in 1798, some sixty years after Azumamaro's death, and its authorship remains disputed: some scholars attribute it instead to his student Yamana Reien, and suggest its original aim may have been wagaku (the study of purely Japanese subjects) rather than kokugaku in its later, more ideologically charged sense.
The word , coined to distinguish this school from kangaku ("Chinese studies"), was popularized by Hirata Atsutane in the 19th century. It has been translated as 'Native Studies' and represented a response to Sinocentric Neo-Confucian theories. scholars criticized the repressive moralizing of Confucian thinkers, and tried to re-establish Japanese culture before the influx of foreign modes of thought and behaviour.
Eventually, the thinking of scholars influenced the sonnō jōi philosophy and movement. It was this philosophy, amongst other things, that led to the eventual collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration.
Tenets The school held that the Japanese national character was naturally pure, and would reveal its inherent splendor once the foreign (Chinese) influences were removed. The "Chinese heart" was considered different from the "true heart" or "Japanese Heart". This true Japanese spirit needed to be revealed by removing a thousand years of Chinese learning.Earl, David Margarey, Emperor and Nation in Japan, Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period, University of Washington Press, 1964, pp. 67 It thus took an interest in philologically identifying the ancient, indigenous meanings of ancient Japanese texts; in turn, these ideas were synthesized with early Shinto and astronomy.Jason Ānanda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. pp 110–1
Influence
The term was used liberally by early modern Japanese to refer to the "national learning" of each of the world's nations. This usage was adopted into Chinese, where it is still in use today (). The Chinese also adopted the term "national essence" (, ).
According to scholar of religion Jason Ānanda Josephson, played a role in the consolidation of State Shinto in the Meiji era. It promoted a unified, scientifically grounded and politically powerful vision of Shinto against Buddhism, Christianity, and Japanese folk religions, many of which were named "superstitions."Josephson, 108–115.
Notable kokugaku scholars
Shimogawa Keichū Hanawa Hokiichi Hagiwara Hiromichi
Hirata Atsutane Hayashi Ōen Kada no Azumamaro Kamo no Mabuchi
Motoori Norinaga Motoori Ōhira Motoori Haruniwa Tanaka Ōhide
Shimazaki Masaki Tsunoda Tadayuki Nakane Kōtei Yamakuni Hyōbu Ueda Akinari Date Munehiro
Tomobayashi Mitsuhira Kume Kunitake Hasuda Zenmei Hirao Rosen Fujimoto Tesseki
See also Haibutsu kishaku Ishihara Shiko'o Magokoro, a fundamental concept of kokugaku Mitogaku, a philosophy ideologically related to kokugaku Shinbutsu bunri Soga–Mononobe conflict, the juncture at which Buddhism supplanted Shinto as the religious foundation of the Japanese state — an event bitterly resented by the kokugakusha Ukehi, a prehistoric practice promoted by a number of kokugakusha Guido von List, European analogue advocating a similar revival of prehistoric religion
References
Further reading Harry Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Mark McNally, Proving the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2005. Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise. Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth Century Japan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1990. Michael Wachutka, Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan: The Modern Transformation of 'National Learning' and the Formation of Scholarly Societies. Leiden, Boston: Global Oriental, 2013.
External links The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School. Kokugaku — Encyclopedia of Shinto.