Hayashi Razan’s redeploymentof anti-Christian discourse:the fabrication of Haiyaso

K I R I PA R A M O R E

Abstract: Haiyaso, a short text found in the collected works of the earlyTokugawa Confucian Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), purports to be a record ofa debate held in 1606 between Razan and the famous Japanese Jesuit scholas-tic Habian (1585–1621). The debate is presented in the text as a confrontationbetween Confucianism and Christianity. In the modern period, right up to thepresent, the text has been used prolifically to present ‘a conflict between West-ern thought and East Asian intellectual systems’ as one of the central stories ofthe intellectual history of early seventeenth-century Japan. In this sense, the texthas been used to justify the imposition of fashionable modern dichotomies – be-tween ‘East and West’ and ‘rational and religious’ – onto the intellectual history ofTokugawa Japan. This outlook has been supported by an inaccurate representa-tion of Habian’s Jesuit period treatise Myotei mondo as some kind of ‘introductionto Western thought’. In fact, Myotei mondo is a much more complex work which,among other things, shows the clear influence of Confucian and Neo-Confucianhumanism.

This article goes back to the extant source documents of indigenous JapaneseJesuit thought, and the attacks on it in the early seventeenth century. Throughexamining the ideas of Habian in contrast with other Japanese and Chinese Jesuittexts, and by analysing the context within which Haiyaso sits in Hayashi Razan’scollected documents, the paper demonstrates that Haiyaso was a fabrication, inthe sense that it is a work of propaganda probably written well after Habian’sdeath, and imputing to Habian views that he clearly did not hold.

Keywords: Tokugawa Confucianism, Kirishitan thought, Christianity in Japan,early modern intellectual history, comparative philosophy

The anti-Christian discourse of Tokugawa Japan has traditionally been presentedas the rhetorical element in an early seventeenth-century story of persecution,torture and extermination in which ended Japan’s so-called ‘Christian century’.That is, it has been presented primarily in terms of the historic period that is

Japan Forum 18(2) 2006: 185–206 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X onlineCopyright C© 2006 BAJS DOI: 10.1080/09555800600731106

186 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

its subject matter, rather than in terms of the historic period of its production.It has therefore ended up as part of histories of Christianity in Japan and of so-called East-West interaction. Recently, however, scholars of Japanese intellectualhistory have begun to look at anti-Christian discourse more in terms of its rolein the development of political thought throughout the Tokugawa period. Theimage of Christianity contained within anti-Christian discourses has come to bediscussed in terms of its role as a ‘representation of the other’ over the course ofthe Tokugawa period, that is, as ‘an imagined rather than real projection of whatwas alien to the consciousness of order, a necessary ‘demon’, an oppositional figureagainst which the early modern Japanese order was established’ (Kurozumi 2003:158).

This kind of analysis looks towards what role anti-Christian discourses andimages of Christianity may have played in the formation of ideas of intellectualorthodoxy, national identity and other politically relevant constructs through thecourse of the Tokugawa regime and immediately thereafter – the seventeenth,eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. References to Christianity, or at least imagesof Christianity formulated as part of anti-Christian discourses, appear all throughthese three centuries, surfacing in the writings of figures and movements as sig-nificant as Hayashi Razan, Suzuki Shosan, Kumazawa Banzan, Arai Hakuseki,Miura Baien, Mitogaku and Inoue Tetsujiro.

This article, however, seeks to look at nothing more than one small moment, beit nevertheless an arguably formative moment, in the creation of one of the mostimportant early Tokugawa anti-Christian discourses: Hayashi Razan’s ‘projection’of an image of a figure referred to as Fukansai Habian, Hapiyan, Habiyan orFukan, a figure who, on the one hand, was once one of the most highly regardedJapanese Jesuit intellectuals and yet who, conversely, ended up becoming not onlythe author of one anti-Christian text, but moreover the farcical main character inat least two others.1

Often referred to in English histories as Fukan Fabian, Habian (1585–1621)the historical figure stands as arguably the most important Japanese intellectual ofthe so-called Christian period of late sixteenth-, early seventeenth-century Japan.As a Jesuit scholastic Habian wrote Myotei mondo, which was completed in 1605and soon became the most generally referenced Christian text in Japan.2 In 1620,well after Habian’s resignation from the Jesuits in 1608 and the beginning of thegovernment’s active persecution of Christians from 1613, Habian wrote Hadaius,which went on to become one of the most famous anti-Christian texts.

Through employment of this dramatic about turn, Habian’s life and his ideas,during both his Jesuit and his anti-Jesuit periods, have been historicized interms of an anti-Christian discourse created during the Tokugawa period whichsought to locate Christian and anti-Christian thought in the context of an in-tellectual and political conflict between Nanban and Nihon. This developedinto a discourse which sought to set up a polemic between ‘Japaneseness’ and‘Non-Japaneseness’.3

Kiri Paramore 187

The fact that most twentieth-century research on Habian deals with him interms of the parameters of this discourse is one of the more fascinating aspectsof the research in this field. Nearly all the research on Habian, while rating hisJesuit period treatise Myotei mondo as one of the more important texts of theperiod, values it in terms of its role in ‘introducing Western thought to Japan’,and in contrast with ‘traditional Japanese thought’ (Ebisawa 1964: 117). In thisway research on Habian, whether viewing the Jesuit venture in Japan positively, asEbisawa does, or negatively, as Elison (1991) does, sees Habian’s Jesuit-period roleas representative of a Christian Western side in a conflict with something viewed asJapanese and traditional.4 His turning away from the Jesuits and Christianity andhis alignment with the anti-Christian forces is then inescapably analysed in termsof this framework of ideological competition between two opposed civilizations –a clash of cultures.5

One of the key anti-Christian texts used to support this discourse has beenHaiyaso. Haiyaso, a text which purports to be a record of a debate between Habianand the early Tokugawa Confucian Hayashi Razan held around 1606, is found onlyin Hayashi Razan bunshu, a collection of Razan’s documents compiled by Razan’sson Hayashi Gaho and published in 1662. Haiyaso has always been viewed as anauthentic document, and particularly significant in that it shows Habian duringhis Jesuit period through the eyes of those opposed to the Jesuits, in this casegovernment-aligned Confucians.

Yet, while even in modern histories Haiyaso has been accepted fairly much atface value, the authenticity of Haiyaso as a true record of a conversation betweenHabian and Razan has never been proven. While Jesuit documents seem to indicatethat such a debate may have occurred around 1606,6 there is no proof that thedocument published in 1662 by Gaho is a true record of that debate. Fukan,as Habian is called in Haiyaso, is pictured in that text, as he is in most otheranti-Christian literature which refers to him, as a standard bearer of a singularreligious-philosophical system called Yaso or Tenshukyo (Christianity, Catholicismor Jesuitry).7 Habian’s ideas are portrayed as fitting into a singular system whichsupports homogeneous images of Nanban and Yaso.

This article considers whether that portrayal fits with the true nature of Habian’sideas as expressed by him during his Jesuit period by, first, re-examining the con-tents of Habian’s only philosophical work during that time, Myotei mondo, andthen analysing it in the context of other Christian texts read in the Japan of thattime, both those originating from Japan-based Jesuits and those written by MatteoRicci in China. Through examining the contextualized philosophical content ofMyotei mondo, and the content and contextual setting of Haiyaso within Razan’sother writings, a further understanding can be reached of 1) what Jesuit-inspiredthought in Japan had actually become by the start of the Tokugawa period (asrepresented in the Jesuit-period writing of Habian), 2) the nature of one partic-ularly pervasive early Tokugawa anti-Christian discourse (Razan’s projection ofan image of Habian) and 3) the nature of the relationship between the two. The

188 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

re-examination of Haiyaso thereby offers up an opportunity to take a close lookat the reality of Japanese Christian-aligned thought in the first decade of the sev-enteenth century, and to see how the anti-Christian discourse engages with andemerges from that.

Myotei mondo

Before examining Haiyaso, however, it is first necessary to provide a solid con-textualized analysis of what Habian’s Jesuit period ideas were, as expressed in hismain extant text Myotei mondo. Previous research on Myotei mondo has tendedto concentrate on its criticism of non-Christian religious traditions. In terms ofMyotei mondo’s approach to Christianity itself, previous research has tended tonote Myotei mondo’s explanation of creation and its employment of scholastic phi-losophy, and stopped there. While differences between Myotei mondo and othercontemporary Christian texts have been pointed out, these have been referredto in terms of Habian’s ‘lack of faith and consequent inability to grasp the ba-sic tenants of Christian doctrine’ (Ebisawa 1993: 512). Such analysis of Habian,however, is clearly based less on an attempt to see his thought as a whole withinits contemporaneous social context and more on attempts to compare Habianagainst an imagined universal standard of Catholic doctrine.

One effect of this kind of approach to Habian has been to obscure the integratednature of the humanistic perspective offered in Myotei mondo. For, in additionto a theory of creation, Myotei mondo also puts forward a very particular viewof humanity. The oft-quoted theory of creation, which explains the origins ofheaven and earth, all things, and humanity itself, is complemented by a particularconception of humanity, which suggests how human beings should react to thiscreated world.

Myotei mondo’s theory of creation, which is initially explicated as a base forcritiquing what Habian sees as flaws in the Buddhist and Confucian conceptionsof creation, contains an Aristotelian categorization of anima which defines thehuman species in terms of its possession of anima rationalis.8 Anima rationalis isposited as what both distinguishes human beings from other living things,9 andwhat also gives human beings the potential to attain the afterlife.

The reason why anima rationalis gives humans the capacity to attain the afterlifeis explained in terms of the logic of anima categorization. Anima is categorizedbasically in terms of the nature of a given object. In Myotei mondo, however, thenature of things is furthermore seen to be closely related to their function: ‘Itis applicable to all things that the changes in their natures are known by theirfunctions’ (Habian 1993: 397).10

In other words, we can know whether a thing has the possibility of attainingthe afterlife or not depending on its function. The reason why anima sensitiva, thecategory closest to anima rationalis, does not have the ability to attain the afterlifeis explained as follows: ‘Looking at the category of birds, beasts and insects, we see

Kiri Paramore 189

that the function of their capacity for thought is limited solely to physical matters’(Habian 1993: 399). Because the function of animals does not go beyond ‘physical’or flesh-like objects their lives are also limited to that physical dimension of thecurrent world.

This all sounds pretty familiar. But things get more interesting when Habiangoes on to explain the difference between the function of humans and animals.

Human beings also drink and eat, wake and sleep, and copulate. These are allfunctions. If one looks at where these functions reside, it is clear that they are ofthe person. Does that then mean that this is the only function which should beassociated with the person? Another function is that which discerns the principleof things, enacts the true intention of the principle of benevolence, justice,custom, knowledge and faith, and considers how one’s name will be thoughtof after one’s death. Praying for a life after this one in heaven, discerning rightfrom wrong and good from evil, these are now this other function I speak of.This function cannot but spring from one’s nature.

(Habian 1993: 399–400)

For Habian, the function particular to human beings is that which transcends thephysical and engages with abstract concepts such as principle, right and wrong,good and evil, heaven, and the Confucian set of benevolence, justice, custom,knowledge and faith. In addition, as can be seen from the above quote, animarationalis is not only associated with transcending the physical sphere, it is alsosingular that ‘knowing’ – knowledge – is what is seen as giving human beings accessto the world of abstract concepts. When Habian first defines the difference betweenanima sensitiva and anima rationalis he states of sensitiva, ‘there is knowledge andsensibility, but there is not understanding of principle’; of rationalis he states, ‘itincludes knowing the principle of things and having the wisdom to discern rightand wrong’ (Habian 1993: 395).

So even though Habian criticizes Confucianism for locating the cause of thedifference between humans and animals in matter (Jp. ki Ch. qi) not nature (Jp. seiCh. xing) (Habian 1993: 366), on the other hand he ultimately bases his definitionof the difference between the two on their function (Jp. yo Ch. yong). In this way,the underlying logic of his position actually mirrors that which can be seen inSung Confucian texts favoured by Confucian contemporaries of Habian such asFujiwara Seika.11

Habian emphasizes not only the nature of God’s creation, but more importantlyhuman function, the role of human agency in discerning principle, good, bad,right and wrong. This emphasis can be seen throughout Myotei mondo. While theConfucian phrase ‘benevolence, justice, custom, knowledge and faith’ is used onseveral occasions, it is the use of phrases like ‘know the principle’ and ‘discernright and wrong, good and evil’, which are repeated constantly through all threesections of Myotei mondo, which brings home at every point of the treatise Habian’semphasis on the human agency of discernment.

190 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

In the third section of Myotei mondo, where the creation theory is methodicallylaid out, ‘knowledge’ is represented as the key point of differentiation betweensensitiva and rationalis. According to Habian, humans as agents, through animarationalis, should know principle, right, wrong, good and bad. This is the func-tion of human beings, the purpose of the human category, the way human beingsshould live (Habian 1993: 400). This is the core of Habian’s concept of human-ity. Furthermore, as will be discussed below, this concept of humanity, and theimportant role knowledge plays within it, is significantly different from that seenin most other Christian texts in Japan.

Kirishitan and Tenshukyo

The difference between the ideas expressed by Habian in Myotei mondo and thosefound in other Japanese Kirishitan texts has been noted previously by so-calledKirishitan history scholars. Those scholars, however, have tended to refer to thedifferences between Habian and others in terms of Habian’s ‘misunderstanding’,‘lack of knowledge’ or mistaken interpretation of Christian doctrine (Ebisawa1964: 117; Ide 1995: 205). Rather than judging Habian’s ideas as mistakes orotherwise, however, perhaps it might be more helpful to further consider thenature of the differences between Habian and other Japanese Christian texts andthe intellectual implications of those differences. In addition to looking at theseJapanese Jesuit texts, it might also be instructive to consider the ideas expressedin Myotei mondo in comparison with those seen in Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi.For not only was Tianzhu shiyi produced only two or three years before Myoteimondo, it also went on to become one of the most widely distributed Jesuit textsin early Tokugawa Japan. Yet, seemingly inexplicably, it has never been seriouslyexamined comparatively with Myotei mondo.

Japanese Kirishitan texts

From the late 1500s and into the first decade of the seventeenth century the Jesuitsoversaw the production of a number of texts in Japanese. Particularly suitable forcomparison with Myotei mondo is Dochirina kirishitan, a text which both stylisticallyand functionally is similar to Myotei mondo and which vies with it for the position ofone of the most widely referenced Japanese Kirishitan texts. In addition, Dochirinakirishitan, both in terms of its contents compared to contemporaneous JapaneseKirishitan texts and in terms of the fact that its initial production was overseen byJesuit Visiting Inspector Alexandro Valignano, stands as a useful representationof an orthodox Japanese Christian missionary text of the period.

Dochirina kirishitan differs from Myotei mondo importantly in terms of the fol-lowing three attributes: 1) an emphasis on the role of faith and a correspondinglynegative view of knowledge; 2) linking attainment of the afterlife to an interven-tionist role for God in the world post-creation; 3) an inherently negative world view.

Kiri Paramore 191

The importance of faith and a dubious view of knowledge are expressed fromthe very beginning of Dochirina: ‘What we must believe in is a truth beyond thereach of human knowledge and reason. A truth reached through the virtue offaith’ (Anon 1993: 15).12 This contrast of faith against knowledge and negativeportrayal of human knowledge is a constant feature of Dochirina.

The logic behind such a contrast is revealed further in the explication of the con-cept of grace. Grace is referred to only fleetingly on one occasion in Myotei mondo,but it plays a much larger role, not only in Dochirina, but also in other contempora-neous texts like Nihon no katekizumo, a text based on some of Valignano’s lectures(Valignano 1993: 245). As can be seen in the quote from Dochirina below, becom-ing a Christian, and thereby attaining salvation, is not something achieved simplythrough one’s own thought or action, or even simply through the help of otherpeople. It requires the direct intervention of God. This is why grace, represent-ing this kind of intervention, is emphasized in Dochirina and absent from Myoteimondo. It also explains Dochirina’s emphasis on faith in relation to knowledge.

Master: Can we know what kind of person’s works enable them to become aChristian?Disciple: Those with the Grace of God are the ones who become Christians.Master: What does ‘with the Grace of God’ mean?Disciple: I do not yet fully understand that. Please teach me.Master: ‘With the Grace of God’ means that not by ourselves, not through thepower of this human form given us by our parents, but only in the mercy ofGod through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ do we become Christians.

(Anon 1993: 17)

This difference in terms of the attainment of salvation also goes to what that salva-tion actually represents. In Myotei mondo salvation appears to simply be salvationfrom death and the attainment of the afterlife. But in Dochirina Christians aresaved not simply from death but from toga (sin) and from tengu (the devil).

When the Devil stands there beside us is when we commit mortal sins. Whenwe escape the Devil’s presence is when we renounce sin. The Devil well knowsthat we do this through the power of Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross. This iswhy the Devil fears the Cross greatly.

(Anon 1993: 21)

Myotei mondo presents good and evil as abstracts to be discerned by people (Habian1993: 400). But in Dochirina good and evil, represented by God and Satan, areactive players in the world competing for the souls of human beings.

In Dochirina this representation of the world is backed up by a clear idea oforiginal sin, which creates an imperative to see the created world, and humanityin particular, in a negative light.13 Myotei mondo, which hedges on the idea oforiginal sin, is thereby less negative on the created world and in particular on thenature of things.14

192 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

Myotei mondo’s resultant comparatively heavy emphasis on human action for-mulated by a nature which gives humans the ability to discern abstract valuesin the created world contrasts with the emphasis on faith and negation of thecreated world seen in Dochirina kirishitan and other Japanese missionary texts ofthe period, such as Nihon no Katekizumo, Kirishitan kokoroesho and Sakuramentateiyofuroku.15

Tianzhu shiyi

Yet, through most of the seventeenth century and thereafter, the most commonlyquoted Christian text in Japan was not one of these texts produced by the Japan-based Jesuits, but Tianzhu shiyi, Matteo Ricci’s treatise written in China aroundthe same time as Myotei mondo and introduced to Japan soon thereafter.

Tianzhu shiyi shares a surprising number of characteristics with Myotei mondo.It is written in a question and answer format, it devotes a significant proportionof its argument to in-depth analysis of non-Christian religious traditions, it em-phasizes philosophical theory, in particular Aristotelian metaphysics and it payscomparatively little attention to more theological issues such as Christ’s role inannulling original sin. Both texts, while agreeing in parts with Confucian ideas ofmorality and humanism, virulently attack Sung neo-Confucian metaphysics.

Despite these significantly particular similarities, however, the two texts in theend differ most singularly in terms of the way in which they develop the Aristoteliancategory theory which they both use to oppose Sung neo-Confucian metaphysics.Tianzhu shiyi emphasizes the importance of anima categories as follows.

There is no greater cause of the difference between humans and animals thanin their souls (anima). The soul is what discerns between right and wrong, andtells the difference between truth and falsehood. It is difficult for the soul to bedeceived by something which has no reason.

(Ricci 1971: 41)

While Myotei mondo agrees with Tianzhu shiyi here in terms of the importance ofanima, the two texts disagree sharply in terms of the way they see anima beingimparted to human beings. Myotei mondo portrays anima as being imparted tohuman beings in a single act by God during the reproductive process.

In the womb of the mother the father’s seed is received. It is within this physical-ity that God creates people’s anima rationalis. The anima rationalis then becomesthe master of this physicality (body) and directs the body in line with reason,hoping to then live on into the afterlife.

(Habian 1993: 401)

In Tianzhu shiyi, however, the process through which God, human beings andtheir souls are related is much more complex. As in Myotei mondo, the anima ofTianzhu shiyi is given by an externalized God to an internalized human self. In

Kiri Paramore 193

Tianzhu shiyi, however, the external and internal are related through the use ofAristotle’s doctrine of four causes.

If we are to speak of the causes of things we must see that there are four. Whatare these four? There is maker, form, matter and end. The maker is what createsthe object, turning it into the thing it should be. The form shapes a thing, givingit its fitting category, differentiating it from other kinds of things. Matter is thesubstance that the object is made from. That which takes on the form. The endis the determined function the object is made for. . . . Within the four, form andmatter, these two are internal to things. They are the basis of things, what iscalled yin and yang. Maker and end, these two are external, they transcend theoriginal state of things.

(Ricci 1971: 43–4)

If we look at the problem of anima in terms of this interpretation of the doctrineof four causes, we see that the creator is an externalized God and that the form isan internalized soul (anima). As Ricci continues his explication of the doctrine offour causes we can see that, unlike in Myotei mondo where after the reproductiveact anima rationalis acts independently of creation, in Tianzhu shiyi it remains tiedto God.

In terms of the four causes, there are those which are internal, like yin andyang. There are also those which are external, like the maker category. God’screation of things therefore, as it is the Lordly Creation, is external. So thesethings exist, but they are not part of God. They are related as things are relatedto places where they belong. Like someone’s garden belonging to their house.Or like how some objects have components to them. It is like how arms and legsare of the body, or how people are made up of yin and yang. Dependent thingsrely on something else which is autonomous to exist. Like how a white horseis comprised of a horse which is white, and cold ice comprised of ice which iscold. For a thing to exist something must precede its existence to cause it toexist. The sunlight must shine to create refractions in a crystal, there must befire to make metal glow red.

(Ricci 1971: 151)

In other words, while God and soul are not the same, they are related in a re-lationship like the ‘dependent’ and ‘autonomous’ or the sun and reflected light.The nature of this relationship is made clearer in the following quotation.

Like a crop which is grown by itself but which God uses, as an artisan uses atool. God is not originally those things he is employing. A stone mason is not achisel, a fisherman is not a net or a boat, likewise God is not such a thing.

(Ricci 1971: 148)

This idea of God employing or utilizing other things, pulling the strings whichare never cut, is the theoretical basis of the link in Tianzhu shiyi between God’s

194 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

‘creation of Heaven, Earth and all things’ and his ‘periodic intervention in andcontrol of this’ created world (Ricci 1971: 44). In this way Tianzhu shiyi portraysGod as ‘utilizing’ objects in the created world in a way not seen in Myotei mondo. Inmany waysTianzhu shiyi and Myotei mondo are similar to each other, in particularthrough their emphasis on the role of knowledge and their refusal to base theirexplication of Christianity on a concept of faith reliant on Church authority.16

Despite these similarities, however, the two texts differ on the key issue of wherethey see God acting in the universe.

In this way, while the Japanese Kirishitan texts like Dochirina kirishitan may differfrom Ricci markedly in terms of overall outlook, when lined up against Myoteimondo these texts and Ricci’s differ from Myotei mondo on the same critical point:the role of God in influencing human beings in the created world. In Myotei mondohumanity’s ability to attain the afterlife is made possible through the granting increation of anima rationalis to humans. But that potential afterlife can be realizedonly by humans themselves living in accord with their anima rationalis, somethingthey discern autonomously. In the other texts, however, God’s interventionistrole in the process of human beings attaining salvation is not limited to creation.Even in the most rational approaches seen in Matteo Ricci in China and PedroGomez in Japan, God continues to act on the human soul after creation.

Within a reasonably diverse array of Christian associated thought in latesixteenth- early seventeenth-century Japan, Habian’s ideas had a particular speci-ficity to them which involved this key issue of what role God plays in the lives ofhuman beings.

Haiyaso

Having established this specific nature of Habian’s thought within his historicalcontext, we are now forced to consider how it has come to be that, from theearly Tokugawa period right up until the present, these clearly very particularideas of Habian’s have been virtually ignored, and that his Jesuit-period ideashave rather come to be characterized as almost a stereotype of ‘Western-ness’ and‘un-Japaneseness’. A key text used to justify this latter image of Habian, seem-ingly irreconcilable with our examination of Myotei mondo, has been Haiyaso.17

Indeed, the image of Habian offered up in Haiyaso seems to be the one which hashistorically stuck. Despite Haiyaso having been used constantly right up until thepresent to deliver this kind of image of Habian, however, there is good reason tobelieve that the lines attributed to Habian in this text were never spoken by him.As mentioned earlier, the authenticity of Haiyaso as a record of a conversationbetween Razan and Habian has never been proven.

Turning to the contents of Haiyaso, we see that Habian’s comments as recordedin Haiyaso tend to go along with the generalized image of Jesuit thought in Japan:foreign, homogeneous, doctrinally orthodox. The original ideas of Habian seenin Myotei mondo are completely absent from Haiyaso, the intellectual content of

Kiri Paramore 195

Myotei mondo never being touched upon during the course of the discussion. Theonly brief reference to Myotei mondo is a disparaging remark about the Japaneselanguage usage (Hayashi 1977: 673), with no reference to actual content or anyother evidence that Razan (or Gaho) had ever even seen the text.

Rather than discussing any issues raised in Myotei mondo, the discussionrecorded in Haiyaso restricts itself to two main subjects: a discussion on whetherthe earth is round or not and a discussion on part of Ricci’s creation theory. Boththese discussions refer directly to texts produced by Matteo Ricci as part of hisefforts to communicate with the educated elite in China. The discussion refer-ring to Ricci’s explanation of creation and metaphysics quite clearly begins witha quote from Tianzhu shiyi.

Razan says: ‘Matteo Ricci the Jesuit writes, “Heaven and Earth, Spirits, and theSouls of Men have a beginning but no end”. I do not believe this. If there is abeginning, there must be an end.’

(Hayashi 1977: 673)

This discussion not only begins with a quotation from Ricci, but in the contentsof the discussion itself the comments of Fukan (as Habian is called in Haiyaso)do not agree with Habian’s creation theory. As noted in our discussion of Myoteimondo, Habian’s creation theory develops through anima categories and is closelyrelated to a particular view of humanity. Neither of these elements is present inHaiyaso. Furthermore, and more singularly, as the discussion of creation devel-ops in Haiyaso, comments which directly contradict basic tenets in Myotei mondoemerge.

Fukan, not gathering what had been said, states, ‘The occurrence of an ideawhich creates an implement is what enables principle. Before the occurrence ofthe idea there exists an unsentient unthinking substance. So substance precedesprinciple.’

(Hayashi 1977: 673)

In this argument Fukan posits God as the creator of all things as ‘substance’and therefore argues that ‘substance precedes’ all else. This agrees with Myoteimondo. The characteristics of God outlined here, however, are problematic. InMyotei mondo Habian criticizes the Buddhist concept of Muso munen (unsentientunthinking) and contrasts it with Deus Ittai (God the One Substance), who, heemphasizes, is yuchi yutoku (knowing and virtuous). In Myotei mondo, in Habian’scriticism of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto, he interprets Buddhist ku andConfucian and Shinto yin and yang as scholastic materia prima, making a themeof contrasting the unsentient unthinking materia prima against the knowing andvirtuous God (Habian 1993: 393). The characteristic of God as being sentientand virtuous, not simply a value-free, unthinking substance like materia prima,provides the basis for Habian’s attack on Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto.18 Itis also the launching pad for Habian’s explication of creation and anima categories

196 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

(Habian 1993: 396–400). The fact that such a key idea in Myotei mondo, indeedthe underpinning of the bulk of its argument, is contradicted by Fukan in Haiyasois suspect to say the least.

Looking at the other argument present in the text, about the world being round,it is also fairly clear that Razan is referring to Ricci texts. Myotei mondo mentionsgeography only fleetingly in its introduction, but Haiyaso does not touch on thatdiscussion. Rather Haiyaso refers to a map which it appears is Ricci’s WanguoYutu.19

Moreover, in discussion on both of the above topics, indeed throughout Haiyaso,Fukan uses completely different language from that used by Habian in Myoteimondo. Habian’s use of the word Deus for God is not only replaced by Tenshu (Ch.Tianzhu) (used by Ricci and the Chinese Jesuits for God), but a whole range ofother words represented by katakana versions of Latin words in Myotei mondo failto appear in Haiyaso.20

The Fukan of Haiyaso seems markedly different from the Habian who advancesa humanistic position based on a creation theory outlined in scholastic Latinlanguage terms in Myotei mondo. Not only Habian’s language, but his core ideasare all absent from Haiyaso. Conversely, a number of the ideas expressed by Fukanin Haiyaso are clearly and directly contradictory to ideas expressed by Habian onlyone year before the time this debate is supposed to have taken place. The Fukanof Haiyaso uses Chinese words to advance an image of an interventionist Godcouched in Confucian terms.

Hayashi Razan bunshu

If this is what analysis of the content of Haiyaso yields, what about the textualcontext within which Haiyaso is located? How does Haiyaso fit within the extanttexts of Hayashi Razan, and in particular Hayashi Razan bunshu where Haiyaso isfound? If we look beyond Haiyaso to the other contents of Hayashi Razan bunshuwe can discern a characteristic often noted in Razan’s thought, and indeed in a lotof other Tokugawa Confucian writing that followed: careful delineation betweena conception of orthodoxy and one of heterodoxy. Of course, the existence of anorthodoxy is reliant on the creation of a heterodoxy by which it can define itself.Heterodoxy as presented in Hayashi Razan bunshu, regardless of what kind ofreligious-philosophical tradition it actually comes from, is often labelled as Yasoor Tenshukyo. Even when philosophy which Razan regards as heterodox is notin any way Christian, the use of words like Yaso as rhetorical devices plays animportant role in Razan’s (and indeed Gaho’s) endeavour to create a discourseof orthodoxy. In a famous example often quoted in research on Nakae Toju andKumazawa Banzan, Razan at one stage in Bunshu labels Xinxue Confucianism as‘a variation on Christianity’ (yaso no hen) (Hayashi 1977: 94). In another text,‘Sozoku zenki koki’, he even directly links Banzan personally to Christianity usinga similar phrase (Hayashi 1803).21

Kiri Paramore 197

It is interesting to note that the documents that these Xinxue references comefrom, letters to Ishikawa Jozan contained in Book 7 of Hayashi Razan bunshu,and ‘Sozoku zenki koki’, are also considered the main examples of Razan’santi-Christian writings. Hori Isao refers to these documents as Razan’s ‘lateperiod’ anti-Christian writings, and identifies documents Razan penned on be-half of the Tokugawa government for diplomatic use between 1625 and 1641,22

together with Haiyaso and one other document, Nagasaki itsuji (Hayashi 1977:246–8), as Razan’s ‘early period’ anti-Christian writings (Hori 1964: 384). Asthe documents penned on behalf of the government represent the governmentposition on Christianity for foreign (usually Chinese or Korean) consumption,rather than Razan’s personal views, they are of little use in assessing Razan’s ownapproach to Christian thought.

This leaves Nagasaki Itsuji and Haiyaso as the only other documents which dealwith Christianity at all before 1625, and the only ones which purport to showRazan’s personal approach to Christianity before the 1650s. The more signifi-cant issue, however, and one until now seemingly not noted, is that these twodocuments do not seem to be compatible with one another. As discussed above,Haiyaso purports to be a record of a debate between Habian and Razan datingfrom 1606. Nagasaki Itsuji is a 1610 record of a trip made to Nagasaki where Razanremarks upon the profiteering motivation of Japanese who convert to Christianity.Nagasaki Itsuji is interesting in comparison with Haiyaso in that it mentions Chris-tianity in a much more removed, descriptive and disengaged style than that seen inHaiyaso. In Nagasaki Itsuji Razan describes Christianity almost anthropologically.

They [the barbarians] make a religion of worshipping Heaven. They call it Yaso,it has also been called Tenshu. Their book is written horizontally and boundJapanese style. Their teachings are to do with karma, life and death. I wonderif perhaps they might not be a kind of Mohammedan folk.

(Hayashi 1977: 246)

This descriptive and rather detached report in the 1610 Nagasaki Itsuji seemsrather strange if indeed Razan had, as is indicated in Haiyaso, read Myotei mondoand Tianzhu shiyi fully and debated a Jesuit scholastic by 1606. Haiyaso suggestsRazan to be a 24-year-old Confucian in Kyoto who had read both these very recentand rather strange books and been given the opportunity to debate a much olderand at the time extremely senior and busy Habian. Given the dates from whichthese books were available in Japan, however, it seems unlikely, if neverthelesspossible, that they would have been generally available in Kyoto by this time.23

This is further cause for doubt as to whether Razan would have read both booksby this time, but it is not proof that he did not.

Nagasaki itsuji, on the other hand, presents a 28-year-old Razan who does notseem to have become an expert on Christianity. On a trip to Nagasaki he makesa few simple and casual observations about this strange Christian religion, andthat is all. The voice of the 28-year-old Razan in Nagasaki Itsuji is not the voice

198 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

of a man who had read Ricci and Habian and debated issues of astronomy andreligion with the latter at the age of 24. The two representations do not match.So which is true? The case against Haiyaso and in favour of Nagasaki Itsuji’sauthenticity is strengthened when we look at their relative positions in HayashiRazan bunshu.

Nagasaki Itsuji appears within Hayashi Razan bunshu in a fairly natural locationin a kiji section in Book 22 after a document written in 1607 (Togyo nichiroku) andbefore a note on the availability of Sunpu nikki (a document which was supposedto have been composed in 1614 and would have included entries for 1610). Inother words, it appears among other similar genres of document written aroundthe same time.

The placement of Haiyaso in Hayashi Razan bunshu, however, is rather moresuspicious. Haiyaso appears towards the end of Hayashi Razan bunshu in a zatsusection, Book 56. Zatsu (miscellaneous) sections of bunshu (collected documents),as the name suggests, usually comprise a range of writings on a variety of topics.But, if we look to the kind of Chinese prototype upon which Hayashi Razanbunshu may have been based, we can see a big difference between the zatsu genreas it stands in Zhu Xi Wenji, for instance, and as it is conceived in Hayashi Razanbunshu. In Zhu Xi Wenji the zatsu sections contain a variety of essays, but nearly allon key philosophical issues (Zhu Xi 1996: 226–37). Hayashi Razan bunshu’s zatsusections, however, are comprised predominantly of polemical factional assaultson non-Confucian philosophical and religious traditions competing with Razan.

Haiyaso appears in Hayashi Razan bunshu in a context where the three docu-ments appearing directly before it are also similar diatribes against non-Confuciantraditions. The text directly before Haiyaso, entitled Sannin wo satosu, attacks Bud-dhist metaphysics. The text before that one, Zento wo tsugu, derides the (lack of)ethics of Buddhist monks. The text before it, Shakuro, attacks Buddhist and Taoistasceticism (Hayashi 1977: 242–6). In other words, much of the zatsu section isclearly conceived as a platform on which to attack religious practice and ideaswhich Razan regarded as heterodox.

In this sense, the zatsu section overall fits into the kind of discourse we see es-tablished in documents like the letters to Ishikawa Jozan and ‘Sozoku zenki koki’,a discourse which blames disorder on the existence of heterodox ideas, and badethics on the bad ethical practice of people who had come under the sway of theseideas. It is a discourse which begins as simply anti-Buddhist pro-Confucian, butdevelops, especially through the 1650s, a careful delineation between heterodoxand orthodox ideas within non-Buddhist thought – a delineation which increas-ingly targets heigaku thought24 and Xinxue Confucianism, and which increasinglyuses rhetoric that links these movements to Christianity. It is interesting to notethat this discourse, which begins to employ anti-Christian imagery against non-Buddhist ‘heterodoxies’ like Xinxue, was established during the 1650s, well afterthe complete suppression of Christianity. It is therefore clear that Razan’s increas-ing use of the anti-Christian image at this time was not part of any real attemptto control Christians in Japan.25

Kiri Paramore 199

In terms of the position of Nagasaki Itsuji in Hayashi Razan bunshu, and its tonein terms of the surrounding context, there are no problems. Haiyaso, conversely,is positioned in the Bunshu in a highly unorthodox manner, in a context notdictated by period or style, but rather to position it around other texts also clearlydesigned to attack other non-Confucian traditions seen as heterodox. In otherwords, Haiyaso appears in the context of an attack on heterodoxy. Yet the maindocuments which establish this kind of use of an anti-Christian discourse to attackheterodoxy (the letters to Ishikawa and ‘Sozoku zenki koki’) were all produced afterthe 1640s. Haiyaso is thereby left standing as the only document before the 1650sin which this kind of approach to Christianity is taken, and we are to believe thatthe document dates to 1606, even though the Christian documents Razan wassupposed to have read had at that time existed in Japan for at best less than a year.

Conclusion

Taking into account the issues relating to the content of the document alone, nevermind the supporting contextual evidence, it seems clear that Haiyaso is undoubt-edly a fabrication; that is, that, while as an historical document it may stand as anexcellent example of mid-seventeenth-century ‘anti-Christian discourse’, it doesnot seem to represent an attack on any Christian reality of the early seventeenthcentury, because the text does not represent anything like what Habian was likelyto have said if he indeed ever did meet Razan in 1606. Therefore, even if we admitthe possibility that such a meeting occurred and that the text represents Razan’srecollection of what happened there, which is a big assumption to begin with, itseems highly unlikely that the document was written at that time.

As the earlier examination of the contents of Haiyaso showed, the text refersto arguments from Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi rather than to any ideas expressed byHabian.26 In other words, Haiyaso, rather than being criticism of Habian’s ideasin 1606, seems more likely to have been conceived of after Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyihad become the text most commonly associated with Christianity: after the 1630s,and after the near complete eradication of Christianity in Japan. In 1606 Tianzhushiyi may not even have reached Kyoto, yet from the 1630s onwards it is moreoften referred to and reached a wider readership than any of the Japanese texts.The comparative popularity of the Ricci text over Japanese-produced texts andthe employment of anti-Christian discourse by Razan to combat heterodoxy bothdate from after the 1630s at the earliest.

Further, going beyond the issue of Habian, the contextual placement of thetext in Hayashi Razan bunshu, among attacks on other non-Confucian traditions,and the fact that the most reliable Razan sources mentioning Christianity also doso in the context of attacks on other heterodoxies, and in a period well after thenear complete suppression of Christianity, make it difficult not to suspect, giventhe other facts, that Haiyaso was not conceived of in that context. Therefore,whether it indeed was composed by Razan, or, as the style seems to suggest,someone else, it seems unlikely it was produced close enough to 1606 to bear

200 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

much resemblance to any factual event that may or may not have occurred. Theuse of this document, therefore, to reconstruct an historical image of Habian, asit has been used extensively in previous research, is highly problematic.

Examination of Myotei mondo in its contemporaneous context revealed a Habianwho, while taking a critical stance against a number of other religious traditionswhich existed in the Japan of his day, also adopted and employed some of theintellectual frameworks and linguistic structures of those same traditions to createa unique, unorthodox interpretation of the Christian thought which had emergedin the Japanese archipelago of his time. That interpretation is noteworthy in thatit differs significantly from the Catholic doctrine of the time, and from manyother Japanese Christian texts, in its humanistic tendencies, and in particular inits emphasis on the role of human discernment and comparative lack of emphasison any interventionist role for God.

This alone would seem to suggest that a real understanding of late Jesuit-inspiredthought in Japan may need to involve going beyond the image of Christian-alignedthought there as being an unoriginal translation of Catholic doctrine, and ratheraccepting the diversity within that thought, particularly that standing at oddswith contemporary Catholic doctrine. As we have seen through comparing Myoteimondo with contemporaneous Japanese and Chinese Christian texts, Habian’sintellectual legacy would be better described in terms of his unusual interpretationof scholastic philosophy and integration of Confucian philosophy than it would bein terms of hackneyed ideas like the ‘introduction of Western thought’ to Japan.Indeed, instead of an example of one monolithic homogeneous side in a clashof cultures, Habian’s Jesuit-period work might rather be regarded as expressiveof the heterogeneous and comprehensive nature of a multi-faceted intellectualenvironment where various forms of Buddhism, new trends in Confucianism,Shinto and a variety of interpretations of scholastic and Christian thought brieflyco-existed in late sixteenth-, early seventeenth-century western Japan.

The image of Habian projected by Razan and others from the 1650s onwards,however, is considerably different. That image sought to portray both the Japaneseand Chinese Jesuit traditions, including Habian, as representing a single homo-geneous ideological religious worldview. Such a monolithic image of the alienopponent was what was useful for the kind of job Razan and others employedthe Christian image for: attacking non-Christian heterodox Confucian and otheropponents. The Hayashi faction’s rhetorical imperatives were to fit Habian intoan anti-Christian rhetoric which combined the general Yaso image, an image al-ready well established as dangerous and foreign, with Ricci’s early seventeenth-century thought, which in late seventeenth-century Japan was becoming not onlythe Christian text people were more likely to see, but also one which used simi-lar Chinese terms to the heterodox enemies within (like the Xinxue Confucians)who were the real targets of Razan’s attacks. The Fukan we see in Haiyaso is areconstruction of Habian, a fabrication to fit that rhetorical imperative.

Kiri Paramore 201

But so what if Razan, or his followers, did invent the Fukan we see in Haiyaso?So what if things were bent to fit into Razan’s rhetoric? After all, one of themain currents of the post-Maruyama rewriting of Tokugawa intellectual historyover the last thirty or more years has been to point out how uninfluential Razan,and indeed Confucianism in general, was in early Tokugawa Japan. If Razan hadcomparatively so little influence, who really cares what his views on Christianitymay or may not have been?

Yet one of the surprising things a study of Tokugawa anti-Christian discourse re-veals is how influential Razan and other early Tokugawa Confucian discourses onChristianity were later in the period. Of course, as the post-Maruyama historianshave rightly pointed out, Razan certainly did not establish a ‘guiding doctrine’ ofgovernance in the Tokugawa period (Bito 1961: 277–80; Watanabe 1985: 23). Butwhat nowadays, in the flurry of Maruyama bashing, can sometimes be overlookedis that Razan, even in his own time, had been able to project an image of himself asthe representative of Confucian orthodoxy.27 His followers enhanced and furtherutilized that image until, by the late Tokugawa period, his influence on politi-cal thought in Japan was significant.28 In the development of the anti-Christiandiscourse of the late Tokugawa period, that influence is particularly palpable.Anti-Christian Mitogaku and even Buddhist compilations of the late nineteenthcentury not only included Razan’s anti-Christian writings in pride of place, theymoreover employed discourses which utilized the same categories established inRazan’s attempt to delineate a concept of orthodoxy.29

Twentieth-century historians of the Christian period and its suppression, partic-ularly those so-called ‘Kirishitan history’ scholars like Ebisawa, who have producedthe bulk of quality research on this period, sought to invert the categories inher-ent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century nationalist conceptions of Eastand West in Japan, conceptions heavily informed by the Mitogaku tradition. Thelikes of Elison then again inverted this inversion of categories. But neither actu-ally overcame the invented fiction of an essential opposition between a ‘ChristianWest’ and something called ‘traditional East Asia’.

Yet, whether we look at Habian’s employment of Confucian concepts andsilent rejection of Catholic doctrine in his Jesuit period texts, or the brutal re-ality of the Dutch shelling of the rebel-held Hara Castle during the ‘Christian’rebellion at Shimabara, it is clear that the real divisions were not as simple as‘East’ and ‘West’, or ‘Christian’ and ‘traditional East Asian’. The conflicts in-herent in these events were anything but cultural. The cultural essentialism soinfluential in the way both these events have been historicized did not begin inthe nature of the events themselves, but in the way they were spun thereafter.The significance of the fabrication of Haiyaso, and of the discourse it repre-sents, is its historical endurance, and the power of its influence on later politicalthinking.

Leiden University

202 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

Notes

1. Habian authored Hadaius (which can be found in the kirishitansho/haiyasho volume of Nihonshiso taikei (Ebisawa 1970: 423–47)) in 1620. He is also depicted as a character of ridicule inthe 1639 text Kirishitan monogatari (which can be found in Washio 1969b: 379–86).

2. Other than an annotated edition of Heike monogatari (Kamei and Sakada 1966) and Buppo nojidai ryakubatsusho (Ebisawa 1993: 419–31), the intellectual content of which is fairly close tothe opening section of Myotei mondo, Myotei mondo itself stands as Habian’s only extant workfrom his Jesuit period.

3. An excellent example of the employment of anti-Christian discourse in this manner is ‘Sokky-ohen’ (Tokugawa 1860), a collection of early and mid-Tokugawa anti-Christian works compiledtowards the end of the Tokugawa period by Mitogaku scholars during the time when the Mitohanshu Tokugawa Nariaki was representing anti-foreign factions in political intrigues and AizawaYasushi and other Mitogaku writers were producing a range of anti-foreign diatribes. Examplesof emphasis on the non-Japanese nature of Christians in early Tokugawa works included in‘Sokkyohen’ are, for instance, the opening passages of Suzuki Shosan’s Hakirishitan (Ebisawa1970: 450) and the line from Haiyaso itself where Fukan is quoted calling Portuguese vessels‘our ships’ (Hayashi 1977: 672).

4. For instance, Elison (1991: 165–6). Elison’s argument throughout relies heavily on the estab-lishment of a polarized relationship between the Jesuit and post-Jesuit Habians, mirroring aconflict between ‘traditional East Asian systems’ and Christianity. These arguments are basedon readings of Myotei mondo and Hadaius summarized by Elison (ibid.:166). Elison emphasizesthe fact that Hadaius directly addresses issues in Myotei mondo. He then uses these argumentsbetween the two texts as an analogy for the conflict between Christianity (by which he meansorthodox doctrinaire Catholicism) and ‘traditional East Asian systems’. One of the key points ofHadaius, however, which Elison describes as criticism of ‘the Christian dependence upon theextra-terrestrial sphere of justification’, is significantly not a criticism of anything in Myoteimondo. On this point Myotei mondo and Hadaius are not actually in conflict. As is pointed outbelow, Myotei mondo is significant among Jesuit-produced texts in that it does not emphasizethe role of God in the created world, rather placing the emphasis on human action. On thispoint, Myotei mondo and Hadaius seem to agree. Elison’s summary of Myotei mondo’s mainpoints is correct. It must be noted, however, that those points exclude certain key aspects ofCatholic doctrine which were particularly emphasized by European Jesuits in Japan, but ignoredby Habian. Therefore, while Myotei mondo can be said to be a good example of an indigenous‘Christian’ text in the sense that it is Jesuit inspired and produced by someone who at the timewas a member of the Order, it definitely did not represent the European Catholic doctrinalorthodoxy of the time. Elison’s employment of Habian in his overall argument does not seemto take account of this differentiation. Elison employs the elements of Myotei mondo which crit-icize non-Christian religions, but ignores the non-Christian elements of Myotei mondo itself. Inaddition to Ebisawa and Elison, another good modern example of this kind of take on Habian isIde Katsumi, who describes Habian as ‘a thinker who symbolizes the intellectual battle betweeneast and west’ (Ide 1995: 186).

5. For a detailed discussion on Habian’s anti-Christian work Hadaius, and a rejection of the thesisthat Myotei mondo and Hadaius are directly opposed to each other, see Paramore (2006: 80–8).

6. A letter from the senior Jesuit in Japan, P. Francisco Pasio SJ, dated October 1606 refers toHabian debating Buddhist monks and other representatives of Japan’s ‘various religious sects’.The letter does not, however, refer to any particular debate, or to Razan by name, or to anyother Confucians, nor indeed does it mention Confucianism. See Ide (1995: 189, 209–10).

7. The differences between these terms as expressed in these three English words were not usuallydifferentiated by early Tokugawa era commentators.

Kiri Paramore 203

8. Habian sets up his explanation of creation and anima categorization in the early sections ofMyotei mondo within his critique of Buddhism and Confucianism. There he argues for theneed for an initial substance from which creation can first occur. In his initial comments onBuddhism he repeatedly criticizes Buddhist theories on creation, saying that their ideas of aninitial substance from which creation could occur lack the notion of sentience which he claimsis necessary for the act of creation (Habian 1993: 301). Identifying substance as bussho or ku inBuddhism, and as yin and yang in Confucianism and Shinto, Habian points out that these lacksentience and a capacity for value judgement. He then suggests the idea of Deus as a sentientfirst substance. When Habian later also identifies the distinguishing feature of humanity, animarationalis, as being defined through the function of the human intellect in its ability to conceiveof abstract values (Habian 1993: 393), he thereby, perhaps unwittingly, links his conceptionsof God and humanity. He creates a humanistic position which, while metaphysically positingsubstance before principle, also defines substance in terms of function, thus presenting a systememphasizing the role of human discernment and action rather than transcendent intervention.For more detail on the relation between Habian’s definition of God and delineation of humanbeings from animals on similar terms see Paramore (2004: 85–6).

9. Something Habian claims Confucianism does not do (Habian 1993: 396–8).10. Quotations from Myotei mondo are taken from the current standard printed version in Ebisawa

(1993). Myotei mondo was originally printed in 1605.11. An instance from such a text favoured by Seika can be seen in Zhu Xi’s Mengzi Zhangju (Zhu

Xi 1983: 326) where, while at the same time emphasizing the universality of nature, Zhu Xialso points out the innately human aspects of the human actions associated with nature andprinciple. Habian’s criticism of Neo-Confucian metaphysics does criticize the Neo-Confucianposition on nature. However, in terms of the view of human action, and the practical definitionof humans in terms of that action (their function), Habian and the Neo-Confucian positionsare actually fairly close.

12. Quotes from Dochirina kirishitan are taken from the current standard printed version of the later1600 version of the text in Ebisawa (1993).

13. This is made very clear in Dochirina in passages like: ‘This first sin of Adam is continuouslyhanded down to us in the innately evil nature of our flesh at birth’ (Anon 1993: 24).

14. Myotei mondo brushes over the question of original sin. The paragraph which briefly mentionsAdam’s original sin summarizes God’s reaction as simply expelling Adam and his offspring(humanity) from the ‘earthly paradise’ and taking away their gift of ‘endless life without aging’.The paragraph concludes with the rather vague but certainly not threatening sentence: ‘So whenit is mentioned that some people are not helped in the afterlife, this is what that springs from’(Habian 1993: 406–7).

15. The first two of these texts can be found in Ebisawa (1993) and the last in Ebisawa (1970). Fordiscussion on the similarities between these texts and Dochirina on the issues discussed abovesee Paramore (2004: 89–90). In addition to these texts, which like Myotei mondo were designedprimarily to be read at large outside the Order by potential and lay Christian Japanese, it is alsoinstructive to look at how these issues play out in Pedro Gomez’s Kogi yoko sometimes referred toby its Latin title Compendium, had a different target readership than the other texts in that it wasdesigned for the instruction of Japanese Jesuits themselves. It is therefore an important source asit represents the most comprehensive extant explication of the theology that the Japanese Jesuitswere being taught at the time. In terms of the differences pointed out between Myotei mondo andthe other Japanese Jesuit texts of the time, it can be seen that Kogi yoko also emphasizes the roleof faith. As shown in the following quotation, Kogi yoko introduces faith to the anima categories,thereby creating a hierarchy of life which, rather than being formulated to put humans at the topin an order of nature as in Habian, places Christians at the top ahead of non-Christian humanbeings in a ranking of humanity.

204 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

‘Above the light of sensitiva there are those who, using the light of discernment (anima ratio-nalis), turn their works to the path of righteousness. It can be said that these are good peopledoing good works. Seneca and Plato can be counted in this category. Then there is a light abovethis which is the light of faith. Those who pursue this light are Christians. Christians alonereceive the Grace of God. So we can see that there are 3 categories of light. Higher, middle andlower. The highest is the light of faith. The middle is the light of discernment. The lowest is thelight of sensitiva’ (Gomez 1998: 29–30).

16. For more on the particular nature of the concept of ‘faith’ present in Japanese Christian textsof this period, its political role at the time and the way this political role has been overlookedand its significance misinterpreted in modern studies, see Paramore (2006: 33–4, 157–8).

17. For an example of this kind of employment of Haiyaso, see for instance Ide (1995: 167).18. The criticism of Buddhism, which comprises the first two-fifths of the text, is heavily based

on this argument (Habian 1993: 301). For a good example of this argument employed againstConfucianism and Shinto, see Habian (1993: 393).

19. What Razan refers to as an enbo no chizu (Hayashi 1977: 672).20. In addition to this kind of substitution of vocabulary and terms, the meanings of certain key

words, like li and yong, principle and function, are subtly different. This can be observed forinstance by comparing Hayashi (1977: 416) with Habian (1993: 397).

21. The reference to ‘Sozoku zenki koki” is from a hand-copied manuscript in the Naikaku bunko,Tokyo. The copy was made in 1803, thus the date in the reference. This is the earliest extantcopy of the document so far found. In the actual text of the document it is dated in 1651(the first part) and 1652 (the second part). Page numbers are not given because the pages arenot numbered. Interestingly, Banzan himself also used the image of Christianity in a similar,although significantly subtler, way in his criticism of Buddhism. Maruyama Masao discussesthis issue together with Razan’s use of the Christian image against Banzan in ‘Sozoku zenkikoki’’ (Maruyama 2000: 114–16). In the same 1966 lecture notes Maruyama likens the kindof discourse seen in ‘Sozoku zenki koki’’ to McCarthyism and also discusses ‘anti-communist’repression in the 1930s and ‘anti-Christian’ repression during the Tokugawa period together ina study of the idea of ‘tolerance’ (Maruyama 2000: 116–19).

22. These include an array of documents in Book 58 of Hayashi Razan Bunshu (Hayashi 1977:690–3), as well as Daimin fukken totoku ni kotau, contained in Book 12 of same (Hayashi 1977:136–7).

23. Myotei mondo had been produced only a year before the date of the alleged debate. Tianzhushiyi was first imported into Nagasaki from China at around the same time. Indeed there is noevidence that any copies of Tianzhu shiyi had got to Kyoto by 1606.

24. Also referred to as gungaku and related to the bingfa tradition in Chinese thought, which is mostfamously identified with the Chinese Warring States period thought of Sunzi. The Japaneseheigaku tradition popular in the early Tokugawa period was heavily influenced by the classicChinese tradition, but developed significant new trends and features, in particular through thecourse of the Japanese Warring States period (by the sixteenth century the Chinese teachingswere only one component of Japanese heigaku, thus the decision here to use Japanese Roman-ization). A contemporary figure closely associated with heigaku was Yamaga Soko. KumazawaBanzan was also both highly valued and feared a threat for his heigaku knowledge. In ‘Sozokuzenki koki’, Razan emphasizes that Yui Shosetsu, one of the leaders of the Keian jiken coup plot,was a gungaku teacher.

25. The cause of the noticeable expansion of Razan’s working conception of heterodoxy, in particularhis emphasis on attacks on xinxue and heigaku thinkers in the 1650s, is an interesting topicof research the author hopes to discuss at further length in a forthcoming article. There ismaterial relevant to the issue in Toby (1984: 65, 219, 227) and McMullen (1999: 92-112,117–20).

Kiri Paramore 205

26. It is important, however, to note here that the lines attributed to Fukan in Haiyaso, like the onequoted earlier about ‘unsentient unthinking substance’ (musomunen), are not only inconsistentwith Habian’s position, but are also equally inconsistent with Ricci’s portrayal of God andcreation. While Razan addresses Ricci texts, his portrayal of the ‘Christian ideas’ is inconsistentwith either Ricci or Habian’s real position.

27. As can be seen in Nakae Toju’s criticism of Razan, which includes a derisory reference to hisreputation as ‘the father of Japanese Confucianism’ (Bito 1975: 13).

28. One of the main factors in the continual influence of Razan was the development of his schoolinto educational institutions which ultimately became the Shoheizaka gakumonjo (in relation tothe Shoheizaka gakumonjo and its influence see Wajima (1966)). Razan’s later influence, however,did not stop at the undeniable influence the Shoheizaka gakumonjo, and the institutions whichpreceded it, had in Confucian and bushi circles. There are also numerous examples of Shintoand Buddhist writers quoting Razan in support of their arguments. For instance, the editors ofJodoshu to nichirenshu shuron no ki, a document in which the Shingon monk Reikei attacks Jodoand Nichiren sect nenbutsu practices, include at the end of the document after Reikei’s text ashort treatise on the subject by Razan (Reikei 1914: 139). The discussion in Hirata Atsutane’sKokon’yomiko also opens with a quote from Razan (Washio 1969a: 40).

29. See the Mitogaku compilation (Tokugawa 1860) and the Jodoshu monk Kiyu Dojin’s (UgaiTetsujo) compilation (1861).

References

Anon (1993)Dochirina kirishitan, in Ebisawa Arimichi (ed.) Kirishitan Kyorisho, Kyobunkan.Bito, Masahide (1961) Nihon hoken shisoshi kenkyu, Aoki Shoten.—— (1975) Nakae Toju: Nihon shiso taikei 29, Iwanami Shoten.Ebisawa, Arimichi (1964) Nanbanji kohaiki, jakyo taii, myotei mondo, hadaiusu, Heibonsha.—— (1970) Kirishitansho/haiyasho: Nihon shiso taikei 25, Iwanami shoten.—— (1993) Kirishitan kyorisho, Kyobunkan.Elison, George (1991) Deus Destroyed, Harvard University Press.Gomez, Pedro (1998) Iezusukai nihon korejiyo no kogiyoko II, ed. Satoru Ohara, Kyobunkan.Habian (1993) Myotei mondo, in Ebisawa Arimichi (ed.) Kirishitan kyorisho, Kyobunkan.Hayashi, Razan (as Ro Yoshi) (1803) ‘Sozoku zenki koki’, manuscript in Naikaku bunko, Tokyo.

Document number: 27689.—— (1977) Hayashi Razan bunshu, Perikansha.Hori, Isao (1964) Hayashi Razan, Yoshikawa Kobunkan.Ide, Katsumi (1995) Kirishitan shisoshi kenkyu josetsu, Perikansha.Kamei, Takanori and Sakada, Yukiko (1966) Habiyan sho Kirishitan ban Heike monogatari, Yoshikawa

Kobunkan.Kiyu, Dojin (Ugai Tetsujo) (1861) ‘Hekija kankenroku’, manuscript in University of Tokyo Sogo

toshokan bunko. Call number: C60:110.Kurozumi, Makoto (2003) Kinsei nihon shakai to jukyo, Perikansha.McMullen, James (1999) Idealism, Protest and the Tale of Genji: The Confucianism of Kumazawa

Banzan, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Maruyama, Masao (2000) Maruyama Masao kogiroku, Vol. 6, Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai.Paramore, Kiri (2004) ‘Habian tai Fukan: 17 seiki shoto Nihon no shiso bunmyaku ni okeru Habian

shiso no imi to Haiyaso’, Nihon Shisoshigaku 36: 82–99.—— (2006) ‘Seiji shihai to Haiyaron: Tokugawa zenki ni okeru “yasokyo” hihan gensetsu no seijiteki

kino’, PhD dissertation, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo.Reikei (1914) Jodoshu to nichirenshu shuron no ki, in Dainippon bukkyo zensho shuron sosho, Bussho

Kankokai.

206 Hayashi Razan’s redeployment of anti-Christian discourse

Ricci, Matteo (1971) Tianzhu shiyi, in Goto Motomi Tenshu jitsugi, Meitoku Shuppansha.Toby, Ronald P. (1984) State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan, Princeton University Press.Tokugawa, Nariaki (ed.) (1860) ‘Sokkyohen’, manuscript in University of Tokyo Sogo toshokan

bunko. Call number: C60:73.Valignano, Alexandro (1993) Nihon no katekizumo, in Ebisawa Arimichi (ed.) Kirishitan Kyorisho,

Kyobunkan.Wajima, Yoshio (1966) Shoheiko to hangaku, Shibundo.Washio, Junkyo (1969a)Nihon shiso toso shiryo, Vol. 9, Meichokankokai.—— (1969b)Nihon shiso toso shiryo, Vol. 10, Meichokankokai.Watanabe, Hiroshi (1985) Kinsei nihon shakai to sogaku. Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai.Zhu Xi (1983) Sishu zhangju jizhu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju Chuban.—— (1996) Zhu Xi Ji, Sichuan: Sichuan Jiaoyu Chubanshe.

Kiri Paramore recently earned his PhD from the University of Tokyo writing about the politicalfunction of anti-Christian discourse in early modern Japan. He is currently a post-doctoral researcherat Leiden University. His work on Tokugawa and Meiji intellectual history has been published inNihon Shisoshigaku and Shisoshi Kenkyu. He may be contacted at k.n.paramore@let.leidenuniv.nl.