Reexamining the Sinosphere: Transmissions and Transformations in ...

Although in some samurai circles the thought of the great Ming-dynasty scholar Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) carried considerable weight, only about a dozen books on the Yijing by Tokugawa scholars bear his intellectual imprint. Wang’s philosophy, commonly identified as the Learning of the Mind (Xinxue 心學)—as opposed to Zhu Xi’s Learning of Principle (Lixue 理學)—emphasized the innate ability of all human beings to recognize goodness (liangzhi 良知) without the need for formal study of the sort advocated so persistently and energetically by Master Zhu. This “intuitive” approach to moral knowledge encouraged in some of Wang’s Chinese disciples—notably the iconoclastic scholar Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602)—a skepticism and moral relativism (是非不定論) that led, among other things, to a certain social egalitarianism. According to Li, the Yijing was “the lifeblood of the Sages” (易經真是聖賢血脈) and as such was the key to understanding history and to guiding individual behavior. Essentially, his was a philosophy of “practicality” (shixue 實學), informed by one’s own moral compass but guided by the hexagrams of the Changes. To Li Zhi, Zhu Xi’s vaunted School of Principle was nothing but “a hotbed for phonies” (假人之淵藪).¹⁸

Among Wang Yangming-oriented Tokugawa scholars, Kumazawa Banzan 熊沢蕃山 (1619–1691) was the most accomplished and wide-ranging in terms of Changes scholarship. Of the seven books he wrote on the Yijing, his Ekikyō shōkai 易經小解 (A small interpretation of the Classic of Changes) was particularly original. In the fashion of Li Zhi in China, Banzan drew upon the hexagrams of the Yijing to explain Japanese history and mythology, and he also drew upon historical examples to explain hexagrams. Like Li (and a number of other scholars throughout the premodern Sinosphere), he also used the Changes as a means of critiquing political and social problems, and he relentlessly emphasized the need for practical studies.¹⁹

It was, however, the School of Ancient Learning (Kogaku 古學) that produced some of the most stimulating Yijing and Yijing-related scholarship in Tokugawa times. The goal of this school—like the roughly