Reexamining the Sinosphere: Transmissions and Transformations in ...

contemporary School of Evidential Research (Kaozheng xue 考證學) in China—was to discover the “original” meanings of ancient Chinese texts, and its great pioneer in Japan was Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁齋 (1627–1705). Hostile to Zhu Xi’s claim that the Changes was primarily a book of divination, he appreciated Cheng Yi’s effort to explicate the work in terms of textual analysis and morality. At the same time, however, Itō resisted most other Song-dynasty interpretations of the classic, arguing that they were tainted by Buddhist and Daoist influences. His effort to explore the earliest extant versions of the Yijing led to three major iconoclastic studies: Ekikyō taizō kai 易經大象解 (An explanation of the “big images” of the Classic of Changes); Ekikyō kogi 易經古義 (Ancient meanings of the Classic of Changes); and Shūeki kenkon kogi 周易乾坤古義 (Ancient meanings of the Qian and Kun hexagrams).²⁰

Jinsai’s son, Itō Tōgai 伊藤東涯 (1670–1738), was also an ardent advocate of Ancient Learning, who proved to be an even more accomplished Yijing scholar than his father. Indeed, he wrote a dozen books on the Changes, one of which—Shūeki kyōyoku tsukai 周易經翼通解 (A thorough explanation of the basic text and [Ten] Wings of the Zhou Changes)—was described by the Japanese historian Hoshino Hisashi 星野恒 (1837–1917) as the most important book on the Yijing written in the entire Tokugawa period.²¹ Like his father (and his son), Tōgai argued vehemently that the Ten Wings were not authored by Confucius or his disciples, a minority view of scholars throughout the Sinosphere.²²

Yet another major Yijing-oriented exponent of Ancient Learning in Japan was Dazai Shundai 太宰春臺 (1680–1747), whose five books on the Yijing—in particular his Shūeki hansei 周易反正 (Return to a correct [interpretation of] the Zhou Changes), published in 1746—predated the major Yijing-related kaozheng studies of such celebrated Chinese scholars as Hui Dong 惠棟 (1697–1758), Zhang Huiyan 張惠言 (1761–1802), and Jiao Xun 焦循 (1763–1820). It is clear that some of the works by Hui, Zhang, and Jiao, like those of Tōgai, Shundai, and Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666–1728), circulated widely in the Sinosphere, but it is sometimes