The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Kamo no Mabuchi

1697–1769

Also known as Mabuchi

Edo-period scholar of Japan's oldest poetry, who held that the ancient Way followed the rhythms of nature and was corrupted by the artificial morals imported from China.

Ink drawing of a seated older man in loose robes
Ink drawing reproduced in a 1939 Japanese collection of portraits of literary scholars.Public domain · See the original

Kamo no Mabuchi grew up in Hamamatsu, on the road between Kyoto and Edo, and studied at the school of Kada no Azumamaro, where he met the Man’yōshū, Japan’s oldest poetry anthology, and the whole field of Kokugaku, or Native Studies. From 1746 to 1760 he served as the authority on Japanese learning to Tayasu Munetake, the shogun’s younger brother. Much of his work was a philological study of the Man’yōshū, through which he hoped to recover the words and spirit of Japan before they were altered by Chinese influence.

After his retirement he spoke more openly of his own age as a decline from ancient times, and became fiercely hostile to Chinese learning. His academy on the edge of Edo was the first successful private school of Kokugaku, with some three hundred students, the most famous of them Motoori Norinaga, whom he met only once.

Key ideas

A natural Way before China
In the age of the Man’yōshū, Japan was governed by the descendants of the kami according to a Way that followed the rhythms of heaven and earth. The theories later brought from China replaced these natural virtues with artificial morals, and disorder followed.
Recite the old verses
Reading the most ancient verses aloud carries one’s words and heart (kokoro) back to the ancient past, so that one acquires, without effort, the old virtues of honesty, directness and vigour that his corrupt age lacked.
No word, no need
The ancient Japanese language had no native words for the Confucian virtues, which showed, Mabuchi argued, that ancient Japan had no need of them: its order came from living in step with nature.
Tradition
Japanese
Region
Hamamatsu and Edo, Japan
Period
Edo

Influences

Kamo no Mabuchi1697–1769

Influenced

Kamo no Mabuchi1697–1769

Influenced

Where these links come from

Terms on this page

kami
The powers revered in ancient Japanese religion and in Shintō, often too narrowly translated “gods”, which manifested a power to inspire awe.
kokoro
Heart, or spirit. Kamo no Mabuchi sought the words and kokoro of Japan as they were before Chinese influence, in its oldest poetry.

All terms in the glossary

Sources

  1. Gideon Fujiwara and Peter Nosco, The Kokugaku (Native Japan Studies) School, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy