Nishi Amane

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Nishi Amane
Nishi Amane
Born(1829-03-07)March 7, 1829
Tsuwano, Shimane, Japan
DiedJanuary 30, 1897(1897-01-30) (aged 67)
Occupation(s)Politician, Philosopher
In this Japanese name, the surname is Nishi.

Nishi Amane (西周, March 7, 1829 – January 30, 1897) was a Japanese philosopher. He studied law and economics in the Netherlands. He became a political advisor to Tokugawa Yoshinobu before and after the Meiji Restoration. He served as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Popular Affairs, and the Ministry of the Imperial Household under the Meiji government. He was involved in the drafting of the Military Precepts and the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors. With Mori Arinori and others, he formed the Meirokusha and worked to introduce Western philosophy.

Early life

Nishi was born in

feudal system and their samurai status in favor of a pursuit of Western studies, as these intellectuals believed that the Japanese feudal system was incompatible with Western studies.[1] Nishi was then appointed by the government as a Yōgakusha or specialist scholar of Western learning. Aside from Nishi, the Yōgakusha included Fukuzawa Yukichi, Mori Arinori, and Nakamura Masanao, who were all schooled in kangaku, a kind of traditional Chinese learning.[2] Later, in 1857, Nishi was appointed a professor at the Bansho Shirabesho
.

With increasing foreign pressure on Japan to end its national isolation policy, in 1862 the Shogunate decided to send Nishi and Tsuda Mamichi to the Netherlands to learn western concepts of political science, constitutional law, and economics. They departed in 1863 with a Dutch physician Dr. J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, who had set up the first teaching hospital for western medicine in Nagasaki.

The two Japanese students were put in the care of Professor Simon Vissering, who taught Political Economy, Statistics and Diplomatic History at the University of Leyden. They developed a genuine friendship with Vissering who was conscious of the long-standing friendship between Japan and the Netherlands. He felt that the students' desire for knowledge would make them likely future participants in Japan's modernization. Vissering, a member of La Vertu Lodge No, 7, Leyden introduced them to Freemasonry, of which they became the first Japanese adherents on October 20, 1864.[3]

Meiji philosopher

Nishi returned to Japan in 1865, and was an active participant in the

Meiji Japan because it gave the Japanese people a chance for stabilization and understanding in a society and culture that was undergoing rapid revolutionary change. To Nishi, positivism was the Western counterpart to Eastern practical studies (jitsugaku), with an emphasis on a hierarchy of knowledge similar to that of Confucianism.[1] Nishi’s translations of utilitarianism were also taken to well during the restoration period because utilitarianism promotes the social over the individual, which is a concept that is easily reconcilable with a Confucian-trained mind in Meiji Japan. Utilitarianism also assisted Japanese modernization because Nishi and others have applied it to the justification of an industrial and commercial economy.[4] As for empiricism, Nishi and the rest of the Yogakusha intellectuals became leading figures in the Meiji Enlightenment (bummei kaika, i.e. "civilization and enlightenment"[4] ), in which they promoted empiricism and practical studies instead of abstract reasoning in order for each person to attain an understanding of truth.[4]

In 1868, Nishi translated and published "International Law". He also published an

inductive logic
as a more scientific way of learning.

In 1873, Nishi helped to found Japan’s first scholarly society for solely academics (and not politics) known as the Meiji Six Society. The goals of this society were to educate and enlighten the people because they believed Japan needed an enlightened populace in order to understand and live up to its political and moral responsibilities of modernization and restoration.[5] Nishi felt that if the new state were to become enlightened as it should be, there would be no more conflict between political and scholarly obligations within the Meiji Six Society, and within Japanese society in general.[5] Nishi was unique in this society in that he maintained a view of Japanese modernization in which he reconciled traditional Confucianism with Western Philosophy and pragmatism together in order to ascertain the correct path for Japan to take.

In his Hyakuichi-Shinron, published in 1874, he went so far as to reject Confucian ethics altogether as no longer appropriate for Japan, but was careful not to reject Japanese heritage. This publication was an original piece of Nishi scholarship that dealt with two main topics: the separation of politics and morals, and the distinction between human and physical principles.[1] In regards to the first topic, Nishi felt that the later Confucians who presumed that self-cultivation was all that was necessary for ruling society were wrong, but that the original Confucians who proclaimed that the morality taught had practical application in society were right. What is more is that Nishi portrayed Confucius as a teacher of politics with a sideline of morality.[1] Nishi attempted to sever the philosophical connection between morality and politics because he thought that although they obtained the same objective – to better people’s lives – they used different methods to obtain this objective, stemming from his belief that rightness was at the base of law, whereas goodness was at the base of morality.[6] To Nishi, morality is an omnipresent thing existing within every human activity, but law is strictly limited to its defined aspects of human relations. Though morality must rely on the law within politics to keep order, it is morality, rather than the law, that will eventually penetrate and shape the people’s minds and values.[1] Nishi concludes this first topic with the idea that when it comes to civilization, politics is the machinery and morality is the lubricant that is responsible for keeping the machinery running and intact.[1] In the second topic, Nishi determines, for the first time in the East, the relationship and differences between human principles and physical principles. He discerns that physical principles and laws are a priori prerequisites for the existence of society, whereas human principles and laws are a posteriori devices derived from these physical principles and laws. Because human principles are a posteriori, they have infinite possibilities of distinctions and greater flexibility in premonitions.[1] Nishi considers morality and law to be human principles; however, that does not mean that he deems morality man-made; rather, there are feelings (not unlike the Mencian Sprouts) that exist in all humans, and it is up to human will to act upon those feelings of morality that are constant in human nature. What Nishi’s discernment led to was the first expression in the East that human society was not, in fact, a product of the invariable structure of the universe. In this way, Nishi opened up room for humans to divert the inevitability of the social hierarchy.[1]

In Jinsei Sampo Setsu (1875) he urged all Japanese to seek the goals of health, knowledge and wealth, or what he called the “three treasures,"in place of Confucian subservience and frugality. In order for society to maintain a balance of these three treasures, Nishi felt that individuals should not disrespect others’ treasures, and that individuals should assist others in acquiring their treasures, thus, if the three treasures were honored and preserved, all of society would be independent and free.[1] Moreover, Nishi thought that the Japanese government should be responsible for promoting the pursuit of these three treasures in society as well, and in turn, the political and national strengthening within the Meiji Enlightenment would not require Western rule or governmental tactics.[1] Nishi promoted that if policy were structured based on enhancing general happiness through an equal balance of domestic enforcement of law, diplomacy and military defense of society, encouragement of industry and finance, and obtainment of the state’s own three treasures, this would be the key to good government.[1]

Meiji bureaucrat

While working at the Ministry of Military Affairs, Nishi helped in drafting the Conscription Ordinance of 1873, which introduced universal conscription and laid the foundation for the Imperial Japanese Army. In his lectures to the military, he emphasized discipline and obedience over seniority and hierarchy. These ideals found their way into the subsequent Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors in 1882.

In 1879 Nishi was made the head of the

Diet of Japan after the 1890 Japanese general election
.

He was ennobled with the title of danshaku (baron) in the kazoku peerage system. His grave is at Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Legacy

Nishi Amane

Nishi Amane is considered to be the father of

Eastern thought can be reconciled with Western Philosophy. During his time, Nishi concurred that although the West was superior in the realm of philosophy, the East still had the means to become better equipped in philosophy, as he professed that philosophy was essential for making the East intellectually modernized.[1]

He was honored on a 10-yen Japanese

commemorative postage stamp
in 1952.

Nishi Amane former residence

Nishi Amane former residence in Tsuwano

The building which Nishi Amane used as his study from the age of 4 to 25 in Tsuwano still exists and is preserved as a museum. The site is surrounded by earthen walls, and in addition to the main house and storehouse, there is a garden and a farmland on the back side, which is the basic layout of a samurai residence. The main building where Nishi lived was destroyed in a fire in 1853, and the main building that remains today was rebuilt after the fire. However, the storehouse survived the fire, and is a one-story wooden structure with earthen walls and a thatched roof. Nishi's study was a three tatami mat room on the left side of the building. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1987.[14] Across the Tsuwano River, is the former residence of Mori Ogai.[15]

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0691-03080-4
    .
  2. ^ a b Cooney, Owen. "Shaping Modern Japan Through Kangaku: The Case of Nishi Amane". Masters Thesis. Columbia University. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
  3. ^ Australian National Library: MS 6681, Papers of Harold S. Williams (1898-1987) §42, Freemasonry
  4. ^
    JSTOR 2051748
    .
  5. ^
    S2CID 143520214
    .
  6. JSTOR 2383861
    .
  7. ^ Marra, Michael F. (2002). Japanese hermeneutics, pp. 89–96., p. 89, at Google Books
  8. ^ Murphy, Alex. "Traveling Sages: Translation and Reform in Japan and China in the Late Nineteenth Century" (PDF). Studies on Asia. Kenyon College. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
  9. ^
    S2CID 143585244
    .
  10. ^ a b Steben, Barry. "Nishi Amane and the Birth of "Philosophy" and "Chinese Philosophy" in the Early Meiji Japan". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ Raud, Rein. (2014). "What is Japanese about Japanese Philosophy?" In Rethinking “Japanese Studies, ed.by Mayuko Sano and Liu Jianhui. Kyoto: Nichibunken.[1]
  12. ISBN 978-0-203-00286-5
    .
  13. S2CID 144700992
    .
  14. ^ "西周旧居" (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  15. ISBN 4311750404
    .(in Japanese)

References

  • Cooney, Owen. "Shaping Modern Japan Through Kangaku: The Case of Nishi Amane". Masters Thesis. Columbia University. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
  • Defoort, Carline. "Is 'Chinese Philosophy' a Proper Name? A Response to Rein Raud", in Philosophy East and West 56, no. 4 (2006): 625–660.
  • Gluck, Carol. (1985). Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Godart, George Clinton (January 2008). "'Philosophy' or 'Religion'? The Confrontation with Foreign Categories in Late Nineteenth Century Japan". Journal of the History of Ideas. 1 69: 71–91.
  • Havens, Thomas R.H. (1970). Nishi Amane and modern Japanese thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Jansen, Marius B.
    (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Marra, Michael F. (2002). Japanese hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
  • Minear, Richard (Summer 1973). . "Nishi Amane and the Reception of Western Law in Japan". Monumenta Nipponica. 2 28: 151–175.
  • Murphy, Alex. "Traveling Sages: Translation and Reform in Japan and China in the Late Nineteenth Century". Studies on Asia. Kenyon College. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
  • Ramsey, Robert (April 2004). "The Japanese Language and the Making of Tradition". Japanese Language and Literature. 38 1: 81–110.
  • Saitō, Takako. "The meaning of Heaven according to Nishi Amane," in Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, edited by
    James W. Heisig
    (Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture,2006): 1–21.
  • Steben, Barry. "Nishi Amane and the Birth of "Philosophy" and "Chinese Philosophy" in the Early Meiji Japan".
  • Wei-fen, Chen. "The Formation of Modern Ethics in China and Japan: The Contributions of Inoue Tetsujiro and Cai Yuan-pei". Article. Retrieved 2012-05-08.

External links

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