Interpreting the Qin in Tokugawa Japan: Ogyu Sorai’s Studies on Chinese Music

Abstract

The presentation tackles an extremely important issue in East Asian music and Tokugawa intellectual history—the question why Japanese political thinker Ogyu Sorai (1666–1728 ), in the last phase of his career, composed a series of works on the Chinese qin music based on his reading of the two ancient manuscripts discovered in the early years of Kyoho (1716–1736). Written in Japanese, Ogyu Sorai’s four treatises on Chinese qin music has been looked upon as short introductory essays prepared for non-literati musicians. Nevertheless, close scrutiny reveals that Ogyu consciously applied Confucian teachings to political 15 Abstracts Thursday Morning: Session 1-  issues through his music projects. Ogyu was awesome in this regard not because of his expertise in Chinese philology, but due to his ability to manipulate existing facts and present them in a manner that was convincing to his contemporaries. In short, Ogyu himself was absolutely conscious of the political implications of his Chinese qin music studies, both within Japan and without. Therefore, an in-depth inquiry into the nature and causes of Ogyu’s studies on qin music is indispensable in pursuing a full picture of Ogyu’s ideology. The results drawn from this presentation not only sheds new light on the history of East Asian music, but also addresses crucial lacuna in the study of Tokugawa intellectual history.