“Defining the Old Japan”— Interpretations of Self-Cultivation in the Late Meiji and Taishō Periods

This presentation will highlight developing views of “Chinese learning” (kangaku) and Rinzai Zen practice (sanzen) as related resources for personal cultivation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The reliance on classical textual studies for moral and intellectual development is illustrated by the regular attendance of laypeople, especially university students and other young people with career aspirations, at Zen master Shaku Sōen’s sermon (teishō) series in the Tokyo area. I cite an example from one of these talks in which he contextualizes and comments at length on a passage from the Mencius following the interpretation of Imakita Kōsen, his predecessor as abbot of Engakuji in Kamakura. From the mid-1890s a growing number of young people in the Tokyo area not only attended these seemingly ecumenical lectures but also experimented with Zen practice at Engakuji and other nearby sites. They reportedly considered Zen a form of shūyō or moral discipline that would help advance their life goals in the rapidly modernizing nation of Japan. In this regard the great novelist, Natsume Sōseki, was representative of his generation; as a young man he, too, visited Kamakura and tried to practice Zen under Shaku Sōen. Sōseki’s later remarks about his experience in a short testimony called Iroke o sareyo, and indirectly in his novel, Mon, give us a special glimpse into how “old” traditions of self-improvement were being redefined during this period.

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