Ogyu Sorai

Ogyū Sorai (荻生 徂徠^?) (March 21, 1666, Edo, Japan – February 28, 1728, Edo), pen name Butsu Sorai, was a Japanese Confucian philosopher. He has been described as the most influential such scholar during the Tokugawa period. His primary area of study was in applying the teachings of Confucianism to government and social order. He responded to contemporary economic and political failings in Japan, as well as the culture of mercantilism and the dominance of old institutions that had become weak with extravagance. Sorai rejected the moralism of Song Confucianism and instead looked to the ancient works. He argued that allowing emotions to be expressed was important and nurtured Chinese literature in Japan for this reason. Sorai attracted a large following with his teachings and created the Sorai school, which would become an influential force in further Confucian scholarship in Japan.

Sorai was born the second son of a samurai who served as the personal physician of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (徳川綱吉), who would become the fifth shogun. Sorai studied the Zhu Xi version of Song Confucianism, and by 1690 he became a private teacher of Chinese classics. He went into the service of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, a senior councillor to Tsunayoshi, in 1696. He left in 1709 after the death of Tsunayoshi and would turn away from the teachings of Zhu Xi to develop his own philosophy and school. He is credited with the creation of kō shōgi, an unusual form of chess.

Sorai would write several influential works. In them he identified two fundamental weaknesses in the philosophy of Song Confucianism. The first was in the bakufu-domain system, which by the eighteenth century was in trouble. As a result, he doubted whether the reliance on finding an individual's ethical good was sufficient. As such he argued that the political crisis of the time required more than perfecting moral character. Moreover, he saw the ancient Chinese sage-kings as concerned not only with morality but also with government itself. His second disagreement with Song Confucianism was that he felt putting too much emphasis on morality repressed human nature, which was based on human emotion.

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