Kokugaku

Thus, Mito scholars synthesized Confucian ethics with Kokugaku theories about Japan's divine past.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

After Norinaga's death, Kokugaku practice itself came to be extraordinarily divisive.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, modern ideologues used language and ideas derived from Kokugaku discourse to create of a new ideology of imperial rule.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

There is an important and ongoing national narrative in which Kokugaku is valorized as the intellectual movement that marked the emergence of a Japanese national consciousness in the late eighteenth century, with the result that the early modern discourse in the modern Japanese discussions of social, political, and cultural identity.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

Of those who took up the study of the ancient texts following Keichû, the most notable for the formation of Kokugaku was Kamo no Mabuchi (1730-1801), whom Norinaga would claim as his teacher, although the two only met on one occasion.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

“Kokugaku” came to be widely used to refer to scholarship that focused on Japanese texts with the aim to discerning the distinct cultural characteristics of Japan.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

Those associated with the Kokugaku movement criticized the study of the Confucian classics, the primary object of intellectual endeavor in early modern Japan, and made the earliest Japanese works, which they asserted had escaped Chinese influence, the object of philological and exegetical examination.

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

A similar point was made by Saigô Nobutsuna who asserted that Kokugaku was characterized by a set of methodological and historical fallacies, the widespread acceptance of which led to the production of a “passive,”

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

He linked Kokugaku with other indigenous movements against Western imperialism in East Asia and recast it as a “modern” and

The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School Burns, Susan 2007

Kokugaku means "Japan studies," and this university (with an enrollment of about 5,000) is one of two in Japan accredited to train Shinto priests.

Evolution News & Views 2009