Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
One of the interesting questions concerning the Meiji Restoration of 1868 is the degree to which the Western-oriented intellectuals of Japan compromised their scholarly curiosity about European civilization by serving the pre-Restoration Tokugawa government and its successor, the Meiji oligarchy. In what ways might their duties as civil servants colour their objectivity in studying the newly found academic disciplines of the West? What tensions did late Tokugawa and early Meiji scholar-bureaucrats perceive between their investigations of European knowledge and their service in a partisan regime? An examination of the career of Nishi Amane (1829–1897), who was an important scholar of Western philosophy as well as a bureaucrat in both the Tokugawa and Meiji governments, casts some light on the problem of the intellectual as public servant in early modern Japan. This study will concentrate on three important events in Nishi's life: his decision to flee his feudal clan in order to study the West in 1854; his refusal to join the Restoration movement in 1868; and his defence of the idea that scholars could serve the new state without compromising their objectivity in 1874.
1 Research for this essay was supported by a grant from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program. A previous version of the essay was read at the New England Association for Asian Studies' annual meeting, Middletown, Connecticut, October 1967.Google Scholar
2 Ogai, Mori (Rintaro), Nishi Amane den, Ogai zenshū, Tokyo, 1923–1927, VII, p. 135.Google Scholar
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., pp. 135–36.
5 Kyoichi, Kazue, ‘Nishi Amane no shogai to sono shiso’, Tetsugaku kaishi, 9 (1958), p. 6.Google Scholar
6 Kuwaki, Gen'yoku, Meiji no tetsugakkai, Tokyo, 1943, pp. 10–12.Google Scholar
7 Nihon kindaishi jiten, ed. Kyoto Daigaku Bungakubu Kokushi, Kenkyushitsu, Tokyo, 1958, p. 393;Google ScholarRyoen, Minamoto, ‘Meiji ishin to jitsugaku shiso’, Meiji ishinshi no mondaiten, ed.Yoshio, SakataTokyo, 1962, p. 98.Google Scholar
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10 Quoted in Ogai, Nishi Amane den, p. 165. Presumably the Kagoshiima battle to which Koyama refers was the August 1863 shelling of Kagoshima by the British after the Richardson incident.Google Scholar See Beasley, W. G., The Modem History of Japan, London, 1963, pp. 84–5.Google Scholar
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12 Minamoto, ‘Meiji ishin to jitsugaku shiso’, p. 103.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., pp. 103–4.
14 See Blacker, Carmen, The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi, Cambridge, 1964, p. 9.Google Scholar
15 Funayama Shin'ichi criticizes their bureaucratic mentalities and excessive respect for power in Meiji tetsugakushi kenkyū, Tokyo, 1959, p. 67.Google Scholar
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18 Tsuda, , ‘Gakusha shokubunron no hyo’ Meiroku zasshi, 2 (February 1874),Google ScholarMeiji bunka zenshū, ed. Yoshino, Sakuzo, Tokyo, 1927–1930, XVIII, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar
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21 ‘Higakusha shokubunron’, Meiroku zasshi, 2 (February 1874), Meiji bunka zenshū, XVIII, p. 61.Google Scholar
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., p. 60.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid. Nishi elaborated on this theme in a speech in October 1877 to a group of scholars who formed the nucleus of the Tokyo University faculty. The speech was entitled Gakumon wa engen o fukakusuru ni aru no ron and appears in Nishi Amane Zenshū, new seres, I, pp. 568–73.
