Hayashi Razan - Political Theorist

Political Theorist

As a political theorist, Hayashi Daigaku-no-kami Razan lived to witness his philosophical and pragmatic reasoning become a foundation for the dominant ideology of the bakufu until the end of the 18th century. This evolution developed in part from Razan's equating samurai with the cultured governing class (although the samurai were largely illiterate at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate). Razan helped to legitimize the role of the militaristic bakufu at the beginning of its existence. His philosophy is also important in that it encouraged the samurai class to cultivate themselves, a trend which would become increasingly widespread over the course of his lifetime and beyond. Razan's aphorism encapsulates this view:

"No true learning without arms and no true arms without learning."

Hayashi Razan and his family would have played a significant role is helping to crystallize the theoretical underpinnings of the Tokugawa regime.

In January 1858, it would be Hayashi Akira, the hereditary Daigaku-no-kami descendant of Hayashi Razan who would head the bakufu delegation which sought advice from the emperor in deciding how to deal with newly assertive foreign powers. This would have been the first time the Emperor's counsel was actively sought since the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The most easily identified consequence of this transitional overture would be the increased numbers of messengers which were constantly streaming back and forth between Tokyo and Kyoto during the next decade. There is no small irony in the fact that this 19th-century scholar/bureaucrat would find himself at a crucial nexus of managing political change—moving arguably "by the book" through uncharted waters with well-settled theories as the only guide.