Yamazaki Ansai - Influence/Legacy

Influence/Legacy

Yamazaki Ansai was part of a larger movement in the early Tokugawa era that revived and helped proliferate Neo-Confucian thought in Japan. He was the first to introduce the writings of the Korean Neo-Confucian scholar Yi T'ogeye to Japan, and was instrumental in popularizing Zhu Xi's thought (partly due to his connections with the government). His political theory was appropriated by the Tokugawa Bakufu, as a means to legitimate the suppression of political contestation.

The institutions that Ansai had created (the Kimon school and Suika Shinto) did not last for very long (in their original forms, as Ansai had intended). However, the power of Ansai's ideas and the influence he exerted on a large number of his students have had vast repercussions. Ansai's Suika Shinto transformed Shinto into a political ideology that was later incorporated by ultra-nationalist thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. In his scholarly research of Shinto texts, Ansai was able to break the monopoly on Shinto doctrine, by freeing it from the private storehouses of specialist, Shinto circles (Yoshida, Ise), and thereby making it available for future generations to freely study and interpret.

Although the Kimon school suffered from various schisms (both during and after Ansai's time), its lineage has lasted until present times. After Ansai's death, his students continued to preach some form of his Confucian or Suika Shinto thought, to both commoners and Bakufu officials alike. A large number of Kimon scholars later filled the ranks of the Bakufu College during the Kansei Reforms.