Hayashi clan (Confucian scholars)

Hayashi clan 林氏
Titles	Rector
Founder	Hayashi Razan
Final ruler	Hayashi Gakusai
Founding year	17th century
Dissolution	1867

The Hayashi clan (林氏 Hayashi-shi) was a Japanese samurai clan which served as important advisors to the Tokugawa shoguns. Among members of the clan to enjoy powerful positions in the shogunate was its founder Hayashi Razan, who passed on his post as hereditary rector of the neo-Confucianist Shōhei-kō school to his son, Hayashi Gahō, who also passed it on to his son, Hayashi Hōkō; this line of descent continued until the end of Hayashi Gakusai's tenure in 1867. However, elements of the school carried on until 1888, when it was folded into the newly organized Tokyo University.

Critical analysis

The Hayashi family's special position as personal advisors to the shoguns gave their school an imprimatur of legitimacy that no other contemporary Confucian academy possessed.^[1] This meant that Hayashi views or interpretation were construed as dogma.^[2] Anyone challenging the Hayashi status quo was perceived as trying to challenge Tokugawa hegemony; and any disagreements with the Hayashi were construed as threatening the larger structure of complex power relations within which the Confucian field was embedded.^[3] Any disputes in the Confucian field in the 1650s and 1660s may have originated in personal rivalries or authentic philosophical disagreements, but any issues became inextricably intertwined with the dominating political presence of the shogun and those who ruled in his name.^[1]

In this period, the Tokugawas and the fudai daimyō were only the most powerful of the nearly 250 domain-holding lords in the country. By filling the high offices of the shogunate with his trusted, loyal daimyō, the shoguns paradoxically increased the power of these office holders and diminished the powers which were once held by Ieyasu alone.,^[4] which caused each to more zealously guard against anything which might be seen to minimize intertwined power and prestige; and the varying characters of the shoguns further exacerbated this development.^[5] The Edo period power structure itself discouraged of dissent from what became the accepted Hayashi othodoxy.

In the spectrum of the Tokugawa retainer band, the Hayashi family head himself was a high-ranking hatamoto (thus coming under the jurisdiction of the wakadoshiyori), and possessed an income of 3,500 koku.^[6]

Notable clan members

Colonnade at the reconstructed Yushima Seidō.

In the early years of the Edo period, the seidō or Confucian "Hall of Sages" was located in Shinobugaoka; but in 1961, it was moved to a new location at the top of a hill in the Yushima section of Edo.^[7] The hereditary heads of the Yushima Seidō (later, the Edo daigaku) are identified below.

• Founder: Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), formerly Hayashi Nobukatsu, also known as Dōshun (1st son of Nobutoki).^[8]
• Son of founder: Hayashi Gahō (1618–1688), formerly Hayashi Harukatsu (3rd son of Razan).^[9]
• 1st rector: Hayashi Hōkō (1644–1732), formerly Hayashi Nobuhatsu (son of Gahō).^[7]
• 2nd rector: Hayashi Ryūkō (1681–1758).
• 3rd rector: Hayashi Hōkoku (1721–1773).
• 4th rector: Hayashi Hōtan (1761–1787).
• 5th rector: Hayashi Kimpō (1767–1793), also known as Hayashi Kanjun or Hayashi Nobutaka^[10]
• 6th rector: Hayashi Jussai (1768–1841), formerly Matsudaira Norihira, 3rd son of Iwamura daimyo Matsudaira Norimori—Norihira was adopted into Hayashi family when Kimpō/Kanjun died childless; explained shogunate foreign policy to Emperor Kōkaku in 1804.,^[11] also known as Hayashi Jitsusai^[12] and Hayashi Kō.^[10]
• 7th rector: Hayashi Teiu (1791–1844).
• 8th rector: Hayashi Sōkan (1828–1853).
• 9th rector: Hayashi Fukusai (1800–1859), also known as Hayashi Akira, chief Japanese negotiator for the Treaty of Kanagawa^[13]
• 10th rector: Hayashi Gakusai (1833–1906), formerly Hayashi Noboru, head of Yushima Seidō in 1867.
  • Hayashi Nobutoki (1583–1657), father of Hayashi Razan.^[10]
  • Hayashi Nobozumi (1585–1683), brother of Hayashi Razan.^[14]
  • Hayashi Yoshikatsu, brother of Hayashi Nobutoki and adoptive father of Hayashi Razan.^[10]
  • Hayashi Dokkōsai, formerly Hayashi Morikatsu (born 1624), 4th son of Hayashi Razan
  • Hayashi Shunzai or Hayashi Shunsai (1618–1680), alternate spellings for early name of Hayashi Gahō.^[10]
  • Hayashi Jo, son of Hayashi Razan, brother of Gahō and Morikatsu.^[14]
  • Hayashi Shuntoku (1624–1661).
  • Hayashi Baisai.
  • Hayashi Kansai.
  • Torii Yōzō, 2nd son of Jussai—adopted into Torii family^[15]
  • Satō Issai (1772–1859), adopted into Hayashi family from Iwamura, becomes professorial head of academy in 1805.^[16]
  • Hayashi Kakuryō (1806–1878), Confucian scholar who never gave up his top-knot.^[17]
  • Hayashi Ryōsai (1807–1849).^[18]

See also

• Hayashi clan (disambiguation)

Notes

1. Yamshita, Samuel Hideo. "Yamasaki Ansai and Confucian School Relations, 1650–1675," Early Modern Japan. 9:2, 3–18 (Fall 2001).
2. Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680, pp. 107–108.
3. Bourdieu, Pierre et al. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 106.
4. Totman, Conrad. (1967). Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600–1843, p. 208.
5. Yamashita, p. 16; Bourdieu, p. 106.
6. Ogawa, Edo no hatamoto jiten, p. 85.
7. De Bary, William et al. (2005). Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2, p. 443.
8. Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822, p. 65; Cullen, L.M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds, p. 59.
9. Screech, p. 65.
10. Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric et al. (2005). Japan Encyclopedia, p. 300.]
11. Cullen, pp. 117; 163.
12. Asiatic Society of Japan. (1908). Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, v36:1(1908), p. 151.
13. Cullen, p. 178 n11.
14. Nussbaum, p. 301.
15. Cullen, p. 159.
16. Cullen, p. 163.
17. Mehl, Margaret. (2003). Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline and Transformation of the "Kangaku juku," p. 49.
18. Mehl, p. 92.

References

Flags mark the entrance to the reconstructed Yushima Seidō (Tokyo).

• Bourdieu, Pierre and Lòeic J. D. Wacquant. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-06741-6
• Cullen, Louis .M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82155-X (cloth). ISBN 0-521-52918-2 (paper)
• De Bary, William Theodore, Carol Gluck, Arthur E. Tiedemann. (2005). Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12984-X; ISBN 978-0-231-12984-8; OCLC 255020415
• Online Encyclopedia of Shinto (19 Sept. 2007)
• Mehl, Margaret. (2003). Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline and Transformation of the "Kangaku juku". Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). ISBN 87-91114-94-2
• Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01753-6; ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 48943301
• Ogawa, Kyōichi (2003). Edo no hatamoto jiten. Tokyo: Kōdansha.
• Ooms, Herman (1975). Charismatic Bureaucrat: a political biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu, 1758–1829. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-63031-5
• __________. (1998). Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570–1680. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-939512-85-8
• Ponsonby-Fane, Richard A.B. (1956). Kyoto: the Old Capital, 794–1869. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society.
• Timon Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1720-X
• Totman, Conrad D. (1967). Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Further reading

• Dore, Ronald Phillip. (1965). Education in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. [reprinted University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1984. ISBN 0-939512-15-7; ISBN 978-0-939512-15-7 (cloth) -- ISBN 0-939512-59-9; ISBN 978-0-939512-59-1 (paper)]
• Hori Isao (堀勇雄). (1964). Hayashi Razan (林羅山). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. ISBN 4-642-05185-6.
• Totman, Conrad. (1983). Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun. San Francisco: Heian International. ISBN 0-89346-210-1; ISBN 978-0-89346-210-9 (paper)