Dr.T.Kawashima holds that Nakae Toju interpreted the Confucian concept of filial piety on the basis of the concept of compassion (恩) and that Nakae's interpretation of filial piety was unknown in Chinese thought and peculiar to Japanese feudal thought. Dr.Kawashima's view has, in fact, laid the grounds for Dr.J.Morimoto's studies of the intellectual history of the Edo period. This author, however, disagrees. First, the concept that filial piety is based on compassion is found in some Chinese philosophical writings. Second, Nakae Toju, was not the first Japanese thinker to mention this relationship between filial piety and compassion. Long before Nakae Toju, a Heian Buddhist monk, Kukai, had held such a view, though he understood it in a Buddhist way. Many later Japanese thinkers noticed the same conceptual link, and Nakae Toju was just one of those thinkers. Thus, it is wrong to claim that Nakae Toju's interpretation of filial piety shows a "feudalistic character" peculiar to the Edo period. Dr.Kawashima also believes that filial piety served principally as the morality of everyday life. But the most dominant aspect of this concept of filial piety in East Asia is a religious one.... as expressed in ancester worship, the desire to hand down one's life to one's children, etc. The function of filial piety as a morality for everday life is secondary to this. In fact, it was none other than Nakae Toju who stressed this religious aspect of filial piety.
View full abstract