EAST 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Filial Piety, Motoori Norinaga, Aizawa Seishisai
15 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Tokugawa treats itself as a second court and gets all the domains to give it tribute. Political authority centered around emperor: tokugawa find legitimacy through emperor, tokugawa see themselves as restoring the emperor, doesn"t really have a lot of actual power. Social structure is hierarchal, upper and lower keep their places as seen in nature: heaven above, earth below, you will be placed in a natural category that you have to follow. Ideologies assumed and uninterrupted continuum between the extraterrestrial and earthly worlds, therefore projecting a timeless, inviolable and harmonious image of the cosmos onto society. Tokugawa writers acknowledged that the emperor was the hidden center of gravity in their validation of political authority: tokugawa have more power, but are below emperor. Mediation between 2 ideas: restoration (chuko) strongly supported by mito thought, return to antiquity (fukko) strongly supported by nativists.
