Although East Asian religion is commonly characterized as
"syncretic", the historical interaction of Buddhist, Confucian, and
other traditions is often neglected by scholars of mainstream
religious thought. In this thought-provoking study, Janine Sawada
moves beyond conventional approaches to the history of Japanese
religion by analyzing the ways in which Neo-Confucianism and Zen
formed a popular synthesis in early modern Japan. She shows how
Shingaku, a teaching founded by merchant Ishida Baigan, blossomed
after his death into a widespread religious movement that
selectively combined ideas and practices from these traditions.
Drawing on new research into original Shingaku sources, Sawada
challenges the view that the teaching was a facile "merchant ethic"
by illuminating the importance of Shingaku mystical experience and
its intimate relation to moral cultivation in the program developed
by Baigan's successor, Teshima Toan. This book also suggests the
need for an approach to the history of Japanese education that
accounts for the informal transmission of ideas as well as
institutional schooling. Shingaku contributed to the development of
Japanese education by effectively disseminating moral and religious
knowledge on a large scale to the less-educated sectors of Tokugawa
society. Sawada interprets the popularity of the movement as part
of a general trend in early modern Japan in which ordinary people
sought forms of learning that could be pursued in the context of
daily life.
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