Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, is just over two hours away from Tokyo by train. Anyone who has read Lu Xun's famous essay "Mr. Fujino" knows this Japanese place name, and here is well-known, as well as the late Ming scholar Zhu Shunshui who buried his bones here.
Zhu Shunshui (1600-1682), a native of Yuyao, Shaoxing Province, Zhejiang, was a predecessor of Lu Xun. His original name was Zhu Zhiyu (朱之瑜), the character Chu Xuan (一作鲁璵), shunshui is the name of his hometown Yuyao Yihe River. In 1659, Zhu Shunshui went to Japan for the seventh time and has lived forever ever since. The second-generation Mito Domain Daimyo Tokugawa Mitsuyoshi hired him to give a lecture in Edo, and he was so respectful that he did not dare to call him by his first name, that is, "Mr. Shunshui". Zhu Shunshui has been lecturing in Japan for more than 20 years and has spent a stable and fulfilling twilight year. Shunsui was not a guest of Stagnant Mizuto, and he died in 1682 at the age of 83 in his villa in Edo (now the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tokyo). This villa was built for it by Hikari. After his death, Mitsuki remembered his merits in enlightenment and spreading scholarship, and buried him in the cemetery of the previous lords of the Mito Domain, following Shunshui's last words, the cemetery was a turtle shell tomb built according to the Ming Dynasty burial customs. For more than three hundred years, although there have been constant enmity between China and Japan, Zhu Shunshui has always been highly revered in Japan, and the cemetery is still well preserved. Zhu Shunshui's name is more widely known in Japan than in China.
Zhu Shusui Images
Why did Zhu Shunshui live in Japan?
Zhu Shunshui spent half his life upside down and went through ups and downs. He has been committed to the cause of anti-Qing and restoration, taking advantage of the convenience of merchants in Ningbo Port, traveling to Annam and Nagasaki in Japan, or begging for help, or buying military supplies, or engaging in trade, in order to fund Zheng Chenggong and other anti-Qing organizations, for fifteen years. According to shunshui's proud protégé Anton shoujo in Japan, Shunshui traveled to and from Japan seven times and Annan six times in his lifetime, all in order to oppose the great cause of the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty.
In 1659, Zhu Shunshui went to Siming Prefecture (present-day Xiamen) to join Zheng Chenggong's Northern Expeditionary Army, and after Zheng's army defeated Nanjing, he fled to Zhoushan. At that time, the Manchu Qing Dynasty had become a major trend in the Central Plains, and in order to save his honor, Zhu Shunshui fled to Nagasaki on a Japanese merchant ship, and he lived in Japan until his death.
Japan is not easy to live in. When Zhu Shunshui went into exile in Japan, Japan had been locked in the country for nearly half a century. In order to cope with the increasingly frequent entry of Western European countries into East Asia and to prevent the "Tatars" from Northeast Asia from attacking, Japan implemented a policy of locking up the country, allowing its own people not to go abroad, those who have already left the country not to return, and even more forbidden for foreigners to settle in Japan. Nagasaki was the only port where trade could be made to the Netherlands, China and North Korea. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of Jiangnan merchants went to Nagasaki to stay without success, and Zhu Shunshui was also in a dilemma.
The turnaround came in the following year. In 1660, a samurai named Andong Provincial Nunnery frequently appeared in Zhu Shunshui's apartment. Andong Province,no.1 Wasong Shou (号守約), a samurai of the Yanagyukawa Domain of Fukuoka, was born into a samurai family, but aspired to learn from sages and often traveled around to study. When Zhu Shunshui first arrived, no one appreciated him, and his life was very difficult. After several interviews, Shou Yue admired Shunshui's personality and learning, sympathized with his plight, and asked him to stay in Japan to teach, and joined him, becoming Shunshui's first Japanese disciple. Later, with the efforts of keeping the contract, nagasaki town inspector finally made an exception and issued a settlement permit for Zhu Shunshui.
Shun Shui was isolated overseas and had difficulties in making a living, so he not only helped him settle down but also took out half of his feng lu to support the teacher. There are also young and old in the shou family, who came to Nagasaki from The Yanagawa Domain to study with Shunshui, and the travel expenses also have to be realized by food, and their livelihood is quite embarrassing. Keeping the covenant was often ridiculed by his colleagues and relatives for this, but he did not care about it, and diligently learned to be poor and happy.
In 1663, a fire broke out in Nagasaki, and Zhu Shunshui's apartment was burned down, and he had to take shelter under the eaves of the temple. After hearing about the covenant, he rushed to Nagasaki to comfort his sister despite his sister's serious illness and gave everything he had to build another residence for him. He said, "I provide for the teacher to know everything in all directions, the teacher is hungry and cold, what face do I still have to live in the world?" Zhu Shunshui was halfway throughout his life, full of the heat and cold of the world, but this Japanese disciple who was twenty years younger treated him as "like a father and son", shunshui regarded him as a confidant, and taught what he had learned in his life. The learning of keeping the covenant also grew rapidly, and he later became a well-known scholar with great achievements.
As more and more protégés came to study, The influence of Zhu Shunshui spread far and wide, and even entered the horizon of the upper echelons of the Edo shogunate. In the sixth year of settling in Nagasaki, Zhu Shunshui's life ushered in a new situation.
Why did Shunshui science blossom in Japan?
At that time, Tokugawa Mitsuyoshi, who was assisting the government in Edo Castle, had heard about Zhu Shunshui's deeds and learning, and was deeply impressed. For the sake of prudence, he first sent his courtier Koizai shun to Nagasaki to inquire about the truth. In May 1665, Koi Otaku shun visited the Confucians in Kyushu and talked with Chinese scholars living in Japan, and found that Zhu Shunshui was indeed learned, so he recommended him to Hikari. 8 Moonlight welcomed Shunshui to Mito, "played the gong court", and hired Shunshui as a guest teacher, lecturing between Edo and Mito.
Tokugawa Mitsuhito (1629–1690), courtesy name Ryūrō, was the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the second-generation lord of Mito Domain. Tokugawa Mitsuyoshi was a generation of Ming emperors of the Edo period, and his career was full of legends: young and crazy, weak crowns read the "History of Boyi" in the year of the weak crown, vowed to take the Chinese sages as a model, like Sima Qian, to revise the history of Japan, and since then he has changed his predecessors and worked hard to learn, and has become a big person. Hikari's deeds and deeds are widely praised in Japan, and are still a popular subject in historical novels, films and television.
Zhu Shunshui's preaching and teaching in Japan not only brought a new wind to Edo scholarship, but his teachings also blossomed in Japan. As Zhu Shunshui's number one protégé, the high-ranking and powerful Tokugawa Mitsuyoshi put the teacher's ideas and teachings into policy guidelines, whether in the central government or later returned to the territory to govern local affairs, he paid attention to the way of benevolence and forgiveness, strictly prohibited extravagance, and paid attention to the sufferings of the people; advocated practical learning, rewarded peasant workers, widely developed education, and encouraged scholarship.
Zhu Shunshui's encounter in Japan is not accidental. At the beginning of the founding of the Edo shogunate, Zhu Zixue was enshrined as the national ideology, Confucianism was revered, Shunshui, as a great Confucian who represented the forefront of Chinese scholarship, and also had a loyal and patriotic personality, was enshrined as a "victorious guest teacher", and was deeply treated and admired by the Japanese government and the public, and the followers were like clouds, just like Liang Qichao admired, "Shunshui gave great influence to the people of Japan with his extremely bright and handsome personality, extremely plain and profound knowledge, and extremely sincere and kind feelings." He devoted himself to disseminating the chinese study of the practical application of the world, and trained many outstanding scholars, which not only contributed to the development and maturity of the far-reaching "Mito Studies" in the history of Japanese scholarship, but also made Confucian culture shine with different vitality overseas.
Mito studies is a major academic school in modern Japan, and was formed in the mid-17th century by a group of Mito scholars with Tokugawa Mitsuhito as the core in compiling the History of Great Japan. The occurrence, development and even later achievements of Mito Studies are inseparable from the nourishment and enlightenment of "ShunShui Studies". In the early period of its origins, scholars from Mitsuru and Anjiku Shopo to Koizai Shun were all protégés of Shunshui and grew up in the history of shushi; in the later period, the ninth lord of the clan, Tokugawa Kisaki (1800-1860), set up the clan school "Hongdokan" in Mito as a starting point, reviving historiography and advocating the study of Western science and technology culture as the main feature of this school. Tokugawa Kisaki was a highly accomplished politician at the end of the shogunate, studied under the Mito Domain Confucian scholar Aizawa Masashisai, and was also a descendant of Shunshui from the academic vein.
Bronze statue of Zhu Shunshui standing in Mito City (Image source: People's China Japanese Edition, Photo by Wu Yiwei, June 2014)
The so-called Shunshui science is Chinese scholarship with Zhu Shunshui's "practical theory and actual learning" as the core content, that is, the study style oriented by advocating practice, paying attention to reality, paying attention to practice, and pursuing merit, which is an important part of the study of the application of the world during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, and originates from a group of thinkers who have advanced with the times, such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, and Zhu Shunshui. Influenced by Shunshui Studies, the Mito School of Governance focused on the study of the Shih Ji Min, which became the basic consensus of grassroots samurai in various places more than a century later. At the end of the shogunate, Japan was forced to open a country under the threat of Western guns, and this idea was transformed into the positive and enterprising revolutionary spirit of the restorationists of the Mito, Choshu, Satsuma and other domains, which promoted The rapid transformation of Japan into a modern country. Michihiro Ishihara, a scholar who studied Zhu Shunshui's spiritual relationship with Japanese culture, said that it was no accident that at the end of the shogunate period, Japan miraculously emerged such as Sakuma Elephant Mountain, Watanabe Huashan, and Yoshida Shoin, who were high-minded and had strong executive power.
Another influence of Shunshui on Mito studies is the research characteristics of heavy history and shang history, which is also the academic tradition of inheriting the Zhejiang Eastern School of China. Zhejiang Eastern Scholarship is mainly centered on Yuyao, Shaoxing, Xiaoshan and other counties east of the Qiantang River in Zhejiang Province, and Huang Zongxi, Zhu Shunshui, Quan Zuwang, Zhang Xuecheng and other generations belong to it. Under Shunshui's teachings, the Mito school became an important town of Edo historiography.
In 1657, Tokugawa Mitsuhito opened the History Bureau at his mansion in Edo to edit the History of Great Japan, and at first only four Confucian students participated, but the research and development power was insufficient and the fire was encountered, and the work was always in a state of stagnation. Later, Shunshui participated in it, and the number of backbone editors increased to twenty, and the work of revision of history was fully carried out. In 1668, the History Bureau was officially named "Zhangkaoguan", with Zhu Shunshui as the chief adviser, most of whom were also from his disciples, and the editor-in-chief An Jizhuangbo was Shunshui's proud disciple. This large-scale history of the country was finally completed in 1906, and the history of Japan was re-told using the Confucian values of "honoring the king and the lowly".
In ancient Japan, japan was a centralized state, and in the late Heian period, the king's power was lifted, the samurai power was raised, and the power fell into the hands of the shoguns of Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo, and the emperor's court stood aside for six or seven hundred years. The Mito school advocates the idea of honoring the king, as An Ji Po said: "The righteousness of spring and autumn, the king is great." According to this criterion, some historical events and figures have been re-evaluated, the most typical example of which is the rehabilitation of the japanese warlord Masanari Nanmu during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Masanari Nangi was a famous Japanese warlord in the early 14th century, and was the mainstay of the overthrow of the Kamakura shogunate and the imperial power of ZTE. In 1331, Nanmu participated in the fall of the curtain campaign launched by Emperor Go-Daigo, and contributed to the revival of imperial power. In February 1336, when the former King of Qin rebelled against the Ashikaga Clan, Nanmu led a coalition of King Qin to resist, but committed suicide by defeating all the soldiers. The Ashikaga clan supported Emperor Hikari on the throne, and the deposed Emperor Go-Daigo fled to Yoshino in southern Kyoto with an artifact symbolizing imperial power to establish a separate center in the south of Kyoto, coexisting with the Kyoto Imperial Court, which was the era of the Northern and Southern Dynasties in Japanese history. In 1392, the Emperor of the Southern Dynasty handed over the artifact and the Southern and Northern Dynasties were unified. The winner of the king and the loser Kou, Nanmu Zhengcheng because of his loyalty to the defeated Southern Dynasty, often appeared in the history books as a "rebel thief" and "rebel subject". Shunshui believes that according to the standard of "Spring and Autumn Righteousness", the Southern Dynasty has an artifact symbolizing the orthodoxy of imperial power, which is the legitimate monarchy, and the Northern Dynasty is an illegal regime supported by the rebels. As a result, in this "History of Japan", Nanmu Masanari was praised as a "loyal subject", and even ascended all the way to the level, and was sacrificed as a "protector of the country", and there is still a statue of him in the Imperial Palace Square. The Shunshui view of history, embodied in the History of Great Japan, later became a pioneering theory in the reform and restoration of the japanese state in modern times.
In front of Tokyo's Tokyo Imperial Palace Plaza, Nanmu is forming a bronze statue
In the early nineteenth century, as Western forces entered the waters of East Asia in all directions, the "theory of yiyi" advocated by Mito Studies became a major trend of thought in the later schools, and then spread widely throughout the country. In the summer of 1853, U.S. Admiral Perry led four ironclad ships to crash through the gates of Japan, triggering various domestic crises. In the whirlpool of the great turbulent times, Mito Gaku became the mainstay of the state ideology, and the "Honorable King" advocated by it became a banner that gathered various forces in Japan, not only subverting the shogunate rule, but also enabling Japanese society to move from feudal division to national unification. Liang Qichao summed up the three-hundred-year academic history of the Qing Dynasty, and commented on Shunshui's contribution to the reconstruction of the Japanese state: "Tokugawa Mitsuyoshi wrote a "History of Great Japan", which was specifically marked by the meaning of 'honoring the unity of the king'. Fifty years ago, Tokugawa Keiki returned to power, abolished the domain and established the prefecture, becoming the great cause of the Meiji Restoration, and This book is the most creditable. And the study of the light is all subject to Shunshui. Therefore, Shunshui was not a benefactor of the Tokugawa Dynasty, but also had a direct and fundamental influence on the Japanese Restoration. ”
The "reading seeds" planted by Zhu Shunshui in Mito blossomed and bore fruit two hundred years later, achieving earth-shattering feats, which he may have never expected.
bibliography:
1, Ichiro Matsuno, Anse-shoan Nishi-Japanese Thing Shinno 6, Nishinippon Shinkosha, 1999
2. Ishihara Michihiro, Zhu Shui Water, Yoshikawa Kobun 1961