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 shōguns. Among members of the clan in 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.

Hayashi clan position

The Hayashi family's special position as personal advisors to the shōguns 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 shōgun 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 shōguns 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 shōguns further exacerbated this development.[5] The Edo period power structure itself discouraged of dissent from what became the accepted Hayashi orthodoxy.

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

Heads of clan

Founder: Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), formerly Hayashi Nobukatsu, also known as Dōshun (1st son of Nobutoki).[7]
Son of founder: Hayashi Gahō (1618–1688), formerly Hayashi Harukatsu (3rd son of Razan).[8]

The position Daigaku no kami (大学頭, litt. Head of the school) identified the head of the chief educational institution of the state. It was conferred by the shogun in 1691 to Hayashi Hōkō when the Neo-Confucian academy moved to land provided by the shogunate at Yushima. This academic title became hereditary for the ten descendants who followed in succession.[9]

1st Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Hōkō (1644–1732), formerly Hayashi Nobuhatsu (son of Gahō).[10]
2nd Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Ryūkō (1681–1758).
3rd Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Hōkoku (1721–1773).
4th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Hōtan (1761–1787).
5th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Kimpō (1767–1793), also known as Hayashi Kanjun or Hayashi Nobutaka[11]
6th Daigaku no Kami: 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.,[12] also known as Hayashi Jitsusai[13] and Hayashi Kō.[11]
7th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Teiu (1791–1844).
8th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Sōkan (1828–1853).
9th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Fukusai (1800–1859), also known as Hayashi Akira, chief Japanese negotiator for the Treaty of Kanagawa[14]
10th Daigaku no Kami: Hayashi Gakusai (1833–1906), formerly Hayashi Noboru, head of Yushima Seidō in 1867.

Other notable clan members

Hayashi Nobutoki (1583–1657), father of Hayashi Razan.[11]
Hayashi Nobozumi (1585–1683), brother of Hayashi Razan.[15]
Hayashi Yoshikatsu, brother of Hayashi Nobutoki and adoptive father of Hayashi Razan.[11]
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.[11]
Hayashi Jo, son of Hayashi Razan, brother of Gahō and Morikatsu.[15]
Hayashi Shuntoku (1624–1661).
Hayashi Baisai.
Hayashi Kansai.
Torii Yōzō, 2nd son of Jussai—adopted into Torii family[16]
Satō Issai (1772–1859), adopted into Hayashi family from Iwamura, becomes professorial head of academy in 1805.[17]
Hayashi Kakuryō (1806–1878), Confucian scholar who never gave up his top-knot.[18]
Hayashi Ryōsai (1807–1849).[19]

Notes

Yamshita, Samuel Hideo. "Yamasaki Ansai and Confucian School Relations, 1650–1675," Early Modern Japan. 9:2, 3–18 (Fall 2001).
Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680, pp. 107–108.
Bourdieu, Pierre et al. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 106.
Totman, Conrad. (1967). Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600–1843, p. 208.
Yamashita, p. 16; Bourdieu, p. 106.
Ogawa, Edo no hatamoto jiten, p. 85.
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.
Screech, p. 65.
Kelly, Boyd. (1999). Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. 1, p. 522; De Bary, William et al. (2005). Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2, p. 69.
De Bary, William et al. (2005). Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2, p. 443.
Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric et al. (2005). Japan Encyclopedia, p. 300.]
Cullen, pp. 117; 163.
Asiatic Society of Japan. (1908). Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, v36:1(1908), p. 151.
Cullen, p. 178 n11.
Nussbaum, p. 301.
Cullen, p. 159.
Cullen, p. 163.
Mehl, Margaret. (2003). Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline and Transformation of the "Kangaku juku," p. 49.
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 OCLC OCLC
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 OCLC OCLC
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.