"
"The teaching of the sages is the original truth and, given to
men, it forms both their nature and their relationships. With it
complete, naught else is needed for the perfect following of the
'Way.' Let then the child make its parents Heaven, the retainer,
his Lord, the wife her husband, and let each give up life for
righteousness. Thus will each serve for Heaven. But if we exalt
Heaven above parent or Lord, we shall come to think we can serve
it though they be disobeyed and like tiger or wolf shall rejoice
to kill them. To such fearful end does the Western learning
lead.... Let each one die for duty, there is naught else we can
do."
Thus wrote Ohashi Junzo, as late as 1857 A.D., the same year in which
Townsend Harris entered Yedo to teach the practical philosophy of
Christendom, and the brotherhood of man as expressed in diplomacy.
Ohashi Junzo bitterly opposed the opening of Japan to modern
civilization and the ideas of Christendom. His book was the swan-song of
the dying Japanese Confucianism. Slow as is the dying, and hard as its
death may be, the mind of new Japan has laid away to dust and oblivion
the Tei-shu philosophy. "At present they (the Chinese classics) have
fallen into almost total neglect, though phrases and allusions borrowed
from them still pass current in literature, and even to some extent in
the language of every-day life.
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