Reinterpreting Matsumiya Kanzan: On the Interval between State Shintō and the Idea of the Three Religions

IntroductionMatsumiya Kanzan was an Edo-period thinker and a successor to the Hōjō School of military strategy. His legacy includes writings about the concept of the three religions: Shintō, Confucianism, Buddhism (神道・儒教・仏教の三教 Shintō jukyō bukkyō no sankyō). Kanzan was not the equal of Hayashi Razan, Itō Jinsai, or Ogyū Sorai; but his thinking about the three religions reveals another aspect of thought in Edo-period Japan.In 1922, Itō Takeo published an article entitled “Matsumiya Kanzan in Shintō History” in issue no. 62 of Shintō, a magazine published by the Shintō Senyō Kai (神道宣揚会 Society for Enhancing Shintō). This article was the first published research on Matsumiya Kanzan. According to Itō, Inoue Tetsujirō said that Kanzan was someone who should be remembered in the history of the development of Loyalism (勤王 kinnō). He was a scholar on a par with Yamaga Sokō. Even so, when the history of Loyalism is discussed, he is not on the list with Yamaga Sokō, Kumazawa Banzan, Yamagata Daini, Takayama Hikokurō, and Gamō Kunpei. That was because many researchers, as exemplified by Inoue Tetsujirō himself, did not include Matsumiya Kanzan in their research on Loyalism. It was for that reason that Itō Takeo called him “the hidden Loyalist.”Later, from the 1920s to the 1940s, research on Matsumiya Kanzan flourished. While most concerned his biography and his studies of military strategy, research on his Loyalist thinking also increased. The latter concerned the involvement of his thinking in the creation of State Shintō (国家神道 Kokka Shintō). The role of his thinking in promoting the concept of the Japanese Spirit was for a time emphasized in historical research. In his 1943 Research on the Japanese Soul (日本魂の研究 Yamatodamashi no kenkyū) Watari Shōzaburō ranks Matsumiya Kanzan as an important thinker along with Yamaga Sokō, Kumazawa Banzan, and Tokugawa Mitsukuni. The chapter on Matsumiya Kanzan takes its title from his saying, “The concept of patriotism (報国の念 hōkoku no nen) will live on after I die.”