Master Sorai's Responsals: An Annotated Translation of Sorai Sensei Tomonsho

by Samuel Hideo Yamashita

Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) was a humanist scholar who served a prince (one of the shogun's chief lieutenants) and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which Sorai had much to say.
Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.

Genres: Japan

144 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Samuel Hideo Yamashita is an American historian and Asian studies scholar. His research interests include Confucianism, daily life in wartime Japan, and Japanese cuisine. He is the Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History at Pomona College.

Reviews

[Ethan Mckenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two reviews here- 5 stars for the translation work. If you're reading this as a historian, it's both a credible representation of entry-level Sorai Confucian thought, and well translated and annotated.

3.5 stars for the book on it's own. It starts off well, with many credible points and interesting thoughts on governance and philosophy. However, the second half tends to meander in lambasting Sung Confucianism- Sorai has a serious axe to grind, and that rather dropped the rating for me.

Still, worth the read overall.