Kokugaku

Historical Background and Development

Kokugaku (国学), often translated as “nativist studies” or “national learning,” designates a cluster of early modern Japanese scholarly movements that sought to recover an authentic, ancient Japanese way of thinking and living. It emerged in the Edo period under Tokugawa rule (1603–1868), initially as a philological and literary project focused on classical Japanese texts, and developed into a broader intellectual, religious, and sometimes political current.

The movement arose within a complex intellectual landscape dominated by Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism, and—toward the late Edo period—growing awareness of Western learning (yōgaku or rangaku). Tokugawa authorities sponsored Confucian teachings as a basis for social order, while Buddhist institutions remained culturally influential. Against this backdrop, some scholars turned to early Japanese classics such as the Kojiki (712), Nihon shoki (720), and Man’yōshū (8th century poetry anthology) as sources of a distinctively Japanese worldview predating heavy Chinese influence.

Early figures like Keichū concentrated on rigorous textual criticism of Man’yōshū, paving the way for later kokugaku scholars. Kamo no Mabuchi refined attention to ancient poetic language and rustic simplicity (masuraoburi, the “manly” style), arguing that these embodied an uncorrupted Japanese spirit. The movement reached its most systematic formulation with Motoori Norinaga, whose commentary on the Kojiki (Kojiki-den) and theories of emotion, language, and myth became foundational.

By the late Edo period, Hirata Atsutane and others extended kokugaku into a more overtly religious and political direction, connecting its recovery of ancient Shinto with ideas of imperial reverence and national destiny. In this later phase, kokugaku overlapped with sonnō jōi (“revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”) currents that contributed to the ideological climate preceding the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Doctrinal Themes and Intellectual Methods

Kokugaku is not a single unified philosophical system but a family of related approaches. Nonetheless, several core themes recur.

A central aim was the recovery of the “ancient Way” (kōdō or kannagara no michi), believed to be embodied in the lives and practices of the earliest Japanese as depicted in myth and early literature. Kokugaku scholars posited that this Way predated the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism and was characterized by spontaneous sincerity, harmony with the kami (Shinto deities), and natural emotional responsiveness.

To access this ancient Way, kokugaku thinkers relied heavily on philological and textual methods. They argued that the earliest Japanese language preserved in texts like the Kojiki and Man’yōshū carried a special power. The doctrine of kotodama—the “spirit” or potency of words—held that correct understanding and use of the native language could reveal and even actualize the true nature of things. This led to painstaking analyses of grammar, pronunciation, and orthography, and to critiques of later Sino-Japanese vocabulary as obscuring primordial meanings.

In ethical and psychological terms, Norinaga in particular elevated mono no aware, often rendered as “the pathos of things” or sensitivity to the fleeting nature of existence. He saw this aesthetic-emotional responsiveness as a key virtue of the ancient Japanese, contrasting it with what he perceived as the rigid, rational, and moralistic orientation of imported Confucian ethics. For kokugaku writers, sincerity (makoto) and unforced emotion often took precedence over abstract moral rules.

Religiously, many kokugaku scholars reinterpreted or reasserted Shinto as an autonomous tradition rather than as subordinate to Buddhism or syncretic constructs like Ryōbu Shinto. They frequently emphasized:

• The unbroken imperial line descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, grounding the emperor’s authority in mythic antiquity.
• The centrality of ritual directed to the kami as expressions of gratitude and reverence rather than as means to moral cultivation in a Confucian sense.
• The need to purify practice from “foreign” doctrines seen as distorting original Japanese religiosity.

Methodologically, kokugaku involved a sustained critique of Chinese and Buddhist influence. While many leading kokugaku scholars themselves were well-versed in Chinese classics, they frequently portrayed Confucianism as suited to foreign lands and unsuited to Japan’s native character. This contrast was sometimes cast in emotional terms: Chinese systems were said to value reasoned calculation and hierarchical propriety, whereas the Japanese Way valued heartfelt immediacy and intimate bonds with the kami.

Influence, Legacy, and Criticism

Kokugaku’s impact extended beyond philology into religion, politics, and modern Japanese identity. In the late Edo period, kokugaku ideas contributed to reimagining the emperor as a living symbol of a uniquely Japanese Way. These ideas, combined with other intellectual and political forces, helped prepare the ground for the Meiji Restoration, which restored imperial rule and initiated rapid modernization.

During the Meiji era, elements of kokugaku thought informed the construction of State Shinto and official doctrines that linked national identity to imperial myth and reverence for the kami. Some of Norinaga’s and Hirata’s conceptual tools were selectively appropriated to support policies that elevated the emperor and sacralized the polity. However, kokugaku itself remained internally diverse, and not all of its strands aligned neatly with later state ideology.

In the twentieth century, aspects of kokugaku were further mobilized in nationalist and ultra-nationalist discourses, especially those emphasizing Japan’s supposed uniqueness and divine origins. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, such uses became the subject of intense critical scrutiny. Historians and philosophers have since debated the extent to which kokugaku should be understood as a proto-nationalist movement or primarily as a scholarly and religious reform project that was later politicized.

Critics contend that kokugaku’s sharp distinction between “native” and “foreign” fostered essentialist and exclusionary notions of identity, and that its idealization of a pure ancient Japan rested on selective readings of sources. Others argue that the movement’s reliance on mythic texts to ground political authority made it particularly liable to co-optation by state power.

Proponents and sympathetic scholars, by contrast, highlight kokugaku’s contributions to Japanese linguistics, literature, and religious studies. Its exacting attention to early texts significantly advanced knowledge of classical Japanese, and its insistence on taking native myths and rituals seriously as sources of meaning challenged earlier hierarchies that privileged Chinese models. Some contemporary interpreters also see in kokugaku an early form of cultural self-reflection, in which Japanese scholars critically examined imported frameworks rather than simply receiving them passively.

In philosophical and religious studies, kokugaku is now often discussed alongside other forms of nativism and indigenist thought globally. Comparisons have been drawn with movements that seek to recover indigenous traditions in the face of dominant external cultures. Such comparative work underscores both kokugaku’s distinctive features—its philological rigor, its focus on imperial lineage, its aesthetics of emotion—and its place within broader patterns of how societies negotiate cultural borrowing and identity.

Today, kokugaku is primarily studied as a historical-intellectual movement. Its major texts remain central to scholarship on Shinto, Japanese literature, and Edo-period thought, while its legacy continues to inform debates about the relationship between language, myth, national identity, and philosophy in Japan.