Talk:Ueda Akinari
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[edit] Kokugaku
I think it's important not to say that because Ueda Akinari was a kokugakusha he was therefore "anti-foreign". The problem seems to be that kokugaku encompassed a broad range of views -- it was, after all, not ideologically committed to xenophobia -- and that certain views came to be dominant in later centuries. It is the later, more extreme views that brought kokugaku into disrepute. Someone might like to check it out, but I believe Hirata Atsutane's views on the history and lineage of kokugaku set the anti-foreign bias in stone, excluding people like Ueda Akinari from the mainstream. What may have been "mainstream" in Ueda's day was thus not regarded as mainstream in later centuries.
At the moment the article is reasonably balanced, but there is still an apologetic tone, as if to say "Kokugaku is xenophobic, and Ueda shared in the shortcomings of the school, but he did also have his own 'independent' position". This is taking the notion of 'kokugaku=xenophobia' as a given, which I think is going to far.
In fact, if you look at the origins of kokugaku (such as Motoori Norinaga you'll find quite a few Confucianists and scholars of Chinese have a major influence on the early kokugaku school. It's not nearly so simplistic as our views in hindsight seem to make out.
Bathrobe 05:48, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
