Kokugaku
KOKUGAKU. The Japanese intellectual movement known as Kokugaku (Native Learning) includes the Shintō revival that began in the middle of the Edo period (1603–1867). Inspired by the spirit of nationalism, Kokugaku thinkers deplored the lack of scholarship on Japanese history and literature and attacked the wholesale adoption of such foreign influences as Confucianism and Buddhism. According to Kokugaku thinkers, Japanese history can be divided into three periods: antiquity, during which Japan's indigenous, original spirit emerged and was manifest in its purest form; the Middle Ages, when this spirit became "contaminated" and was suppressed by the introduction of Chinese culture, in particular Confucianism and Buddhism; and the modern age, when Japan's ancient, original spirit was revived and rediscovered. Although the Kokugaku movement encompassed various fields of study, among them literature and philology, this discussion is limited to its concern with religion.
In the Genroku period (1688–1704), which marks the rise of the Kokugaku movement, the Buddhist priest Keichū (1640–1701) proposed that the poetic conventions popular during the Middle Ages in Japan be abolished so as to allow free composition of the Japanese waka poems. Keichū applied philological analysis to the Man'yōshū, but said only that Shintō differed from both Confucianism and Buddhism and that the kami were beyond the understanding of people.
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