ABSTRACT

This article attempts at an analysis of the East Asian Confucian hermeneutics as apologetics, as manifested in Itô Jinsai’s interpretation of the Confucian Analects in seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan. Methodologically, Jinsai turned the hermeneutic problems into etymological ones. He urged a return to the original linguistic situation in which Confucius and his pupils engaged in creative conversation. Jinsai clarified the “classical meanings” of Sung Neo-Confucian Philosophy of li (理), especially the system of Chu Hsi.

Key words: Japan, Itô Jinsai, The Analects, Confucius, Tao