The Meiroku-sha (明六社 literally, the society established in the sixth year of Emperor Meiji, i.e., 1873) was the best-known intellectual association of 19th-century Japan. Its organization journal, the Meiroku Zasshi (明六雑誌; henceforth referred to as Meiroku Magazine), played an important role in opening up the Japanese mind to Western thought in a turbulent time. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how Confucianism as a traditional value system influenced the thinking and writing of the contributors to the Meiroku Magazine. Of course, many of the Meiroku-sha members craved for modernization and were consciously Western-minded. However, close reading of the journal reveals a more nuanced picture of how those authors proposed new ideas through different levels of interplay with old tenets. To be specific, while there is little direct debate over Confucianism in the Meiroku Magazine, references and allusions to Confucian ideas are frequent, and for diverse purposes. This chapter seeks to explore these hitherto underestimated Confucian traits of the Meiroku Magazine and demonstrate how intellectual struggles unfolded during this transitional period of Japanese history.

Overview of the Meiroku Magazine and relevant studies

The Meiroku-sha has long been regarded as the embodiment of the Japanese Enlightenment, which, according to Kano Masanao, strived for two goals. “One was to introduce into Japan the institutions, organizations, academic research, and ways of thinking of the state and society [of the modern Western kind] that Japan was aiming at. The other was to… renew the spirit of the Japanese people.” As the principal channel to achieve these goals, the Meiroku Magazine was influential not only for the novelty of its content, but also because it created a public space for free intellectual discussion. Since the start of its publication in 1874, the importance of the Meiroku Magazine had been strongly anticipated by the members of the Meiroku-sha, as exemplified by the endnote that founding member and educator Nishimura Shigeki attached to his contribution to the first issue: