Master Sorai's Responsals: An Annotated Translation of "Sorai Sensei Tomnosho" (Monographs of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto ... Translation of ""Sorai Sensei Tomnosho: 19 - Hardcover

Sorai, Ogyu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082481570X ISBN 13: 9780824815707

Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994

Synopsis

Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) was a humanist scholar who served a prince (one of the shogun's chief lieutenants) and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which Sorai had much to say.
Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.

About this title

About the Author:

Samuel Hideo Yamashita is associate professor of history at Pomona College.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 082481570X
• ISBN 13: 9780824815707
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Yamashita Samuel Hideo