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Ogyū Sorai's Place in Edo Intellectual Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Olof G. Lidin
Affiliation:
East Asian Institute, University of Copenhagen

Extract

Little did it occur to me when I began to translate Ogyū Sorai's Kyōchūkikō (‘Report from Journey to Kai’) some years ago that this endeavour would lead me to the first work that was written by this philosopher. Even after I had shown that the Kyōchūkikō was only a new and shorter edition (1710) of the earlier travelogue Fūryūshishaki (‘Report of the Elegant Emissaries’), written in 1706, it still took time before I realized that this must be the very first work to come from Sorai's brush. The Fūryūshishaki must be his first work and this means that he was 40 before he wrote anything that was literary, and of any length. What we have from before that time are short pieces, letters, poems, and memoranda; also the lexical work Yakubun sentei, which was probably written, at least partially, before 1706.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Lidin, Olof G., Ogyū Sorai's Journey to Kai in 1706; with a Translation of the Kyōchūkikō, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, No 48 (Curzon Press Ltd, London, 1983).Google Scholar