ABSTRACT
Having considered in broad outline the concrete aspects of the development of Dutch studies during the Tokugawa Period, it is necessary to devote some further attention to certain ‘ideological’ conflicts which involved the proponents of Western learning. The realm of ideas, to be sure, is at best often conjectural. Nevertheless, in any overall view of the Dutch impact on Japan, consideration must be given to the effect of knowledge of the West on the thought processes of those men who espoused that knowledge. This chapter then will be concerned with a further discussion of the attitudes of certain Rangakusha towards Confucianism and Buddhism, of their criticism of the written Japanese language, of the controversy between the so-called ‘orthodox’ Confucianists and the Rangakusha – the Bansha soyaku (Calamity encountered by the Bansha (scholars concerned with the ‘barbarians’)) or the Bansha no goku (Imprisonment of the Bansha) of 1839 – and of the so-called ‘open country’ debate.
