ABSTRACT
Prior to the Tokugawa period, established views of life and death consisted of an amalgam of indigenous (“Shinto”), Confucian, and Buddhist notions, centered on the latter. Confucianism, while known in Japan for centuries, gradually established itself as a prevailing mode of thought in the course of the early Tokugawa period. A detailed discussion of the purpose and meaning of Confucian rites for the dead is found in the work of Nakamura Tekisai. Keisai’s reliance on a radish as an example to explain how the soul of a deceased person materializes is rather simplistic. Leading Confucian thinkers of the early Tokugawa period thought of human life as confined to the present world, dismissing the notion of continued existence in a Beyond. Yoshikawa Koretaru, the founder of Yoshikawa Shinto as a new school of Shinto thought heavily influenced by Zhu Xi Confucianism, believed that even as the body withered away after death, the soul was immortal.
