Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/159

 of philosophy. This pronouncement left men's minds unsatisfied, of course, but had at least the effect of inducing all candidates for official favour to adopt the teachings of the school founded by Fujiwara Seika and brought into special prominence by Hayashi Razan.

The most remarkable of the various scholastic institutions that grew out of this philosophical movement was the University of Yedo, known in history as the Seidō. Originally founded (1630) by Hayashi Razan in the Uyeno district of the city, it was moved to the Hongo suburb, sixty years later, by order of the Shōgun Tsunayoshi, and in 1789 it became an official college, its dimensions and endowment being enlarged under the patronage of Matsudaira Sadanobu. So long as it remained a private school, admission was restricted to samurai of Yedo, but after the changes of 1789 it was thrown open to samurai from all the fiefs. The Seidō must not be regarded in the light of a modern university. Its objects were political and ethical rather than scholastic. The textbooks, carefully chosen from the Chinese classics, were in strict accord with the inductive philosophy of Chu, and everything that tended to encourage independent reasoning was tabooed. In fact the institution, modelled by officialdom at the close of the eighteenth century, was an attempt—largely futile—to avert the danger to which unlimited study of Confucianism would have exposed the fabric of military feudalism. Teach-