The Agricultural Ethics of Ninomiya Sontoku

Title

The Agricultural Ethics of Ninomiya Sontoku

Author

Tomosaburo YAMAUCHI

Page

235-257

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2015.12(2)235

Abstract

Ninomiya Sontoku 二宮尊德(1787-1856) or Kinjiro金次郎, was the renowned Japanese farmer-sage in the Edo Era (1603-1867). Sontoku's environmental thoughts and practices are based on the pre-modern, ecological world view that is characteristic of pre-industrial Japanese society; it consisted mainly of Shintoism mixed with Japanese Confucianism and Buddhism. Sontoku's practical solution to the puzzling problem of the human-to-nature relationship lay in the symbiotic co-elaboration of both. Human beings owe gratitude (恩) to Heaven and Earth (our great father and mother), to our ancestors, parents, and lords, and so we are obliged to repay the debt we owe (恩). The main virtues he practiced and recommended for people were diligent labor (勤), frugality (儉), and concession (讓) in agriculture and economics, in order to increase natural produce by ＂assisting the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth＂ (贊天地之化育,大學). This is Sontoku's teaching of ＂reward for virtue＂ (報德). Sontoku eventually rescued more than six hundred villages and tens of thousands of people. He not only saved devastated farms, but also saved people from mental collapse by helping them to be independent financially and morally. Sontoku's achievements testified to his belief that Confucian moral politics (仁政) rather than modern Western power-politics and self-interested economics, can make people happy and restore nature at the same time. In pre-war Japan, Sontoku was a national hero who appeared in elementary school textbooks on moral education called ＂cultivating oneself＂ (修身), as a model of Confucian and other virtues. All national elementary schools had his bronze statue on a pedestal near the main entrance- carrying on his back a bundle of firewood gathered in the mountains, walking, and reading a book. In post-war, modernized and industrialized Japan he was neglected and his school of thought was almost forgotten. However, recently his thoughts and practices have been revived, and looked under fresh light of global environmental crisis.

Keyword

Ninamiya Sontoku, social welfare ethics, environmental ethics, world view, eco-holistic level, hotoku-kyo, nen-giri, bun-do

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