Abstract
The long-awaited English-language publication of Maruyama's famous study is a major event for scholars of Tokugawa Japan. Those of us engaged in teaching Toku-gawa intellectual history have often known a malaise and even frustration which this work will ease considerably. Faced with English-language material that is sparse and often of limited usability, communicating the richness or simply a sense of the vitality and development of Tokugawa thought to students who know no Japanese often becomes a problem. This work, however, opens for them the possibility of new levels of sophisticated analysis and discussion.
For over three decades now this seminal work, consisting of three long essays written between 1940 and 1944, has dominated Tokugawa intellectual studies. As the translator, Mikiso Hane, rightly suggests, Maruyama's stature in this field is comparable to the place occupied in Tokugawa thought by the main figure of his work, Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728). Just as Sorai is seen as the “discoverer of politics,” Ma-ruyama can be regarded as the pioneer of intellectual history in Japan, especially of political thought.