Gorin, the five relationships, are the five moral bonds of Confucian teaching. The Daijisen dictionary traces the list to the Chinese philosopher Mencius: fushi no shin, kunshin no gi, fūfu no betsu, chōyō no jo, hōyū no shin. Affection between father and son, duty between lord and retainer, distinction between husband and wife, order between elder and younger, and trust between friends.
philosophy
The System of Irresponsibility
In 1946, the political scientist Maruyama Masao published the essay Chōkokka shugi no ronri to shinri (The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism). A Japanese biographical dictionary sums up one of its points. Maruyama identified the musekinin taikei, the system of irresponsibility, of Japanese-style fascism and the emperor-system state.
An encyclopedia lists this essay and Gunkoku shihaisha no seishin keitai (The Mentality of the Militarist Rulers) among the analyses he published right after the war. It notes that they had a large influence on Japanese thought.
Once in a Lifetime
Ichigo ichie (一期一会): one lifetime, one meeting. A tea ceremony phrase. Host and guest should treat each gathering as one that will happen only once in their lives, and act with complete sincerity.
It first appears in the record of the tea master Yamanoue Sōji as ichigo ni ichido no kai, a gathering once in a lifetime. Ii Naosuke later stressed it in his tea treatise Chanoyu ichie shū.
The Book of Tea
In 1906, Okakura Kakuzō published The Book of Tea in New York. He wrote it in English, to bring the essence of Japanese culture and the Japanese sense of beauty to the West through the way of tea.
Clever Words
Kōgen reishoku sukunashi jin (巧言令色、鮮し仁): clever words and a pleasing face are seldom found with true virtue. The saying comes from the Analects of Confucius.
In Japanese, kōgen reishoku means to decorate one’s words and put on an agreeable face, without meaning it, in order to flatter others.
The Unchanging and the Changing
Fueki ryūkō (不易流行): the unchanging and the changing. It is a principle of haikai poetry in the school of Matsuo Bashō. A Japanese dictionary explains it this way: the changing fashion that seeks novelty is in fact the unchanging essence of haikai, and the unchanging and the changing must be joined at the root.
Another dictionary notes that no example of Bashō explaining it himself is found. His disciples Kyorai, Dohō and Kyoriku developed it in their writings on haikai.
Utmost Sincerity
The teacher Yoshida Shōin lived by a line from Mencius: Shisei ni shite ugokazaru mono wa, imada kore arazaru nari. There has never been anyone who was not moved by utmost sincerity.
When he was interrogated by the shogunate in Edo, he believed in this teaching and kept trying to persuade the senior councillors. He was sentenced to death.
Bushido on Truthfulness
In Bushido, Nitobe Inazō wrote that the word of a samurai, bushi no ichigon, was a sufficient guarantee of the truth of what he said. Many stories were handed down, he wrote, of men who atoned with their death for having spoken with a double tongue.
Feeling, Then Reason, Then Law
In January 2019, the People’s Court Daily, the newspaper of the Supreme People’s Court, reviewed the book 情理法与中国人, Feeling, Reason, Law and the Chinese. The review summed up the book’s order: “‘In accord with feeling’ is the most important, ‘in accord with reason’ comes next, and ‘in accord with law’ comes after that.”
The review added that the everyday saying 法不外乎人情, the law does not stand outside human feeling, “is not wrong.” Here 人情 means the shared feeling of an era, not personal favors.
Speaking Too Deeply
Jiao qian yan shen (交浅言深). The acquaintance is shallow, but the words are deep. The Handian dictionary defines it as talking about intimate matters with someone one does not know well, and says that it means speaking without proper measure. Confucius made a related point: “If a person can be spoken with and one does not speak, one loses the person. If a person cannot be spoken with and one speaks, one loses the words.” (Analects, chapter Wei Linggong)
The idiom comes from the Strategies of the Warring States, where the line reads: “Deep words in a shallow acquaintance are disorder.” Handian also cites a version of the same passage in which deep words in a shallow acquaintance are called loyalty.