The Commoners' Ideal of the Tokugawa Age and Other Essays

In 1892 Kitamura Tōkoku was writing for a small Christian peace society in a country that had scarcely heard the word "peace." His essays from those years ask what a nation is, where its thought comes from, and what remains of the old Japan inside the new.

These seven works of 1892 and 1893 include the inaugural statement of the peace journal Heiwa; an early Japanese portrait of Tolstoy as a religious pacifist; a polemic against the lingering spirit of "expel the barbarians"; a meditation on revenge, war and suicide; an essay on how a nation's thought is shaped by its past, its creative force and its contact with the world; and a reproach to the philosopher Nakae Chōmin for abandoning thought for business. At the center stands "The Commoners' Ideal of the Tokugawa Age," Tōkoku's long study of the chivalric daring (kyō) and refined style (sui) of the Edo townsmen.

This collection contains Inaugural Statement for Peace; Count Tolstoy; A Certain Kind of Anti-Foreign Thinking; The Commoners' Ideal of the Tokugawa Age; Revenge, War, Suicide; The Nation and Thought; and Where Is Master Chōmin? Each is translated complete and unabridged from Japanese, with a translator's note, brief endnotes and source information.