A large plaque was displayed at the entrance to the Daiseiden Hall

Taiseiden in Yushima Seidō — Shot at Yushima Seido in Yushima, Tokyo

I came to the Yushima Seido in Yushima. This was the site of the Confucius Temple and the Shoheizaka Gakumonjo, an academy under the direct control of the Shogunate. The original private school of Hayashi Razan was established in 1690, and the elite of the time studied here for nearly 200 years until 1871, after the Meiji Restoration. It must have been a place similar to what we would call Tokyo University today. Shoheizaka Gakumonjo is the source of Tsukuba University and Ochanomizu Women's University, and is also considered the birthplace of school education in Japan. Although its role as an educational institution has ended, the Confucius Temple still stands in the same place. The structure in the photo is the main hall of the Yushima Seido, the Taiseiden. There is a large plaque hanging above the entrance.

Confucius temples are rare in Tokyo. I'm not aware of any other Confucius temples in Tokyo. In the Edo period (1603-1868), Vermilion Confucianism was the official ideology of the shogunate, and yet there are almost no Confucius temples left in Edo City. It is not even clear whether they were built in the first place. Perhaps they were not popular among the common people because they did not seem to gain any real benefit from visiting Confucius. And for the ruling class, Confucianism may have been a tool to rule, not something they believed in wholeheartedly.

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