Heaven

Japanese: 天 - てん

An important concept that permeates Chinese thought. The character "Ten" originally referred to a human head, but came to mean the sky. During the Western Zhou period, Ten was revered as the supreme god in the heavens, also known as Shangdi, and was thought to control all earthly phenomena. This belief is said to have originated from the belief in the emperors of the Shang dynasty, or to have originated with the nomadic peoples of the north. In particular, the belief that Heaven gives life to the dynasty and that the Zhou kings are agents of heaven's will played a role in religiously supporting the Zhou feudal system. This is why the monarch is called the Son of Heaven and why heavenly festivals are considered the privilege of the Son of Heaven. Around the Spring and Autumn period, the belief in Heaven as the supreme god began to waver. Thinkers in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period viewed Heaven in a variety of ways, including those like Confucius and Mencius who interpreted it as something akin to the laws of the universe and sought the origin of morality there, those like Zhuangzi who saw it as an unknowable force that operates in all things, those like the Mohists who considered Heaven to be a personal god with a will, and those like Xunzi who considered it a purely natural phenomenon.By the time the Western Han Dynasty had come about and a centralized state had been established, Confucianism had come to hold the position of orthodox thought, but within Confucianism at the time, Dong Zhongshu and others had attempted to grant the monarch superhuman authority by establishing a relationship between Heaven and Man with the Son of Heaven at the center. Since the Han Dynasty, there were thinkers such as Wang Chong, Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi, and Wang Anshi who viewed heaven as simply nature, and Zhu Xi (Zhu Xi) who believed heaven to be reason; therefore, heaven has been interpreted in many ambiguous ways. However, the idea that heaven is a universal, transcendental entity, that a monarch who has received the mandate of heaven is called the Son of Heaven and that this person governs the world, has fundamentally permeated the history of old China, and this strongly influenced the spiritual life of the Chinese people.

[Toshihiko Uchiyama]

Japan

The concept of "heaven" (meaning the heavenly world, the supreme god of the universe, the guardian deity, etc.) introduced from China to Japan includes (1) Taoist, (2) Confucian, and (3) Buddhist concepts, which seem to have combined with the pre-existing (4) belief in the Sun Goddess (from which the concept of the Imperial Ancestor Amaterasu Omikami later emerged) to form the ancient Japanese idea of heaven. In other words, in ancient times, the originally different subjective views of the Emperor - the divine grandson Emperor, the virtuous Emperor, and the Emperor who had done ten good deeds in a previous life - were linked by the underlying idea of heaven to justify the ancient Emperor System, and the revolutionary theory derived from (1) and (2) was applied only to praise the appearance of the great Emperor (the living god) or to explain the change of lineage within the Imperial line, and thus avoided any contradiction with the idea of an unbroken line of emperors derived from (3) and (4). In the Middle Ages, as the samurai gained real political power, the Tenka ideology, which demanded benevolent rule, and the Oto ideology, which advocated submission to the sovereign, came into conflict, both of which were originally based on [2]. However, the samurai government rationalized its position as a ruler through the Tenka ideology. However, at the same time, the samurai government accepted the Emperor as its nominal ruler. This Tenka ideology, or the idea of Heaven, was passed down from the Kamakura and Muromachi shogunates to the Edo shogunate, which linked the divine ancestor Ieyasu with "Heaven" in an attempt to transcendentally guarantee the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate. From the Middle Ages to the early modern period, the idea of the unity of the three religions (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) introduced from China became widespread, but at that time Shinto and Christianity were added to this, and the common ground between these various ideologies was sought in "Heaven" (Tendo). In the early modern period, various interpretations of "heaven" were made in various Confucian schools and other academic fields, but it was the "hybrid" idea of heaven described above that formed the mainstream of the thought of the time. Multilayeredness is often pointed out as a characteristic of Japanese thought, and it can be said that it was none other than the idea of heaven that supported this multilayered structure from within.

[Tadashi Ishige]

"Thoughts of Heaven" by Guo Moruo (included in Iwanami Lectures: Oriental Thought 8, 1935, Iwanami Shoten)" ▽ "The Way of the Pegasus" by Ishida Eiichiro (included in Momotaro's Mother, 1966, Kodansha)" ▽ "Studies in the History of Chinese Philosophy" by Shigezawa Toshiro (1964, Horitsu Bunkasha)" ▽ "Studies in the History of Ancient Chinese Religion" by Ikeda Suetoshi (1981, Tokai University Press)" ▽ "Science and Civilization in China, Vols. 2 and 3" by Joseph Needham, edited by Higashihata Seiichi and Yabuuchi Kiyoshi, translated by Yoshikawa Tadao et al. (1974, 1975, Shisosha)

[Reference item] | Son of Heaven | Unity of Heaven and Humanity | Mandate of Heaven

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

Japanese:

中国思想を貫く重要な概念。天という文字はもと人間の頭部を示し、それが天空を意味するようになった。西周時代には、天は、天上の最高神として崇敬され、上帝ともよばれて、地上の現象を支配すると考えられた。この信仰は、殷(いん)代の帝(てい)の信仰を原型とするとも、北方遊牧民族に起源をもつともいわれる。とくに、天が王朝に命(めい)を与えるとされ、周王が天意の代行者とされたことは、周の封建制を宗教的に支える役割を果たした。君主を天子といい、天の祭りを天子の特権とするのはこのことによる。春秋時代ごろには、最高神としての天の信仰は動揺し始める。春秋・戦国時代の思想家たちの天に対する見方には、孔子(こうし)・孟子(もうし)のようにこれを宇宙の理法に近いものと解し、道徳の根源をそこに求める立場、荘子(そうし)のように万物のなかに働く不可知な力とみる立場、墨家の一部の、意志をもつ人格神とする立場、荀子(じゅんし)の、純粋な自然現象と考える立場などがある。前漢に至り、中央集権国家の確立のもとで、儒教が正統思想の地位を占めるが、当時の儒教では、董仲舒(とうちゅうじょ)らにより、天子を中軸とした天人相関を設定して君主に超人間的権威を付与することが試みられた。漢以来、王充(おうじゅう)、柳宗元(りゅうそうげん)、劉禹錫(りゅううしゃく)、王安石(おうあんせき)ら、天を単なる自然とみる思想家もあり、また朱熹(しゅき)（朱子）は天とは理だとするなど、天は多義的に解釈されたが、天を普遍的・超越的存在とし、天命を受けた君主を天子とよび、それが天下を統治するという考え方は、旧中国の歴史を基本的に貫通しており、これが中国人の精神生活を強く規定した。

［内山俊彦］

日本

中国から日本に伝えられた「天」（天上世界、宇宙の最高神、守護神などを意味する）の観念には、〔1〕道教系、〔2〕儒教系、〔3〕仏教系のものがあり、これらがそれ以前からあった〔4〕日神(ひのかみ)信仰（ここからのちに皇祖神天照大神(あまてらすおおみかみ)の観念が発生する）と合体して日本古代の天の思想を形成したようである。すなわち古代においては神孫君主、有徳者君主、前世十善の君主という元来異質の君主観が、三者に通底する天の思想によって結び付けられ、古代天皇制を正当化していたのであり、〔1〕〔2〕に由来する革命説は偉大なる天皇（現人神(あらひとがみ)）の出現をたたえたり、皇統内における系統の交替を説明する場合に限定して適用され、〔3〕〔4〕に由来する万世一系思想との矛盾が避けられている。中世になって武家が政治的実権を掌握するとともに、本来同じく〔2〕に依拠する、仁政を要求する天下思想と、君王への服従を主張する王土思想が対立することになったが、武家政権は天下思想によって為政者としての地位を合理化した。ただし同時に武家政権は天皇を名目上の君主としていただいた。こうした天下思想＝天の思想は鎌倉幕府・室町幕府から江戸幕府へと受け継がれていったが、江戸幕府は神祖家康(いえやす)と「天」を接合し、徳川将軍家の権威を超越的に保証しようとした。なお中世から近世にかけて、中国伝来の三教（儒・仏・道）一致論が流布したが、当時さらにこれに神道(しんとう)、キリシタンが加えられ、これら諸思想の一致点が「天」（天道(てんとう)）に求められた。近世になると儒教各派およびその他の学問分野でさまざまな「天」の解釈が行われたが、時代思潮の主流を形成したのは上述のような「雑種」的な天の思想であった。日本思想の特色としてしばしば重層性が指摘されるが、その重層的構造を内面から支えていたのがほかならぬ天の思想であったといえよう。

［石毛　忠］

『郭沫若著『天の思想』（『岩波講座　東洋思潮8』所収・1935・岩波書店）』▽『石田英一郎著『天馬の道』（『桃太郎の母』所収・1966・講談社）』▽『重沢俊郎著『中国哲学史研究』（1964・法律文化社）』▽『池田末利著『中国古代宗教史研究』（1981・東海大学出版会）』▽『ジョセフ・ニーダム著、東畑精一・藪内清監修、吉川忠夫他訳『中国の科学と文明　第2、第3巻』（1974、75・思索社）』

[参照項目] | 天子 | 天人合一 | 天命

出典　小学館　日本大百科全書(ニッポニカ)日本大百科全書(ニッポニカ)について　情報 | 凡例

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