The constructive tension between Confucian principles and the feudal structure of Tokugawa society discussed in the previous chapter was enabled and sustained in large part by the location of Confucian practice in early modern Japan primarily outside the institutions and structures of the state. This was a major difference between early modern Japan and contemporaneous China and Korea. In Ming and Qing China and Choson Korea, state examinations were a track to attaining state employment and social status. Confucian activity therefore revolved around the state. Academies, whether public or private, trained students mainly to pass the examinations the state set. The state therefore had a powerful means of influencing the Confucian academic agenda. The fact that the most prestigious academies in China and Korea were directly run by the state and presided over the examinations further institutionally integrated the worlds of academy, practice, and state.

In Tokugawa Japan, however, Confucian practice, teaching, study, and writing occurred in small private schools and reading groups. The vast majority of professional Confucian scholars made their livelihood principally from monies extracted in student fees. The students did not come to these schools to pass state examinations, because for most of the Tokugawa period there were no state examinations. Even when the state did run a few examinations in the early 1800s, only the highest hereditary status samurai (hatamoto and goke'nin) in the Tokugawa houses could participate (Hashimoto 1994; Paramore 2012c). There was no sustained link between Confucian study and government appointment.

Yet, despite the study and practice of Confucianism in Japan generally having no direct effects on career prospects, earning potential or government status, tens of thousands of Japanese of all status studied in Confucian schools at any given moment during most of the mid- and late Tokugawa periods, supporting at any given time many hundreds of professional Confucian scholars who ran these schools (Ishikawa 1960).