光緖帝の繼承をめぐる禮解釋

Abstract

In latter stage of the Qing dynasty, Emperor Guangxu 光緖 succeeded to the throne following Emperor Tongzhi 同治 as an adoptive son of Emperor Xianfeng 咸豐. The succession of Emperor Guangxu, a cousin of Emperor Tongzhi, aroused controversy over how the imperial line should be carried on in the future. This article argues this controversy from the viewpoint of history of the interpretation of ritual rather than that of political factors as is often the case. When Emperor Guangxu succeeded to the throne, the Empress Dowagers declared that a son of Emperor Guangxu would succeed to the throne as an adoptive son of Emperor Tongzhi in the future. The official Wu Kedu 吳可讀 submitted an admonition and committed suicide demanding that the Empress Dowagers' declaration be put into action. The Qing imperial court ordered officials to discuss how to deal with the demand of Wu Kedu and finally decided to choose a novel form of succession in which a son of Emperor Guangxu would succeed as an adoptive son of both Emperor Tongzhi and Emperor Guangxu. This controversy over the succession to the throne was closely related to the problem of ritual interpretation, which had involved how to justify an irregular succession between brothers. This had been the issue in previous stage discussed above. When Emperor Guangxu had taken the throne, the Qing imperial court chose an interpretation that justified an imperial succession between brothers reflecting the generational relationship of parent and child. This choice of interpretation about succession caused the problem of whom the next emperor, who was a son of Emperor Guangxu would succeed to. Regarding the problem of ritual interpretation as how to justify an irregular succession between brothers, many scholars of the Confucian classics in the Qing period adopted an alternative interpretation that justified the irregular succession on the basis of the imperial transmission of the throne and not of that from parent to child. This meant that the Qing imperial court's decision and the officials' discussion diverged from the mainstream of ritual scholarship in the Qing period. The scholar Gui Wencan 桂文燦 explicitly stated that Emperor Guangxu should have succeeded as an adoptive son of Emperor Tongzhi in his commentary on Wu Kedu's admonition, and this shows that he applied the mainstream interpretation of Confucian scholars to the succession of Emperor Guangxu.