The Four Great Men of Kokugaku (國學の四大人, ''Kokugaku no shitaijin'' or ''Kokugaku no shiushi'') are a group of

Edo-period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteri ...

Japanese scholars recognized as the most significant figures in the

Kokugaku ''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label= Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label=Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to r ...

tradition of Japanese

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, religious studies, and philosophy. They are traditionally enumerated as: *

Kada no Azumamaro was a poet and philologist of the early Edo period. His ideas had a germinal impact on the nativist school of National Learning in Japan. Life Azumamaro was born the second son of Hakura Nobuaki (1625-1696), father of a scholarly family that ...

Kamo no Mabuchi was a ''kokugaku'' scholar, poet and philologist during mid-Edo period Japan. Along with Kada no Azumamaro, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane, he was regarded as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku, and through his research into the spiri ...

Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese scholar of ''Kokugaku'' active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka in Ise Province (now part of Mie ...

Hirata Atsutane was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name was . He also ...

External links

Japanese definition
Quartets Japanese culture-related lists People of Edo-period Japan