was a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

and

philologist 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 ...

of the early

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 characteriz ...

. 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 for generations had supplied

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintois ...

priests to the Inari shrine in Fushimi. From an early age he studied traditional

Japanese poetry Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in t ...

waka Waka may refer to: Culture and language * Waka (canoe), a Polynesian word for canoe; especially, canoes of the Māori of New Zealand ** Waka ama, a Polynesian outrigger canoe ** Waka hourua, a Polynesian ocean-going canoe ** Waka taua, a Māori w ...

, and Shinto thought and belief, and his precocity was such that he was soon employed, in 1697, as poetry tutor to one of the sons of

Emperor Reigen was the 112th emperor of Japan,Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 霊元天皇 (112)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession.Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1959). ''The Imperial House of Japan'', pp. 117. Reigen's reign spanned t ...

(regnabat 1663–1687). Fushimi at the time had been described by

Ihara Saikaku was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later ...

as an economically depressed town that had fallen down in its fortunes. This marked it off from the flourishing cultural developments of the Genroku period. He set up an academy for studying and teaching his nativist ideas in the Inari shrine. In 1700 he settled in Edo, where his students mainly came from the Shinto clergy whom he instructed in

norito are liturgical texts or ritual incantations in Shinto, usually addressed to a given ''kami''. History The first written documentation of ''norito'' dates to 712 CE in the ''Kojiki'' and 720 CE in the '' Nihongi''. The Engishiki, a compilatio ...

prayers and the Shinto liturgy, though the curriculum also encompassed such ancient texts as the

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

and the Nihon Shoki. His studies in the former classic profited particularly from the Buddhist priest

Keichū (1640 – April 3, 1701) was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of Kokugaku in the mid Edo period. Keichū's grandfather was a personal retainer of Katō Kiyomasa but his father was a ''rōnin'' from the Amagasaki fief. When he was 13, Keichū left h ...

, and together these two figures may be considered as founding fathers of the movement of nativist thought known as kokugaku ("national studies"). Azumamaro remained in Edo until 1713, when he returned to Fushimi. After a short time, he returned to Edo for a year on a stipend, but then retired to pursue his work in his native Fushima, where he was frequently consulted by members of the Bakufu regarding antiquarian matters regarding ancient court ceremonies and customs. He died by his own hand, after enduring many years of illness, in 1736. He developed an approach which drew a clear distinction between what was considered the native tradition of Japan from the prevalent socio-political orthodoxy of his day,

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...

, but also sought to disentangle Japanese religion from the other major form of foreign thought, Buddhism. He regarded these foreign systems of belief and thought in adversarial terms.

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 ...

, likewise the son of a Shinto priest and, like Azumamaro not of

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

origins, who was to become a major scholar of ancient literature, first met Azumamaro in 1722, and subsequently enrolled to study under him in 1728, and moving to Kyoto in 1733 to be taught by Azumamaro on a more permanent basis.

Reputation

Within a century of his passing,

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 u ...

described Kada no Azumamaro as the first of Kokugaku's 'great men' (''taijin/ushi''). Kokugaku, together with the kogaku (古学: "Ancient Studies") school founded by Kamo no Mabuchi laid the foundations for both the renaissance of interest in Japanese classical poetry and culture, and for the nativist critique of Confucian ideology which was to prove of great ideological importance during and after the transformation of Tokugawa Japan into the modernizing nation of that country under

Emperor Meiji , also called or , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 13 February 1867 to his death, he was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan and presided over the Meiji era. He was the figur ...

Notes and references

Notes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kada no, Azumamaro 1669 births 1736 deaths Kokugaku scholars Japanese writers of the Edo period 17th-century Japanese poets Deified Japanese people 17th-century Japanese philosophers 18th-century Japanese philosophers

Life

Reputation

See also

Notes and references

Notes

References