(1640 – April 3, 1701) was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of

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 refo ...

in the mid

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 ...

. Keichū's grandfather was a personal retainer of

Katō Kiyomasa was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Azuchi–Momoyama and Edo periods. His court title was Higo-no-kami. His name as a child was ''Yashamaru'', and first name was ''Toranosuke''. He was one of Hideyoshi's Seven Spears of Shizugatake. Biography ...

but his father was a ''

rōnin A ''rōnin'' ( ; ja, 浪人, , meaning 'drifter' or 'wanderer') was a samurai without a lord or master during the feudal period of Japan (1185–1868). A samurai became masterless upon the death of his master or after the loss of his master's ...

'' from the

Amagasaki file:Amagasaki Castle Tenshu 20181125.jpg, 270px, Amagasaki Castle file:Amagasaki city center area Aerial photograph.1985.jpg, 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center file:Amagasaki st03s3000.jpg, 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial Citi ...

fief. When he was 13, Keichū left home to become an acolyte of the

Shingon file:Koyasan (Mount Koya) monks.jpg, Shingon monks at Mount Koya is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks suc ...

sect, studying at Kaijō in Myōhōji, Imasato,

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

. He subsequently attained the post of

Ajari is a Japanese term that is used in various schools of Buddhism in Japan, specifically Tendai and Shingon,Fischer-Schreiber, 5 in reference to a senior monk who teaches students; often abbreviated to jari. The term is a Japanese rendering of the ...

(or Azari) at

Mount Kōya is a large temple settlement in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to the south of Osaka. In the strictest sense, ''Mount Kōya'' is the mountain name ( sangō) of Kongōbu-ji Temple, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Kōyasan sect of Shingon Budd ...

, and then became chief priest at Mandara-in in Ikutama, Osaka. It was at this time that he became friends with the poet-scholar Shimonokōbe Chōryū (下河辺長流, 1624–1686). However, he disliked the worldly duties of his work and, after wandering around the

Kinki The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshu, Honshū. The region includes the Prefectures of Japan, prefectures of Nara Prefecture, Nara, Wakayama Prefecture, Wakayama, Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto, Osaka Prefectur ...

region for a while, made his way back to Mount Kōya. Deeply influenced by the thinking of

Kūkai Kūkai (; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835Kūkai was born in 774, the 5th year of the Hōki era; his exact date of birth was designated as the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Japanese lunar calendar, some 400 years later, by the Shingon sec ...

, he also read widely in the Japanese classics under the patronage of Fuseya Shigeta (伏屋重賢), a patron of the arts in

Izumi Province :''The characters ''泉州'' are also used for the name of the Chinese city of Quanzhou''. was a province of Japan in the area of southern Osaka Prefecture. Tango bordered on Kii to the south, Yamato and Kawachi to the west, and Settsu to ...

. After serving as chief priest at Myōhōji, Keichū spent his last years at Enju’an in Kōzu in the Province of

Settsu is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. As of 2017, the city has an estimated population of 85,290 and a population density of 5,664 people per km². The total area is 14.88 km². Surrounding municipalities *Osaka Prefecture **Higa ...

. His prolific works set a new standard in the study of the classics, though building on recent revivals of interest in the subject. When the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' of

Mito Mito may refer to: Places *Mito, Ibaraki, capital city of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan *Mito, Aichi, a Japanese town *Mito, Shimane, a Japanese town * Mitō, Yamaguchi, a Japanese town * Mito District, a district in the province of Concepción, Per ...

Tokugawa Mitsukuni , also known as , was a Japanese daimyo who was known for his influence in the politics of the early Edo period. He was the third son of Tokugawa Yorifusa (who in turn was the eleventh son of Tokugawa Ieyasu) and succeeded him, becoming the seco ...

, decided to sponsor an edition of 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 ...

, he commissioned Shimonokōbe Chōryū, heir to the learning of the great poet and Man'yō expert

Kinoshita Chōshōshi Kinoshita (written: 木下 or 木之下) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Airi Kinoshita (1998–2005), Japanese murder victim * Akira Kinoshita (born 1936), Japanese photographer * Alicia Kinoshita (born 1967), J ...

(木下長嘯子, 1569–1649), to undertake the project. However his dilatory approach, combined with illness, and finally death, impeded his work and the task fell to Keichū, a close friend. The result was the latter's ''Man'yō Daishōki'' (万葉集大匠記, 1687–1690), which had a profound effect on

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 refo ...

scholarship. In particular, applied methods borrowed from Chinese

Kaozheng Kaozheng (; "search for evidence"), alternatively called ''kaoju xue'' (; "evidential scholarship") and Qian–Jia School (), was a school and approach to study and research in the Qing dynasty of China from about 1600 to 1850. It was most prominent ...

philology with rigid

empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...

. He used this hermeneutic to philologically critique

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

and instead located

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 ...

as the indigenous Japanese religion. Similarly his ''

Waji WAJI (95.1 FM) is a commercial radio station broadcasting an adult contemporary format. Licensed to Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States, the station is owned by Bloomington–based Sarkes Tarzian, Inc. WAJI broadcasts in HD, with its HD2 channel ...

Shōranshō'' (1693: ''A Treatise on the Proper way to Write Japanese Words'') challenged the standard orthographical conventions set by

Fujiwara no Teika , better-known as Fujiwara no Teika"Sadaie" and "Teika" are both possible readings of ; "...there is the further problem, the rendition of the name in romanized form. Teika probably referred to himself as Sadaie, and his father probably called ...

and reconstructed distinctions in the old Japanese lexicon based on the earliest texts. In addition to these Keichū wrote the ''Kōganshō'' (厚顔抄 1691 ''A Brazen-faced Treatise'', the ''Kokin Yozaishō'', the ''Seigodan'', the ''Genchū Shūi'', and the ''

Hyakunin Isshu is a classical Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese ''waka'' by one hundred poets. ''Hyakunin isshu'' can be translated to "one hundred people, one poem ach; it can also refer to the card game of ''uta-garuta'', which uses a deck compos ...

Kaikanshō''.

References

Bibliography

*Susan Burns. 2003. ''Before the Nation.'' Duke University Press, pp. 49–52. {{DEFAULTSORT:Keichu Japanese writers of the Edo period 1640 births 1701 deaths Japanese Buddhist clergy Shingon Buddhist monks Edo period Buddhist clergy People from Amagasaki Kokugaku scholars 17th-century Japanese philosophers 18th-century Japanese philosophers

See also

References

Bibliography