was a writer and

Confucian scholar 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 a ...

of 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 ...

Japan popularly known as "the Sage of Ōmi".

Biography

Nakae was the eldest son of a farmer in Ōmi Province. When he was nine years old, he was adopted by his grandfather, Yoshinaga Tokuzaemon, who was a

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 ...

with a stipend of 150 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

'' serving Yonago Domain in

Hoki Province Hoki can mean: *Hōki Province, was an old province of Japan, today part of the Tottori Prefecture *Hōki, Tottori, a town in Japan *Hōki, a Japanese era name from 770 through 781 *Hoki (fish), another name for blue grenadier, a merluccid hake of ...

. In 1617, 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 Yonago, Kato Sadayasu was transferred to

Ōzu Domain 270px, Katō Yasuaki, final daimyō of Ōzu Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, in what is now western Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It was centered around Ōzu Castle, and was ruled thro ...

in Iyo Province and Nakae relocated to Shikoku with his grandparents. In 1622, his grandfather died and Nakae inherited a position with a stipend of 100 ''koku''. However, in 1634, at the age of 27, he left his position without officially resigning due to filial piety for his mother and health reasons. After hiding for a time in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

, he returned to his home village of Ogawa in Ōmi (currently part of Takashima, Shiga, where he opened a private academy for Confucian studies. This was the . The Tōju Shoin takes its name from a giant wisteria which grew behind Nakae's house. His students nicknamed him Mr Wisteria Tree, or "Tōju" in the ''

kanbun A is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. A ...

'' pronunciation of its ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

''. In 1637, Nakae married Hisashi, the daughter of a retainer of

Ise-Kameyama Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Ise Province in what is part of now modern-day Kameyama, Mie. It was centered around Ise-Kameyama Castle. Ise-Kameyama Domain was controlled by ''fudai daimyō'' c ...

. Nakae gradually became obsessed with the

Cheng–Zhu school The Cheng–Zhu school (), is one of the major philosophical schools of Neo-Confucianism, based on the ideas of the Neo-Confucian philosophers Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, and Zhu Xi. It is also referred to as the Rationalistic School. Metaphysics Zh ...

, but was also highly influenced by Yangmingism, which argued for the primacy of human intuition or conscience over intellect: moral improvement arises out of conscience-based action (similar to

Aristotle's ethics Aristotle first used the term ''ethics'' to name a field of study developed by his predecessors Socrates and Plato. In philosophy, ethics is the attempt to offer a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle regarded ...

). Nakae added a more religious aspect to Wang's "School of Intuition of Mind", calling the human conscience the "divine light of heaven". Nakae's works also supplied his followers (such as

Kumazawa Banzan was a Japanese Confucian. He learned Yangmingism from Nakae Tōju and served Ikeda Mitsumasa, the lord of Bizen Province. In his later years, he was imprisoned for writing ''Daigaku Wakumon'', which contained criticism of Tokugawa shogunate po ...

619–1691 with "the moral foundation for political action". His wife died in 1846 and the following year he remarried to Kuri, the daughter of a retainer of

Ōmizo Domain was a '' tozama'' feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It was located in northwestern Ōmi Province, in the Kansai region of central Honshu. The domain was centered at Ōmizo ''jin'ya'', located in what is now the c ...

. In early 1848, he rebuilt the Tōju Shoin on a larger scale; however, he died less than half a year later at the age of 41. His grave is at the temple of Tamarin-ji in Takashima. The Tōju Shoin building was destroyed by a large fire in 1880 along with 34 nearby farmhouses. The current structure is a reconstruction built in 1882, but on a smaller scale than the original. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1922, with the area under protection expanded in 2007. It is about a 15-minute walk from

Adogawa Station is a passenger railway station located in the city of Takashima, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, operated by the West Japan Railway Company (JR West). Lines Adogawa Station is served by the Kosei Line, and is from the starting point of the line at ...

on the JR Kosei Line. Nakae was unusual in teaching that humanism transcended social status or gender, and that his teachings would be useful to women as well as men. While accepting the then standard view of women as usually lacking such virtues as compassion and honesty, he argued: "if a wife's disposition is healthy and pious, obedient, sympathetic and honest, then ... every member of her family will be at peace and the entire household in perfect order." His teachings spread widely not only to samurai but also to farmers, merchants, and craftsmen, and has been spontaneously called "Ōmi saint" since the middle of the Edo period. His later disciples included

Yoshida Shoin Yoshida (written: 吉田 lit. "lucky ricefield") is the 11th most common Japanese surname. A less common variant is 芳田 (lit. "fragrant ricefield"). Notable people with the surname include: *Ai Yoshida, Japanese sailor *, Japanese idol, singer ...

Gallery

File:中江藤樹記念館.jpg, Nakae Tōju Memorial Museum, Takashima File:Tōjushoin.jpg, Tōju Shoin File:Grave of Toju Nakae.jpg, Nakae Tōju grave at Tamarin-ji

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Nakae Tōju,

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

encompasses roughly 130+ works in 200 publications in 5 languages and 740+ library holdings. * 1650 -- ''Dialogue with the elder'' (''Okina mondō'').Shirane, Haruo. (2006). ''Early Modern Japanese Literature,'' 354-358. * 藤樹遺稿 (1795) * 翁問答 (1831) * 藤樹全書: 中江藤樹先生遺稿 (1893) * 中江藤樹文集 (1914) * 孝經五種 (1925) * ''Nakae Tōju sensei zenshu'' (1928) * 鑑草; 附・春風; 陰騭 (1939) * 藤樹先生全集 (1940) * 中江藤樹・熊沢蕃山集 (1966) * 中江藤樹 (1974) * 中江藤樹・熊沢蕃山 (1976)

Notes

References

* Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice. (1997)
"Confucianism in Japan"
in ''Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy'' (Brian Carr and Indira Mahalingam, eds). London: Routledge.
OCLC 35049601
* de Bary, William Theodore. (1981). ''Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart.'' New York: Columbia University Press.
OCLC 7461831
* Nauman, St. Elmo. (1979). ''Dictionary of Asian Philosophies.'' London: Routledge.
OCLC 470939937
* Shirane, Haruo. (2002). ''Early Modern Japanese Literature.'' New York: Columbia University Press. ;
OCLC 48084101

Nakae Tōju
''Britannica Concise Encyclopedia'' 2006. Retrieved: March 26, 2006.

External links

Intellectual Currents in Tokugawa Japan
— by Jason Chan; includes extracts from Toju's writings * Takashima City web site
Toju Nakae and Toju shoin national historical site

— set of (stereo) photographs * East Asia Institute,

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

Further reading/bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nakae, Toju 1608 births 1648 deaths 17th-century Japanese philosophers Confucianism in Japan Japanese Confucianists Japanese writers of the Edo period People from Shiga Prefecture Historic Sites of Japan