was a writer and Confucian scholar of early

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

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 The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

with a stipend of 150 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'' serving Yonago Domain in Hoki Province. 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 no ...

'' 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 thr ...

Iyo Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the area of northwestern Shikoku.Louis-Frédéric, Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tosa''" in . Iyo bordered on Sanuki Province to the northeast, Awa Province (Tokushima), Awa to the east ...

and Nakae relocated to

Shikoku is the smallest of the List of islands of Japan#Main islands, four main islands of Japan. It is long and between at its widest. It has a population of 3.8 million, the least populated of Japan's four main islands. It is south of Honshu ...

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 Filial piety is the virtue of exhibiting love and respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors, particularly within the context of Confucian ethics, Confucian, Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist ethics, Buddhist, and Daoism, Daoist ethics. ...

for his mother and health reasons. After hiding for a time in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

, he returned to his home village of Ogawa in Ōmi (currently part of

Takashima, Shiga is a Cities of Japan, city located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 46,976 in 20601 households and a population density of 68 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Takashima is located ...

, where he opened a private academy for Confucian studies. This was the . The Tōju Shoin takes its name from a giant

wisteria ''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae). The genus includes four species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and nor ...

which grew behind Nakae's house. His students nicknamed him Mr Wisteria Tree, or "Tōju" in the ''

kanbun ''Kanbun'' ( 'Han Chinese, Han writing') is a system for writing Literary Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period until the 20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for offici ...

'' pronunciation of its ''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 and are ...

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

Ise-Kameyama Domain was a Han (Japan), 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 Kameyama Castle (Mie), Ise-Kameyama Castle. Ise-Kameyama Domain wa ...

. Nakae gradually became obsessed with the

Cheng–Zhu school The School of Principle ( zh, p=Lǐxué, t=理學, s=理学), or the Cheng–Zhu School ( zh, p=Chéng Zhū lǐxué, t=程朱理學), is one of the major philosophical schools of Neo-Confucianism, based on the ideas of the Neo-Confucian philosoph ...

, but was also highly influenced by

Yangmingism The School of Mind, or the School of Heart (), or Yangmingism (; ), is one of the major philosophical schools of Neo-Confucianism, based on the ideas of the idealist Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Shouren (whose pseudonym was Yangming Zi and thus ...

, 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 which is devoted to the attempt to provide a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle regarded et ...

). 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 ...

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 daimyō, tozama'' Han (Japan), 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'', ...

. 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 on the JR

Kosei Line The is a commuter rail line in Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto Metropolitan Area, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The line was completed in 1974 by the former Japanese National Railways (JNR) to provide faster access from t ...

. 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.

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. 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 founded in 1967 as the ...

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 O ...

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 The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

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