was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese philosopher, a leading neo-Confucian of the early Tokugawa Period and a teacher of Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu

 was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara  in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...

.

Like his student, Hayashi Razan

Hayashi Razan

, also known as Hayashi Dōshun, was a Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher, serving as a tutor and an advisor to the first four shoguns of the Tokugawa bakufu. He is also attributed with first listing the Three Views of Japan. Razan was the founder of the Hayashi clan of Confucian scholars.Razan was...

 (1583–1657), he had studied in Zen monasteries. But in 1598, at Fushimi Castle

Fushimi Castle

', also known as Momoyama Castle or Fushimi-Momoyama Castle, is a castle in Kyoto's Fushimi Ward. The current structure is a 1964 replica of the original built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.-History:...

, he met Gang Hang (1567–1618), a Korean neo-Confucian scholar who was taken prisoner to Japan during Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598). In Joseon Dynasty, neo-Confucianism was the state ideology and there were a lot of neo-Confucianism scholars and literature. On the contrary, the academism of Japan was usually confined only in the Buddhist monasteries during the civil wars of Daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

 rivalry. And the classical Chinese, in which most of neo-Confucian literature were written, was legible only to the educated Buddhists like Fujiwara or Hayashi. Most of samurais were illiterate then. So neo-Confucianism was very fresh to Japan at that time and interesting to educated Buddhists first. Fujiwara learned neo-Confucianism from Gang Hang and became the originator of Japanese neo-Confucianism.

Later Tokugawa Bakufu adopted neo-Confucianism as ruling ideology, like Chinese and Korean dynasties. Soon neo-Confucianism in Japan was matured and many of prominent neo-Confucianists emerged during Tokugawa Shogunate period.

See also

• Neo-Confucianism in Japan