“Ito Jinsai: (1627-1705) Japanese Confucian scholar. The son of a lumberman, he devoted himself to scholarship. He opposed the authoritarian Neo-Confucianism of the Tokugawa shogunate and advocated a return to the authentic teachings of Confucius and Mencius. He helped establish the Kogaku school of Neo-Confucianism, and with his son founded the Kogi-do academy in Kyoto, which was run by his descendants until 1904. His writings include Gomojigi (1683), a commentary on Confucianism that tried to develop a rational basis for morality and the pursuit of happiness.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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