was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of

Kokugaku was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Edo period. scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of ...

in the mid

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 ...

. Keichū's grandfather was a personal retainer of

Katō Kiyomasa was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, Azuchi–Momoyama and Edo periods. His court title was . His name as a child was ''Yashamaru'', and first name was ''Toranosuke''. He was one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Hideyoshi's Seven ...

but his father was a ''

rōnin In feudal Japan to early modern Japan (1185–1868), a ''rōnin'' ( ; , , 'drifter' or 'wandering man', ) was a samurai who had no lord or master and in some cases, had also severed all links with his family or clan. A samurai became a ''rō ...

'' from the

Amagasaki 270px, Amagasaki Castle 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 455,555 in 223,812 households, and a population de ...

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

Shingon is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō- ...

sect, studying at Kaijō in Myōhōji, Imasato,

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

. 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 Bu ...

, 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 Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropolit ...

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

Kūkai , born posthumously called , was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the Vajrayana, esoteric Shingon Buddhism, Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) und ...

, 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 Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the area of southern Osaka Prefecture. It bordered on Kii Province, Kii to the south, Yamato Province, Ya ...

. After serving as chief priest at Myōhōji, Keichū spent his last years at Enju’an in Kōzu in the Province of Settsu. 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 no ...

'' of Mito,

Tokugawa Mitsukuni , also known as , was a Japanese daimyō, 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 ...

, 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 (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 was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Edo period. scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of ...

scholarship. In particular, applied methods borrowed from Chinese

Kaozheng ''Kaozheng'' (), alternatively called ''kaoju xue'' () was a Chinese school of thought emphasizing philology that was active during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) from to 1850. It was most prominent during the reigns of the Qianlong Emperor and J ...

philology with rigid

empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along ...

. He used this hermeneutic to philologically critique

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

and instead located

Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...

as the indigenous Japanese religion. Similarly his '' Waji Shōranshō'' (1693: ''A Treatise on the Proper way to Write Japanese Words'') challenged the standard orthographical conventions set by

Fujiwara no Teika was a Japanese anthologist, calligrapher, literary critic,"The high quality of poetic theory (''karon'') in this age depends chiefly upon the poetic writings of Fujiwara Shunzei and his son Teika. The other theorists of ''tanka'' writing, st ...

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 compo ...

Kaikanshō''.

References

Bibliography

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

See also

References

Bibliography