Rai San'yō (Japanese: ; 21 January 1780,

Aki Province or Geishū () was a province in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, comprising the western part of what is today Hiroshima Prefecture. History When Emperor Shōmu ordered two official temples for each province (one for male Buddhist prie ...

– 16 October 1832,

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 ...

) was a Japanese

Confucianist Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, religion, theory of government, or way of life. Founded by Confucius ...

philosopher, historian, artist and poet of the later

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 ...

. His true name was Rai Noboru.

Biography

He was born to 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 ...

family of the

Hiroshima Domain The was a large domain that owned all of Aki Province and half of Bingo Province. It occupies most of current Hiroshima Prefecture. The domain office was located at Hiroshima Castle in Sato District, Aki Province (renamed Numata District in 1 ...

. His father, Rai Shunsui, was a respected Neo-Confucian teacher.Excerpt from ''Sources of East Asian Tradition, the Modern Period'' (vol.2)
edited by William Theodore de Bary @ Google Books. His mother, Baisi, was a poet of some note. He first studied humanities with his uncles, who were notable Neo-Confucian scholars.Excerpt from ''Sources of Japanese Tradition: Volume 2, 1600 to 2000, Volume 2''
edited by De Bary, Gluck and Keene @ Google Books. Then, in 1797, he went to the Shōheikō, a training school for government bureaucrats in

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

.Excerpt from ''Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900''
by Haruo Shirane @ Google Books. Wishing to devote himself to writing instead, at the age of nineteen he detached himself from his

domain A domain is a geographic area controlled by a single person or organization. Domain may also refer to: Law and human geography * Demesne, in English common law and other Medieval European contexts, lands directly managed by their holder rather ...

and became a wandering scholar. This was a serious crime without receiving special permission so, to save him from greater punishment, his father disinherited him and locked him in his room for three years. He spent this time studying and writing. It was there he conceived the idea for his '' Nihon Gaishi'' ("Unofficial History of Japan") and began composing the first chapters. Many years before, his father had been engaged in writing an official history, but permission had been suddenly withdrawn. In 1811, he moved to Kyoto, opened a school and continued to work on his history. He soon became part of a circle of writers and scholars that included and

Ōshio Heihachirō was a Japanese philosopher, revolutionary, writer, and ''yoriki'' who led the in Osaka. Despite his privileged status, he led a brief uprising against the Tokugawa shogunate. Early life Ōshio was born as the eldest son in a samurai family ...

and came under the influence of the

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 ...

movement. He was finally able to achieve financial independence and travelled throughout Japan, writing Kanshi poetry. One of the main influences of his life was Ema Saikō, a distinguished bunjin painter and composer of kanshi, whom he met in 1813 when visiting her father to further his reputation as a scholar. He was instantly captivated by Ema and expressed his desire for marriage after a few meetings. However, either by rejection of her father because of Ema's previous rejection of marriage or because Rai San'yō decided against asking for her hand, no such marriage took place. Rai San'yō soon married his 17-year-old maid Rie, whom he also taught to compose verse and paint. He did become Ema Saikō's kanshi tutor in 1813 and the two remained close until his death. Through correspondence, he would correct her verses and send her his own poems to practice calligraphy. In 1827, he completed the ''Nihon Gaishi'', his life work, It was modeled on the ''

Records of the Grand Historian The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...

'' and was in 22 volumes, covering Japanese history from the emergence of the

Minamoto clan was a Aristocracy (class), noble surname bestowed by the Emperors of Japan upon members of the Imperial House of Japan, imperial family who were excluded from the List of emperors of Japan, line of succession and demoted into the ranks of Nobili ...

through the reign of

Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the ...

. It was the first comprehensive study of its kind. The work was dedicated to 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 ...

'',

Matsudaira Sadanobu was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the mid-Edo period, famous for his financial reforms which saved the Shirakawa Domain, and similar reforms he undertook during his tenure as chief of the Tokugawa shogunate, from 1787 to 1793. Early life Matsu ...

, who praised it and presented it to the

shogunate , officially , was the title of the military rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, except during parts of the Kamak ...

for approval. Despite winning that approval, it was later banned in several domains, possibly because it advocated strengthening the powers of the

Emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

. It has been cited as a major influence on the ''

Sonnō jōi was a '' yojijukugo'' (four-character compound) phrase used as the rallying cry and slogan of a political movement in Japan in the 1850s and 1860s, during the Bakumatsu period. Based on Neo-Confucianism and Japanese nativism, the movement sou ...

'' movement. He was also the author of "Records of Japan's Government", in 16 volumes; "Morality and Duty", in 3 volumes; several books of verse and travel diaries. He was also an

ink wash Ink wash painting ( zh, t=水墨畫, s=水墨画, p=shuǐmòhuà) is a type of Chinese ink brush painting which uses washes of black ink, such as that used in East Asian calligraphy, in different concentrations. It emerged during the Tang dynasty ...

painter of modest reputation, associated with the Nanga School. In his later years, he suffered from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

and succumbed to the disease while working at his desk.

References

External links

"Layered Meanings: Rai San'yos poem about Gion Nankai's painted robe"
a lecture by Sadako Ohki (video, 28 minutes) @ The

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

The Rai Sanyo Shiseki Museum
@ Hiroshima Navigator.
Barry D. Steben, "Rai San'yo's Philosophy of History and the Ideal of Imperial Restoration" ''East Asian History'', no. 24 (December 2002) pp. 117-170.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rai San'yo 1780 births 1832 deaths 19th-century Japanese historians Japanese painters People from Aki Province Kokugaku scholars 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Kanshi poets 19th-century Japanese poets Tuberculosis deaths in Japan 19th-century Confucianists