Ito Jinsai

Ito Jinsai

(born Aug. 30, 1627, Kyoto, Japan—died April 4, 1705, Kyoto) Japanese Confucian scholar. The son of a lumberman, he devoted himself to scholarship. He opposed the authoritarian Neo-Confucianism of the Tokugawa shogunate (see Tokugawa period) 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.