Kinoshita Jun'an

was a Japanese philosopher and Confucian scholar of the early Edo period, in the Neo-Confucian tradition of Zhu Xi.

Biography

Born in Kyoto as the second of five brothers, Kinoshita was a child prodigy, and studied under Matsunaga Sekigo.

In 1682, the fifth Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, appointed him tutor to the court.

A famed educator, Kinoshita's students include Arai Hakuseki (who became advisor to the sixth Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Ienobu), Amenomori Hōshū, Gion Nankai, Muro Kyūsō, Nishiyama Juntai, and Sakakibara Kōshū.

References

• Zenan Shu (2009). Cultural and political encounters with Chinese language in early modern Japan : the case of Kinoshita Jun'an (1621-1698), Thesis (D.Phil.), University of Oxford
• Hiroyuki Takeuchi and Hideto Ueno (1991), 木下順庵 / Kinoshita jun'an. Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppansha.
• Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.) (1979), Told Round a Brushwood Fire, University of Tokyo Press.