1. Arai Hakuseki was a Confucianist, scholar-bureaucrat, academic, administrator, writer and politician in Japan during the middle of the Edo period, who advised the shogun Tokugawa Ienobu.
12 Facts About Arai Hakuseki
1. 2.
Arai Hakuseki's father was a Kururi han samurai Arai Masazumi.
3.
Arai Hakuseki was a retainer of Hotta Masatoshi, but after Masatoshi was assassinated by Inaba Masayasu, the Hotta clan was forced to move from Sakura to Yamagata then to Fukushima and the domain's income declined.
4.
Arai Hakuseki offered to leave, becoming a ronin and studied under Confucianist Kinoshita Jun'an.
5.
Arai Hakuseki was offered a post by the largest han, that of Kaga Domain, but he offered the position to a fellow samurai.
6.
In 1693, Arai Hakuseki was called up to serve by the side of Manabe Akifusa as a "brain" for the Tokugawa shogunate and shogun Tokugawa Ienobu.
7.
Arai Hakuseki went on to displace the official Hayashi advisers to become the leading confucianist for Ienobu and Tokugawa Ietsugu.
8.
Arai Hakuseki was buried in Asakusa, Hoonji temple but was later moved to Nakano, Tokyo, Kotokuji temple.
9.
Arai Hakuseki simplified rituals for welcoming the Joseon dynasty's ambassadors, in the face of opposition from the Tsushima Confucianist Amenomori Hoshu.
10.
Arai Hakuseki applied the mandate of heaven to both the emperor and the shogun.
11.
Arai Hakuseki traced Tokugawa family roots back to the Minamoto clan and thus to a line of imperial descent in order to show that Ieyasu's political supremacy had been fitting.
12.
Arai Hakuseki's published writings encompass 237 works in 390 publications in 6 languages and 3,163 library holdings.