Hakuseki Arai was a scholar and statesman of the middle Edo period who played a leading role in the shogunate as adviser to the sixth shogun Tokugawa Ienobu.
Background
Hakuseki Arai was born in the domain residence in Edo On 24 March, 1657. His personal name was Kimiyoshi, his common name Kagcyu, and his literary name Hakuseki. His father, Arai Masanari, was a samurai in the service of Tsuchiya loshisada, lord of the domain of Kururi in Kazusa.
When Hakuseki was twenty, his father was dismissed from the service of the Tsuchiya family, and Hakuseki as a result was obliged to live in very straitened circumstances. He devoted himself to intensive study, however, determined to gain some kind of official employment. To this end, he turned down a proposal of a marriage alliance with the family of Kawamura Zuiken, a wealthy merchant of Osaka.
Education
When he was around the age of thirty, he became a disciple of Kinoshita Jun’an, a teacher of the Chu Hsi school of Neo- Confucianism, and was counted among the latter’s most outstanding students.
Career
In 1683, at the age of twenty-five, Hakuseki entered the service of Hotta Masatoshi, the tairo (chief state councilor) of the shogunate. With the downfall of the Hotta family in 1685, he was once more reduced to hardship. He was offered a stipend in 1691, but felt obliged by circumstances to reject it.
In 1693, on the recommendation of his teacher, he became a lecturer on Confucianism to Tokugawa Ienobu, lord of Kofu, and soon came to be highly trusted. In 1709, Ienobu was chosen to succeed Iokugawa Tsuna- yoshi as the sixth shogun, and Hakuseki accordingly became an official in the shogunate. He ranked in importance with the chamberlain of the shogun Manabe Akifusa and was in a position to advise the shogun in person on questions of state, making Hakuseki a figure of great influence in the shogunate. In 1711 he was given the honorary position of governor of the province of Chikugo and the following year was assigned a stipend of 1,000 koku, honors that were all but unprecedented for a man of scholarly background in the Edo period.
Tokugawa Ienobu died in 1712, but his successor to the shogunate, Ietsugu, was still a child, and Hakuseki therefore continued to play a key role as adviser on matters of state. Upon Ietsugu's death in 1716, however, when Tokugawa Yoshimune, lord of the domain of Kii, became shogun, Hakuseki found his advice no longer wanted and he retired from government service, devoting his remaining years to writing and research. He died in 1725.
Personality
As a scholar, Hakuseki placed particular emphasis upon rationalism and careful documentation, attempting to find ways to translate the ideals of Chu Hsi Confucianism into actual practice.