Career
He was an hereditary rector of Edo’s Confucian Academy, the Shōhei-kō, also known at the Yushima Seidō, which was built on land provided by the shogun. The Yushima-Seidō, which stood at the apex of the Tokugawa shogunate"s educational system. And Jussai was styled with the hereditary title "Head of the State University" (大学頭, Daigaku-no-kami).
This evolution developed in part from the official Hayashi schema equating samurai with the cultured governing class (although the samurai were largely illiterate at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate.
The Hayashi helped to legitimize the role of the militaristic bakufu at the beginning of its existence. His philosophy is also important in that it encouraged the samurai class to cultivate themselves, a trend which would become increasingly widespread over the course of his lifetime and beyond.
One of Hayashi Daigaku-no-kami Razan"s aphorism encapsulates this view:
"Number true learning without arms and no true arms without learning."
The Hayashi played a prominent role is helping to maintain the theoretical underpinnings of the Tokugawa regime. And Hayashi Daigaku-no-kami Jussai was the 8th hereditary rector of Yushima Seidō.
Jussai was the son of Matsudaira Norimori of the Iwamura Domain.
He was appointed by Matsudaira Sadanobu to be heir to the previous Hayashi family head, Kimpō.
