Background
Issai Satō was born on 14 November 1722 into the family of the chief retainer of the Iwamura clan in the province of Mino (Gifu Prefecture).
His common name was Sutezo, Issai being his literary name.
佐藤 一斎
Issai Satō was born on 14 November 1722 into the family of the chief retainer of the Iwamura clan in the province of Mino (Gifu Prefecture).
His common name was Sutezo, Issai being his literary name.
He entered the personal service of the lord of the clan in 1790, at the age of eighteen, and studied Confucianism together with Hayashi (Matsudaira) Jussai, the lord’s son. In 1791 he went to Osaka, where he became a pupil of the Confucian scholar Nakai Chikuzan, then later went to study with the Confucian scholar Minakawa liien in Kyoto. In 1793 he became a pupil of Hayashi Nobuatsu, who was in charge of educational affairs for the shogunate.
When in time his old friend Matsudaira Jussai became head of the Hayashi family and Confucian scholar to the shogunate, Issai became his assistant, and in 1805 became head of the Confucian academy run by the Hayashi family.
In 1841, when Issai was sixty-nine, Jussai died and Issai was selected to succeed him as official Confucian scholar to the shogunate. In the capacity he worked to spread the teachings of the Chu Hsi school of Neo-Confucianism (Shushi- gaku), which the Tokugawa shogunate encouraged as the orthodox form of Confucianism in Japan.
His Confucianism did not concentrate solely on theory, but also took in elements of the doctrines of Wang Yang-ming (Yomeigaku), with its emphasis on action. This, together with his dignified and sincere personality and his wide learning, brought him many pupils, among them such outstanding later figures as Watanabe Kazan, Sakuma Shozan, and Yokoi Shonan.