Background
Nakamoto Tominaga was born in 1715. He was the son of a soy sauce maker of Amagasaki-cho in Osaka. His father, Kichizaemon, was a scholar of sorts and helped to found the Kaitokudo, a school for the education of Osaka townsmen.
富永 仲基
Nakamoto Tominaga was born in 1715. He was the son of a soy sauce maker of Amagasaki-cho in Osaka. His father, Kichizaemon, was a scholar of sorts and helped to found the Kaitokudo, a school for the education of Osaka townsmen.
Brought up in a home where learning was honored, Nakamoto from childhood showed a fondness for scholarship and around the age of ten entered the Kaitokudo, studying under Miyake Sekian and taking instruction in the Wang Yang-ming school of Confucianism, which emphasized the importance of action as well as knowledge.
Later he studied the writing of Chinese poetry and prose under Tanaka Toko, a friend of the eminent scholar of Chinese language and literature Ogyu Sorai.
He also assisted in the task of reprinting and collating an eight- thousand-volume collection of Buddhist scriptures in the possession of the Mampuku-ji, a Zen temple near Kyoto founded by the Ming loyalist monk Yin-yuan. Eventually he opened a school of his own in Bingo-cho in Osaka, teaching at the same time that he carried on his research.
Around the age of fifteen he wrote a work entitled Setsuhei, in which he pointed out what he believed to be errors in the Confucian classics; it is said that his teacher Miyake Sekian disowned him as a result, though the facts are uncertain.
In 1746 he produced a work entitled Okina nofumi, in which he sharply criticized the Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism of his time and called for greater sincerity and moral fervor in the lives of his fellow countrymen.
In 1745 he completed a work, the Shutsujo gogo, in which, drawing upon his profound knowledge of Buddhism, he expressed severe criticism of the Buddhist scriptures. The book aroused bitter opposition among the Buddhist clergy but had the salutary effect of encouraging a more historical approach to the study of the religious texts.
Nakamoto was of weak constitution and often suffered from poor health, but he overcame this handicap to become one of the most learned and creative scholars of the time, producing in his shoft lifetime a number of works remarkable for their insight and originality.