Nobuhiro Satō was an agronomist and thinker of the late Edo period.
Background
Nobuhiro Satō was born on 18 July 1769. . A native of Okachi in the province of Ugo (Akita Prefecture). For four generations his family had been studying agriculture and mining, and at the age of twelve Nobuhiro was taken by his father on a tour of the Ezo territories (Hokkaido) and the Ôu district as a means of giving him instruction in agricultural matters. Unfortunately, his father died just as they reached the Ashio copper mine in the province of Kôzuke (Gumma Prefecture).
Education
In accordance with his father’s dying wish, he went alone to Edo, where he became a pupil of the rangakusha (student of Dutch or Western learning) Udagawa Genzui, and also studied astronomy, geography, and surveying, among other things, with the scholar Kiuchi Taizo.
From 1786 onward he toured Kyushu, Shikoku, and other areas, deepening his knowledge. Returning eventually to Edo, he studied with Yoshikawa Genjürô, official Shinto scholar to the shogunate, then became a pupil of Hirata Atsutane, with whom he studied kokugaku ( the school of learning, first appearing in the mid-Tokugawa period, that sought to return to the true Japanese national spirit via the study of the Japanese classics; with time, it acquired an increasingly nationalistic flavor).
Career
In 1785 he left Edo with his teacher Genzui and went to the Tsuyama domain in the province of Mimasaka (northern Okayama Prefecture), where he gave advice on reforming the clan government.
In 1814 he was admonished by the shogunate on a matter connected with Shinto but persisted and was placed in a state of semiconfinement in Adachi district in the province of Musashi (Saitama Prefecture). He continued nevertheless to devote himself to his studies and to writing books, so that his fame eventually spread among the daimyo and the public in general.
He also became friendly with the contemporary rangakusha Watanabe Kazan and Takano Chôei; as a result, he was caught in the shogunate’s move to suppress progressive students of European science made in 1839 and barely escaped punishment. Following this, at the request of the rojii (councilor of state) Mizuno Tada- kuni, he prepared a work entitled Fukkoho gaigen in which he discussed state control of industry. He also gave advice to various daimyo on agricultural affairs, the economy, and maritime defense, and published a large number of works, among them Nôsei honron, Keizai yôroku, Bokaisaku, and Suiriku semporoku.