信吉 和多羅偉
religious leader shrine priest
Nobuyoshi Watarai was born in 1615, Japan. His family name was Deguchi, his common name Yosa- bui o 01 Shinano, and his literary name Jikian. He was the son of a priest of the Outer Shrine of Ise. At the time of his birth, Ise Shinto had fallen into decline because of the strength of a rival school known as Yoshida Shinto.
Nobuyoshi Watarai did not study under any distinguished teacher, but seems rather to have been self-educated.
Nobuyoshi Watarai became agon-negi, an acting priest in the Outer Shrine. Outside of a few trips to Edo, he seems scarcely ever to have left the Ise region, but spent his entire life in research and lecturing. He also collected and published earlier works, establishing a library known as the Toyomiyasaki Bunko, in these and other ways laboring to revive the fortunes of Ise Shinto.
Nobuyoshi Watarai became head of the community. When Siamese envoys came to Japan, he frequently sent letters and gifts by way of them to important officials in the Tokugawa shogunate, and he also dispatched his own merchant vessels to Japan, Malacca, and Batavia and exchanged letters and gifts with Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the governor general of the Netherland East Indies, thus playing an active part in both commerce and diplomacy. Nobuyoshi Watarai also headed an army of Japanese that took part in the civil and foreign wars of Siam and distinguished himself by his military prowess.
With the death of the king of Siam in the same year, Nobuyoshi Watarai helped to end the struggle that ensued over the succession and to place the king’s son on the throne, but because of the apprehension that he aroused in other members of the royal family, he was appointed governor of the region of Ligor and was dispatched from the capital the following year to take up his new post. While there, he engaged in battle with an invading army from Patani. Nobuyoshi Watarai was wounded in the encounter and died of poison applied to his wounds by the Siamese.
Nobuyoshi Watarai eliminated Buddhist influence from Ise Shintoism and added a Confucian element to it. Reformed Shintoism to according with Japanese spirit.
In his thinking, he followed the traditional doctrines of the Ise school, expounding the trinity of deities made up of Ame-no-minaka-nushi-no-kami, Kunitokotachi-no-kami, and Toyouke Daijingu, and placing great emphasis on the so-called Five Classics of Shinto.
In addition, he stressed everyday morality, in particular extolling the virtue of honesty, thus introducing into Ise Shinto elements that reflect the intellectual and spiritual climate of early Edo times.
