二宮 尊徳
Sontoku Ninomiya was born on 4 September 1787. His common name was Kinjiro. He was the son of a middle-class farm family of the village of Kayama, Ashigara District, in the province of Sagami. His family’s livelihood was wiped out by the floods of the Sakawa River, and both his parents died when he was still a child.
From his youth he was noted for his devotion to learning and diligence, and by around the age of twenty- four he had succeeded in reestablishing the Ninomiya family.
Many farmers of the time, because of the financial pressures upon them, had abandoned their farms and villages. In restoring health to the farming communities, Ninomiya insisted that the yearly levies and taxes imposed upon the farmers by the lord of the fief be kept at a fixed level and employed any surplus funds that became available to improve agricultural facilities or to invest in activities profitable to the farm community. At the same time, he worked to impress upon the farmers the importance of simple, frugal ways of living and of diligence.
As his fame spread, he attracted the attention of the Tokugawa shogunate, which in 1842 appointed him to take charge of public works projects. In 1853 he undertook to restore prosperity to the farming villages in the domain of the Tosho-gu in Nikko, the shrine dedicated to the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, but he fell ill and died before completing the task.
He was requested by the Hattori family, chief retainers of the fief of Odawara, to help the family out of the financial difficulties into which it had fallen. He succeeded in reorganizing the family’s finance, displaying unusual talent in the process. He also exerted great effort in restoring many abandoned farm villages in the fiefs of Odawara, Karasuyama, and Shimodate. He was particularly noted for the leadership that he demonstrated in carrying out engineering projects in the villages and opening up new lands for cultivation.
His ideas and methods were carried on by his principal disciples such as Tomita Takayoshi and Agoin Shoshichi, and the Hotokusha, a society that he founded for the purpose of spreading his teachings, continued to be active throughout Japan in the Meiji period and thereafter. However, his ideas, with their emphasis upon filial piety, frugality, and diligence, were designed originally to meet the needs of an agricultural class existing within a strictly regulated feudal system. In the years since the Second World War, when the emphasis in Japan has shifted to individualism, democracy, and technological advancement, his ways of thought have ceased to appeal to the working classes and no longer enjoy their former popularity.
