Muro Kyuso

Muro Kyuso

Muro Kyūsō ( Japanese 室 鳩 巣 , actually Muro Naokiyo (室 直 清); born March 30, 1658 in Yanaka, Musashi Province ; died September 8, 1734 in Edo ) was a Japanese philosopher during the middle Edo period .

Life

Muro Kyūsō entered the service of the progressive daimyō Maeda Tsunanori (前 田 綱 紀; 1643-1724), who ruled the rich Kanazwa domain, in 1972. He was then sent to Kyoto to study philosophy under Kinoshita Jun'an , a neo-Confucianist. On the recommendation of the highly educated statesman Arai Hakuseki , he got a job as a Confucianist with the Shogunate. When the eighth Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune , was dissatisfied with the formalistic teaching at the school of the shogunate, the "Shōheisaka Gakumonjo" (昌平 坂 学問 所), he set up his own school on the Takakura estate (高 倉 屋 敷) in 1719 and instructed Muro held a teaching position there.

From 1722 until his death Muro worked as a private scholar and teacher. Unlike many of his contemporary Confucianists, he was against a "Japaneseization" of Neo-Confucianism and strictly adhered to the original teachings of Zhu Xi .

Works

Muros works include the "Notes on the Responsible of Akō" (赤 穂 義 人 録, Akō gijin roku) from 1703, which he published in 1709 in a revised version. In this work he defends the plot of the 47 ronin . Another work is entitled "Mixed Conversations of Sundai" (駿 台 雑 話, Sundai zatsuwa). It contains the conversations that 74-year-old Muro had with his students. He tried to define Bushidō from the perspective of Zhu Xi. The book was named after the author's house in Surugadai (駿 河 台), "Sundai" for short, in the Kanda district of Edo .

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Muro Kyūsō . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1017.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Muro is the family name, Kyūsō the first name.