Arai Hakuseki was a Confucian scholar and influential shogunal advisor of the Genroku period (late 17th to early 18th centuries). He was chief advisor under Tokugawa Ienobu, but retired when Ienobu was succeeded as shogun by Tokugawa Yoshimune.
Life & Career
He was the grandson of Arai Kageyu (d. 1609); his father was metsuke Arai Masanari (1601-1682), and his mother, a daughter of the Fujiwara clan by the surname Sakai (1617-1678).
Hakuseki entered the service of the Hotta clan in 1682, at the age of 26, and later married a daughter of Asakura Nagaharu, another Hotta retainer. His first daughter, Shizu, was born in 1687, but died in infancy, possibly at birth. His second daughter, Kiyo, was born in 1689. Hakuseki's first son, Arai Akinori, was born in 1691; Hakuseki resigned from his service to the Hotta earlier that year.[1]
He was granted court rank in 1709.
Policies
Hakuseki was particularly influential in effecting a shift in shogunate attitudes and policies regarding foreign relations, articulating the conceptual meaning and discursive value for the shogunate's legitimacy of conceptualizing foreign relations with Joseon Dynasty Korea and the Ryûkyû Kingdom in terms of a tributary relationship patterned after the Sinocentric worldview.
Among other reforms he advised implementing were the reversal of a 1695 debasement of the currency, ...
Hakuseki made a point to meet with ambassadors or representatives from foreign countries on a number of occasions, including meeting with Jesuit Giovanni Battista Sidotti in 1708, with ambassadors from Ryûkyû in 1710, and with envoys from Korea in 1711.
Selected Works
References
- Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.), Told Round a Brushwood Fire, University of Tokyo Press (1979), 279-308.
- ↑ Ackroyd, 283n82.