Hayashi Nobuatsu was a Confucian scholar and advisor to five shoguns, from Tokugawa Ietsuna to Tokugawa Yoshimune.
Also known as Hayashi Hôkô, Nobuatsu was the second son of Hayashi Shunsai. He became head of the Hayashi clan in 1680, and was named head in 1690 of the Shoheizaka gakumonjo, the Confucian school established by his grandfather Hayashi Razan; the school was moved in that same year onto the site of the Yushima Seidô. He later passed on headship of the school to his son, establishing a precedent for the position as hereditary.
His writings include Ka-i hentai, on which he collaborated with his father; among its arguments, the Ka-i hentai describes Qing Dynasty China as having fallen to barbarian rulers, and advocates that the Tokugawa shogunate should take some kind of action to free China from their control.[1]
References
- Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.), Told Round a Brushwood Fire, University of Tokyo Press (1979), 310n21.
- ↑ Schottenhammer, Angela. “Empire and Periphery? The Qing Empire’s Relations with Japan and the Ryūkyūs (1644–c. 1800), a Comparison.” The Medieval History Journal 16, no. 1 (April 1, 2013): 158n42.