He Yan

• Born: 190
• Died: 249
• Chinese: 何晏 (Hé Yàn)

Hé Yàn was a Wei dynasty (Three Kingdoms period) scholar known for his commentaries on the Analects of Confucius.

Those commentaries continued to be read for centuries, not only in China, but in Japan and elsewhere as well. When the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi was first introduced into Japan in the 14th century, He Yan's commentaries were among the central texts which Japanese scholars studying this new tradition read.

References

• Takatsu Takashi, “Ming Jianyang Prints and the Spread of the Teachings of Zhu Xi to Japan and the Ryukyu Kingdom in the Seventeenth Century,” in Angela Schottenhammer (ed.), The East Asian Mediterranean: Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Harrassowitz Verlag (2008), 255.