Yu Mingtai

• Other Names: 余碧泉 (Yú Bìquán), 克勤齋 (Kèqínzhāi)
• Chinese: 余明台 (Yú Míngtái)

Yu Mingtai was a member of the Yu family, the most prominent publishers in Fujian province from the Southern Song Dynasty through the end of the Ming Dynasty. Mingtai is significant in particular for his publication of the Dakui sishu jizhu, an illustrated version of Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Four Books.

Copies and versions of this Dakui sishu jizhu later made their way to Japan, where they were adapted and reprinted numerous times, and to the Ryûkyû Kingdom. The text survives today only in Japanese reprints, and not in China. Historian Takatsu Takashi identifies the Dakui sishu jizhu as "the most important text when we investigate the circulation of the teaching of Zhuzi in seventeenth century East Asia."

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), 260-261.