Aizawa Seishisai (会沢正志斎?) (1781-1863), born Aizawa Yasushi (会沢安?), was a Japanese Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters which make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which nationalist thinker of the Mito school during the late shogunate period.
In 1799 he became involved in the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi (Great History of Japan) being undertaken by the Mito school.
In 1825 he wrote his Shinron ("New Theses"), a collection of essays that mainly dealt with the concept of kokutai Kokutai is a politically loaded word in the Japanese language, translatable as "national identity; national essence; national character" or "national polity; body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor's sovereignty; Japanese constitution". Historian John S. Brownlee gives this characterization ("national polity"), a term which Aizawa popularised. The Shinron warned of the threat of foreign ships and later became an important work for the sonnō jōi movement.
In 1840 Aizawa became the first head of professors of the Mito school's Kōdōkan but was forced to resign in 1844 when Tokugawa Nariaki resigned as domain leader. He later returned to the Kōdōkan.
Source
- Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi (1986). Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825. Harvard University Press Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP). The current director is William P. Sisler and the editor-in-chief. ISBN 0674040252.
Categories: 1781 births | 1863 deaths | Samurai | Japanese philosophers
