Biography
Hakuseki was born in Edo and from a very early age displayed signs of genius. According to one story, at the age of three Hakuseki managed to copy a Confucian book written in Kanji, character by character. Because he was born on the same year as the Great Fire of Meireki and because he was hot tempered and his brow would crease looking like 火 or "fire", he was affectionately called Hi no Ko (火の子) or child of fire. He was a retainer of Hotta Masatoshi, but after Masatoshi was assassinated by Inaba Masayasu, the Hotta clan was forced to move from Sakura to Yamagata then to Fukushima and the domain's income declined. Hakuseki offered to leave, becoming a ronin and studied under Confucianist Kinoshita Jun'an. He was offered a post by the largest han, that of Kaga Domain, but he offered the position to a fellow samurai.
In 1693, Hakuseki was called up to serve by the side of Manabe Akifusa as a "brain" for the Tokugawa shogunate and shogun Tokugawa Ienobu. He went on to displace the official Hayashi advisers to become the leading confucianist for Ienobu and Tokugawa Ietsugu. While some of Hakuseki's policies were still carried out after Ienobu's death, after the 6th shogun, Tokugawa Ietsugu, died and Tokugawa Yoshimune's rule began, Hakuseki left his post to begin his career as a prolific writer of Japanese history and Occidental studies.
He was buried in Asakusa (current day Taitō, Tokyo), Hoonji temple but was later moved to Nakano, Tokyo, Kotokuji temple.
Read more about this topic: Arai Hakuseki
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