ITŌ JINSAI (1627–1705) was a Japanese kangakusha (Sinologist), educator, and Confucian philosopher. In 1681 Jinsai opened a private school, the Kogidō, in Kyoto and thus founded the Kogakuha, the school of Ancient Learning, a school of thought opposed to the Shushigakuha and the Yōmeigakuha, based on the thought of the Chinese thinkers Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, respectively. The Kogidō, where Jinsai educated hundreds of students from the upper classes, continued uninterruptedly under Ito family management until 1871, when it gave way to the modern curriculum adopted from the West.

Jinsai, known for his personal modesty, forgiving nature, and broadmindedness toward other convictions, such as Buddhism, deserves credit not only as an outstanding moral teacher of the Tokugawa period but also as a scholar whose interests lay beyond his country's boundaries. Unlike the kokugakusha, the scholars of National Learning (Kokugaku), he prepared Japan for...