neo-Confucian philosopher and educator, founder of the Kogaku school, b. 30 August 1627 (Kyoto, Japan), d. 4 April 1705 (Kyoto).
Ito Jinsai was the son of a timber yard owner. He inherited the business but left it to his younger brother and turned towards studies instead.
Ito Jinsai became the founder of the Kogaku ("Study of Antiquity") branch of Neo-Confucianism in Japan. The "official" Neo-Confucianism of the Tokugawa shogunate period promoted the ideal of orderly submission to the authorities and the theory of the four classes and was therefore sanctioned and encouraged by the ruling class.
Ito Jinsai taught a return to the classics. Building on Mencius' evaluation of Confucius, which placed the common people above the rulers, his Kogaku developed an approach to Confucius that tried to develop a framework for human morality and happiness through rational thought rather than authoritarian rules.
During his lifetime Ito Jinsai had a significant influence on Japanese public thought. He had hundreds of students, and he and his son Ito Togai (1670 - 1736) founded the Kogido ("School for the Study of Ancient Meaning") in Kyoto. His work Gomojigi, a commentary on Mencius and Confucius, appeared in 1683. His philosophy is still considered superior in its moral values to every other school of the Tokugawa period.
The Kogaku school of thought tended to support the imperial house and suggest that under the emperor there was no distinction among the four classes. This egalitarian position did not make it popular with the ruling shogunate. The emphasis on Chinese sources and the desire to study them in their original form became an additional liability when Japan and China began to face each other in conflict, and Ito Jinsai's philosophy became marginalized. But his Kogido school continued, run by his descendants, until 1904, when it was incorporated into the public school system.