Aizawa Seishisai

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Aizawa Seishisai (会沢正志斎, Aizawa Seishisai^?) (1781-1863), born Aizawa Yasushi (会沢安, Aizawa Yasushi^?), was a Japanese 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 ("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.

[edit] Source

• Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi (1986). Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674040252.