Fujiwara Seika

Fujiwara Seika from Japananese book『先哲像伝』

Fujiwara Seika (藤原 惺窩, 1561 - 1619) was a Japanese philosopher, a leading neo-Confucian of the early Tokugawa Period and a teacher of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Like his student, Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), he had studied in Zen monasteries. But in 1598, at Fushimi Castle, he met Gang Hang (1567-1618), a Korean neo-confucian scholar who was taken prisoner to Japan during Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598). In Joseon Dynasty, neo-Confucianism was the state ideology and there were a lot of neo-Confucianism scholars and literature. On the contrary, the academism of Japan was usually preserved in the Buddhist monasteries during the civil wars of Daimyorivalry. So neo-Confucianism was very fresh to Japan at that time. Fujiwara learned neo-Confucianism from Gang Hang and became the originator of Japanese neo-Confucianism.

Later Tokugawa Bakufu adopted neo-Confucianism as ruling ideology, like Chinese and Korean dynasties. Soon neo-Confucianism in Japan was matured and many of prominent neo-Confucianists emerged during Tokyugawa Shogunate peroid.