Hayashi Razan, the Japanese Confucianist, helped establish the Zhu Xi (Japanese: Shushi) school as the state doctrine of the Tokugawa government (1603–1867), which played an important role in shaping the national character. Hayashi, who was born in Kyoto, began studying Confucianism at the age of twenty-two, under Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619) and like his teacher abandoned Buddhism for the Neo-Confucianism of the twelfth-century Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi. Fujiwara recommended his talented pupil to Tokugawa Ieyasu as official adviser, a post Hayashi continued to fill under Ieyasu's successors. Through his son Gahō (1618–1680) and grandson Hōkō (1644–1732), both erudite Neo-Confucianists, Hayashi's influence spread. Gahō and Hōkō became hereditary heads of the Confucianist college (Shōheikō) of Edo (Tokyo), center of Japan's orthodox Zhu Xi-ism. Hayashi is credited with an important role in the various codes promulgated by the Tokugawa to reorganize the country under strict military rule. That...