Nakae Tōju, "the sage of Ōmi" (his native town in Shiga prefecture), the most respected Confucianist in the Tokugawa era, was an advocate of the Wang Yangming school. The ideas of Wang Yangming (in Japanese, Ōyōmei) were made known in Japan by the Zhu Xi scholar Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619), but only with Nakae did the Wang Yangming doctrine become a school of thought. The importance of this school lies in its impact on Japanese thinking and the nonconformists it produced. Its stress on ryōchi (literally, "good conscience"; more exactly, the innate knowledge that every man has from Heaven) favored the formation of strong individualists guided by the inner light of conscience without the formalistic restraints of Zhu Xi Confucianism. The cultivation of the mind combined with a stress on deeds rather than formal learning was another...