Andō Shōeki was a critical thinker in the Tokugawa period of Japan. All that is known of his life is that he was born in Akita toward the end of the seventeenth century and died in the second half of the eighteenth century, that his profession was medicine, and that he went to Nagasaki, the first Japanese port to receive Western trade, where he learned about conditions in foreign countries. He is described as a man of stern character who in his teaching never quoted, except to criticize, the Chinese classical books, meaning that he followed only his own ideas, a very unorthodox way of teaching for Tokugawa Confucianists. Very fond of the peasant class, he insisted that his pupils, and he had very few, should do manual work to be in contact with nature...