Muro Kyūsō was a Japanese Confucianist who was instrumental in defending the Zhu Xi school of Neo-Confucianism as the official learning of the Tokugawa government. Born in Edo (Tokyo), he was a pupil of Kinoshita Junan (1621–1698) in Kyoto. In 1711 he became, through the recommendation of the scholar-statesman Arai Hakuseki (1657–1725), the official scholar of the Tokugawa government. He was commissioned to compile the Rikuyu engi-tai (Outline of principles of Confucianism) that in 1724 became the standard textbook on Zhu Xi's doctrine for all official schools. Muro in his early years was not a follower of the Zhu Xi school; as he tells us in his Shundai zatsuwa (Conversations at Surugadai), it was only at the age of forty, after a long period of doubt, that he embraced Zhu Xi's thought. The doctrine was then under...