NAKAE TŌJU (1608–1648), Japanese Neo-Confucian thinker. Tōju, often called the Sage of Ōmi, was born in Ogawa in Ōmi Province on Lake Biwa in central Japan. With the exception of sixteen years spent in Ōzu on the island of Shikoku, he passed his life in Omi engaged in studying, teaching, and writing. His grandfather, who had adopted him at the age of nine, took him to Shikoku and encouraged his early education. After his grandfather's death, when Tōju was fifteen, he attended lectures on the Analects by a visiting Zen priest. After this he began serious study of the Four Books (Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Mencius) and of Zhu Xi's commentaries on them. In 1634, citing as motives his own ill health and his desire to be with his widowed mother, he returned to Ōmi. Although...