Motoori Norinaga

Motoori Norinaga
Self-portrait by Motoori
Born	21 June 1730
Died	5 November 1801 Matsusaka, Mie
Nationality	Japan
Other names	本居 宣長

Motoori Norinaga (本居 宣長^?, 21 June 1730 – 5 November 1801) was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.

Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka in Ise Province (now part of Mie Prefecture) as the second son of an Otsu merchant house (the film director Yasujirō Ozu was a descendant of the same line). After his elder brother’s death, Norinaga succeeded to the Ozu line. At one stage he was adopted out to a paper-making family but the bookish boy was not suited to business.

It was at his mother's suggestion that, at the age of 22, Norinaga went to Kyoto to study medicine. In Kyoto, he also studied Chinese and Japanese philology under the neo-Confucianist Hori Keizan. It was at this time that Norinaga became interested in the Japanese classics and decided to enter the field of Kokugaku under the influence of Ogyū Sorai and Keichū. (With changes in the language, the ancient classics were already poorly understood by Japanese in the Edo period and texts needed philological analysis in order to be properly understood.) Life in Kyoto also instilled in the young Norinaga a love of traditional Japanese court culture.

Returning to Matsusaka, Norinaga opened a medical practice for infants while devoting his spare time to lectures on The Tale of Genji and studies of the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan). At the age of 27, he bought several books by Kamo no Mabuchi and embarked on his Kokugaku researches. As a doctor, he adopted the name of one of his samurai ancestors, Motoori.

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