Yamaga Sokō

Yamaga Sokō (山鹿 素行^?, 21 September 1622 – 23 October 1685) was a Japanese philosopher and strategist under the Tokugawa shogunate. As a scholar he applied the Confucian idea of the "superior man" to the samurai class of Japan. This became an important part of the samurai way of life and code of conduct known as bushido.

Yamaga Sokō had been studying the Chinese classics since the age of six, and at nine became a student of Hayashi Razan, a follower of Neo-Confucianism responsible for its development as the official doctrine of the Tokugawa shogunate. However, at the age of forty he broke away from the official doctrine and changed his concept of Confucianism, burning all of the books he had written while still under its influence. This, along with the publishing of a philosophical work entitled Seikyo Yoroku, caused him to be removed from the bureaucracy and exiled outside Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Soon after being exiled, he moved to the Ako Domain, befriending Asano Nagatomo and becoming an important teacher of Confucianism and military science in the region. Yamaga's influence would later be expressed in the Genroku Akō incident, as its leader, Ōishi Yoshio, had been a devoted pupil of his.

Yamaga wrote a series of works dealing with "the warrior’s creed" (bukyō) and "the way of the gentleman" (shidō). In this way he described the lofty mission of the warrior class and its attendant obligations, which had become known as the "Way of the Samurai" (bushidō). According to William Scott Wilson in his Ideals of the Samurai, Yamaga "in his theory of Shido (a less radical theory than bushido), defined the warrior as an example of Confucian purity to the other classes of society, and as punisher of those who would stray from its path."

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