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Motoori Norinaga

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Norinaga was born in Matsuzaka of the province of Ise (now Matsuzaka City in Mie prefecture). He was the second son of the Ozu merchant house of Matsuzaka (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. Norinaga’s disciples included Ishizuka Tatsumaro, Nagase Masaki, Natsume Mikamaro, Takahashi Mikiakira and Motoori Haruniwa (Norinaga’s son).

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Norinaga was born in Matsuzaka of the province of Ise (now Matsuzaka City in Mie prefecture). He was the second son of the Ozu merchant house of Matsuzaka (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 Matsuzaka, 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. In 1763, Norinaga met Mabuchi in person when the latter visited Matsuzaka, a meeting that has come down in history as ‘the night in Matsuzaka’. Norinaga took the occasion to ask Mabuchi to supervise his annotations of the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters). Mabuchi suggested that Norinaga should first tackle the annotations to the Man'yōshū in order to accustom himself to the ancient kana usage known as the man'yōgana. This was the only meeting between the two men, but they continued to correspond and, with Mabuchi’s encouragement, Norinaga later went on to full-fledged research into the Kojiki. Norinaga’s disciples included Ishizuka Tatsumaro, Nagase Masaki, Natsume Mikamaro, Takahashi Mikiakira and Motoori Haruniwa (Norinaga’s son). Although overshadowed by his activities as a Kokugaku scholar, Norinaga spent 40 years as a practicing doctor in Matsuzaka and was seeing patients until 10 days before his death in 1801.