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first who vindicated the style of the Manyoshiu against that of the modern school. His works are extremely rare. The efforts of these three men were, however, confined to the department of poetry, and the credit of having founded the modern school of pure Shintô belongs to Kada.
I.
Kada Adzumamaro, as he is most commonly styled, was born in 1669 near Kiôto, his father being the warden of the shrine at Inari between Kiôto and Fushimi. From his boyhood up he was fond of study, and devoted himself to antiquarian investigation. He thus acquired an accurate knowledge of the ancient national records, the old laws, of which only fragments have been preserved, the early prose and poetry and the chronicles of the noble families. Though absolutely without any one to point out the way to him in these researches, he was nevertheless enabled to make many valuable discoveries. When considerably over sixty years of age he went to Yedo, where his reputation came to the ears of the government, and he received a commission from it to revise and edit the ancient texts. After residing at Yedo for some years he returned to Kiôto, and the governor of Fushimi presented him with a considerable sum of money as a reward for his labours. It is said that the commission came in the first place from the Mikado, who was obliged to communicate with his subjects through the Shôgunate, and that the money-reward came from the same source, but there is no documentary evidence of this.
Kada had long cherished a scheme for the establishment of a school for the study of Japanese language and literature, and he sent in a memorial on the subject to the authorities at Kiôto, probably to the machibugiô, or to the Shôgun’s Resident (shoshidai). But he died soon after (in 1736), and the project was never carried out. The Kijinden indeed says that the necessary sanction had been given, and that Kada had already selected a spot near the burial-place of the Higashi Honguanji, but Hirata (in the Tamadasuki) thinks that this so-called sanction,
