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Tayasu Kingo (1715-1771), the first of the name, who took great interest in the subject, he entered the service of that Prince. A dispute subsequently took place on account of which Arimaro resigned, but he continued to take pupils at his own house. There is a notice of his life and works in the Kijinden.
When Arimaro quitted the service of Tayasu Kingo, he recommended a man named Mabuchi in his stead.
II.
Mabuchi was a man of ancient lineage, being descended from Take-tsunumi no mikoto, the demigod who took the form of a gigantic crow and acted as guide to Jimmu Tennô in his invasion of Yamashiro, as related in the Nihongi.[1]
About the middle of the 13th century there was a Shintô priest of one of the lesser Shrines of Kamigamo near Kiôto, whose daughter, one of the Emperor’s women, received a gift of 500 koku of land at Okabé near Hamamatsu in Tôtômi. With these lands she endowed a shrine to the gods of Kamo and made her brother Michihisa chief warden of it. The living, if it may be so called, became hereditary in the family of his younger brother and heir, and three generations later the name of the village was adopted as the family surname. In the end of the 17th century the wardenship was held by Okabé Jirozaëmon, and Mabuchi, who was his nephew, was born at Okabé in 1697.
His biographer says that at one period he was desirous of entering the Buddhist priesthood, but his parents refused their consent, and he thereupon quitted their roof for that of the chief innkeeper at Hamamatsu, whose daughter he married. Amongst his friends were two Shintô priests, Sugiura Shinano no Kami and Mori Mimbu no Shôyu, both pupils of Kada. Sugiura’s wife was a niece of Kada, who on his way to and from Yedo used to stop with his relations, and Mabuchi thus made
