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the fiftieth Mikado from Jimmu, and enjoyed a hereditary pension of a hundred koku of rice. Atsutane was the fourth son of a family of eight children. At the age of eight he entered the school of a professor of Chinese named Nakayama Seiga, and three years later commenced the study of medicine under his uncle Ôwada Ringen. Up to his twentieth year he chiefly devoted himself to Chinese studies, and practised fencing under various teachers, but he longed to distinguish himself in some way more worthy of his abilities, and in the beginning of 1795 he suddenly quitted his father’s house, leaving a letter behind him bidding farewell to his relations. He had chosen the 8th of the month for his departure, apparently on account of the popular belief that a person who leaves home on that day never returns. With a riô in his purse he started for Yedo, where, after his arrival, avoiding the society of his fellow-clansmen and friends, he sought on all sides for a virtuous and learned teacher. Sometimes he obtained employment as an under-teacher, and in his worst extremity was reduced to seeking a livelihood by manual labour. In this manner he passed four or five years, suffering great hardship and privation. In 1800, at the age of twenty-five, he became the adopted heir of Hirata Fujibei, a retainer of the daimiô of Matsuyama in Bitchiu, and took up his residence in the yashiki of Honda Shiuri on Kagura-zaka in Yedo.
It was in the following year that Atsutane first became acquainted with the writings of Motoori, and was seized with an enthusiastic love for the study of Japanese antiquity. In the seventh month he formally enrolled himself among Motoori’s pupils, about two months before the death of the elder scholar. His first essay in the new branch of learning to which he had devoted himself was an attack upon the writings of Dazai Shuntai (b. 1680, d. 1747), in a book entitled Kabôsho, which he wrote in 1803, and in the following year he began to take pupils. It was in 1804 that he drew up a table of Chinese characters relating to the practise of the five virtues. These he enumerates as Reverence, Righteousness, Benevolence,
