Ikuta Yorozu
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Ikuta Yorozu | |
|---|---|
生田 万 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1801 |
| Died | July 3, 1837 (aged 35–36) Kashiwazaki, Echigo Province, Japan |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
Ikuta Kunihide (Japanese: 生田 國秀; 1801–1837), better known as Ikuta Yorozu (生田 万) was a Japanese student of the nationalist kokugaku school. He is remembered for his death leading an army of the poor during the Tenpō famine.
Ikuta Kunihide was born in 1801 into a samurai family in the Tatebayashi Domain. His father, Ikuta Nobukatsu (生田 信勝) served as a senior retainer to the Matsudaira clan. Kunihide later took the name Yorozu.
Ikuta studied Confucianism at the domain school, the Dōgakkan (道学館), and was regarded as an intelligent and well-read pupil, but he developed an interest in the austere and idealistic Yangming school and gradually became estranged from his teachers and the other students.[1] In 1824, when he was 23 years old, he travelled to Edo to study kokugaku under Hirata Atsutane. As one of Atsutane's two most prominent disciples, alongside Midorikawa Yoshihisa, the brother of Hirata Kanetane, he served as an administrator for the Hirata school and was respected by Atsutane, who is said to have remarked, "Kunihide will be my successor."[1]
Ikuta had a passionate personality characterized by deep reverence for the spirits and the Emperor. He was distressed by what he saw as the cruelty and incompetence of the Tokugawa government. When he began to openly criticize the government, Atsutane, fearing that he would be arrested, advised him to return home to his domain.
