Hayashi Razan: Information from Answers.com Mobile

Hayashi Razan

(born August 1583, Kyoto, Japan — died Feb. 4, 1657, Edo) Japanese Neo-Confucian scholar. Originally a student of Buddhism, he became a loyal adherent of Neo-Confucianism, and from 1607 he served the Tokugawa shogunate. He established the Neo-Confucian teachings of Zhu Xi as the ideology of the shogunate, emphasizing loyalty and a hierarchical social order. Hayashi also reinterpreted Shinto from the point of view of Zhu Xi's philosophy, laying the foundation for the Confucianized Shinto of later centuries. In 1630 the third Tokugawa shogun gave him an estate in Edo, where he founded an academy.

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