Miura Baien

Miura Baien 三浦梅園
Born	1723 Aki, Ōita, Japan
Died	1789 Aki, Japan
Region	Japanese philosophy
Main interests	Natural philosophy, Epistemology, Scientific method, Ethics, Symmetry
Notable ideas	jorigaku
Influences Confucianism
Influenced Hoashi Banri

Miura Baien (三浦 梅園, September 1, 1723 – April 9, 1789) was a Japanese philosopher of the Tokugawa era. A scholar often qualified as prolific original thinker in economy, interested in epistemology,^[1] he studied nature in a methodical way. He grounded his thought in Neo-Confucianism.

Life

Born as Miura Susumu into the family of a village physician in the present Ōita Prefecture (at that time named Bungo) on the island of Kyūshū, he became himself a physician and declined invitations to take office in the service of a local feudal lord. A master of Chinese language and poetry, he later became an advocate of a new rationalism.^[2]

Key ideas

• jorigaku
• gengo-zu diagrams

Key works

• Baien's Three "Go (words)"^[3]
  • Gengo (lit. Abstruse Talk), freely translated as Discourse on Methaphysics
  • Zeigo (lit. Talking On and On), freely translated as Discourse on Corollaries
  • Kango (lit. Presumtuous Talk), freely translated as Discourse on Morality
• Heigo Fūji (lit. Confidential Matters on the Year Hinoe), 1786, a treatise on political, economic, military and legal affairs
• Kagen (lit. The Origin of Price)
• Logical Model of Earth Ecosystem
• collection of his work in Baien Shiryōshū (1989, Perikansha publication)

See also

• Ninomiya Sontoku

References

1. The Cambridge History of Japan: Early modern Japan, page 633
2. Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. I, compiled by Ryusaku Tunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, Columbia University Press, New York, 1958, p. 480
3. Ancient Sages of the Oita prefecture Three Wisemen of Bungo

External links

• picture of the Miura Baien Historical Museum in the Oita prefecture opened in October 2000
• Miura Baien, 1723-1789, and His Dialectic & Political Ideas, by Gino K. Piovesana � 1965, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (1965), pp. 389–421
• "Logical Model of Earth Ecosystem" by Baien Miura by Tatsuya Kitabayashi, 2004
• Concerning Baien Miura and 'Reply to Taga' by Tatsuya Kitabayashi
• Philosophic projections, The Mathematical Intelligencer, Volume 30, Number 3 / September, 2008
• Miura Baien's Ethical Thought, in Annals of ethics
• blog post Aki / ?? by Joel Swagman featuring pictures of Miura Baien's house, dedicated museum, and grave, 2009
• A Study on the Diagrams by Baien Miura and Sontoku Ninomiya, Ritsuko Izuhara, 2001