Role Poet Name Keichu Keichu | Died April 3, 1701 | |
 | ||
Keichu (契沖) (1640 - April 3, 1701) was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of Kokugaku in the mid Edo period. Keichu’s grandfather was a personal retainer of Kato Kiyomasa but his father was a ronin from the Amagasaki fief. When he was 13, Keichu left home to become an acolyte of the Shingon sect, studying at Kaijo in Myohoji, Imasato, Osaka. He subsequently attained the post of Ajari (or Azari) at Mount Koya, and then became chief priest at Mandara-in in Ikutama, Osaka. It was at this time that he became friends with the poet-scholar Shimonokobe Choryu (下河辺長流:1624 – 1686).
However, he disliked the worldly duties of his work and, after wandering around the Kinki region for a while, made his way back to Mount Koya. Deeply influenced by the thinking of Kukai, he also read widely in the Japanese classics under the patronage of Fuseya Shigeta (伏屋重賢), a patron of the arts in Izumi Province. After serving as chief priest at Myohoji, Keichu spent his last years at Enju’an in Kozu in the Province of Settsu.
His prolific works set a new standard in the study of the classics, though building on recent revivals of interest in the subject. When the daimyo of Mito, Tokugawa Mitsukuni, decided to sponsor an edition of the Man'yoshu, he commissioned Shimonokobe Choryu, heir to the learning of the great poet and Man’yo expert Kinoshita Choshoshi (木下長嘯子:1569 – 1649), to undertake the project. However his dilatory approach, combined with illness, and finally death, impeded his work and the task fell to Keichu, a close friend. The result was the latter’s Man’yo Daishoki (万葉集大匠記:1687-1690), which had a profound effect on kokugaku scholarship. Similarly his Waji Seiransho (1693: A Treatise on the Proper way to Write Japanese Words) challenged the standard orthographical conventions set by Fujiwara Teika and reconstructed distinctions in the old Japanese lexicon based on the earliest texts. In addition to these Keichu wrote the Kogansho (厚顔抄 1691 A Brazen-faced Treatise, the Kokin Yozaisho, the Seigodan, the Genchu Shui, and the Hyakunin Isshu Kaikansho.