Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 58, Motori Norinaga.

This week I want to focus on one of the most interesting and important figures in

Japanese history that almost no one, either in Japan or in the rest of the world, has ever

heard of.

He was born to a merchant family in the early 1700s, and eventually turned his rather

prodigious mind to scholarship.

He proved quite good at it, and made a name for himself.

Around the same time that a fledgling United States was establishing its independence,

he devoted his considerable mental energies to what was considered to be the ultimate

challenge of his day. Looking back at Japan's ancient past to be the ultimate challenge of his day, looking back

at Japan's ancient past to discover the true essence of what it meant to be Japanese.

That man's name was Motori Norinaga, and though he didn't know it, he would eventually

become one of the most important intellectual figures in Japanese history.

Norinaga was born in the city of Matsusaka, in the province of Isay, which is in modern

Mie prefecture in 1730, during the waning years of the golden age of the Tokugawa.

Isay is to the south of Kyoto on the Key Peninsula, a rugged area that is close to the center of Japan,

but divided from it by a range of mountains cutting it off from the nearby metropolitan areas

of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya.

The other important fact to know about Isay is that it is home to the Isay shrine,

the chief shrine of the goddess Amaterasu.

Technically there are two Isay shrines, in fact, the outer and inner shrine, separated by around

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