Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801)

Motoori Norinaga was a pivotal figure in Japan’s ‘Native Studies’ or ‘National Learning’ (kokugaku) movement. An accomplished philologist, he helped decipher the idiosyncratic eighth-century orthography of the Japanese chronicle of history and myth, the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters). This was part of his broader scholarly project of defining the nature of the ancient Japanese sensitivity or ‘heart-and-mind’ (kokoro). In so doing, he articulated an influential religious philosophy of Shintōand an axiology of traditional Japanese values, which he considered as primarily emotivist and aesthetic.