Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–46)

Tominaga Nakamoto was a leading representative of what some scholars have called the eighteenth-century ‘enlightenment’ movement in Tokugawa thought. Nakamoto’s philological critiques of the historical development of Buddhist, Confucian and Shintōdoctrines are noteworthy for their modern, empiricist tendencies. His advocacy of makoto no michi, or ‘the True Way’, a quotidian ethics advocating practical morality, gained no real following during Nakamoto’s brief life.