NAJ: HAYASHI Razan Collection (Chinese classics) Synopsis (1)

Abstract

This article is a survey of the writings in the collection of HAYASHI Razan, which are among the Chinese classics housed at the National Archives of Japan (NAJ). HAYASHI Razan (1583–1657) was a Confucian scholar of the early Edo period. He served the shogun TOKUGAWA Ieyasu by providing the intellectual underpinnings for the Edo bakufu (shogunate). Kyoto-born HAYASHI was wise from early childhood. He was an avid reader and possessed an extensive book collection. By his twilight years, HAYASHI had amassed a collection of tens of thousands of books. Sadly, a great many of those tomes burned in the Great Fire of 1657. Fortunately, however, HAYASHI had already divided many of his books between his two sons, effectively saving those volumes from perdition in the great fire. Frequent subsequent fires steadily reduced the collection in later years, and the surviving works are now housed in the Library as 437 titles containing 4,385 booklets of Chinese classics. A list of the Chinese classics of the HAYASHI Razan collection housed at the Library is appended to the latter half of this article. The synopsis in the first half of the article includes commentaries on works in the list that are worthy of special mention.