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カテゴリー1： 8. Schools, Groups, and Personalities
カテゴリー2： Personalities
Title
Ikeda Mitsumasa
Text (169-82)
Early Edo-period lord of Okayama Domain in Bizen Province (present-day Okayama Prefecture). Common name Shintarō, and posthumous title Hōrekkō. Born in 1609 to Ikeda Toshitaka (1584-1616), the previous lord of Okayama Domain. Mitsumasa inherited the title of daimyō (domainal lord) upon his father's death in 1616, but the following year his holdings were drastically reduced as control of portions of his fiefdom was transferred to the domains of Inaba and Hōki (located in present-day Tottori Prefecture). In 1628 Ikeda married Katsuko, daughter of Senhime, who in turn was the daughter of Hidetada, the second Tokugawa Shogun. When Okayama Domain in Bizen Province was placed under direct control of the shogunate in 1632, Ikeda remained de facto lord of the region. He established a domainal administration based on the Confucian principle of benevolent government (jinsei), and inspired by Confucianists such as Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91) reformed agricultural administration and military affairs, promoting better use of natural resources and the development of arable land. He also devoted himself passionately to fostering education in the region; he established the Hanabatake Academy for children of samurai vassals in 1641, and in 1668 instituted schools for writing in several locations in the domain for the children of commoners. In addition, following the example of the domains of Aizu and Mito, he implanted a far-reaching religious policy that included the merger of Shinto shrines and the reduction of Buddhist temples by half. He was well known for his love of learning, and many of his transcriptions and annotations of Confucian classics such as The Great Learning (Jp. Daigaku, Ch. Daxue), The Doctrine of the Mean (Jp. Chūyō, Ch. Zhongyong), and the Analects (Jp. Rongo, Ch. Lunyu) together with transcriptions of poetry anthologies remain extant. Ikeda died on the twenty-second day of the fifth month of 1682 at the age of seventy-four.

- Yazaki Hiroyuki

Pronunciation in Japanese/用語音声

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