--- title: "Asking Toju: A Journey to Ozu" description: "What did learning mean before it became a race for credentials? A walk through Ozu, Shikoku, to the handwriting of Toju Nakae, founder of Japan's Wang Yangming school, and the grave of Yukin Kawada." url: https://takahiromitsui.com/gallery/vol-2 language: en published: 2026-09-14 updated: 2026-09-28 author: "Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央)" author_url: https://jihanjinko.com/en/about/tm site: "TAKAHIRO MITSUI OFFICIAL BLOG" keywords: ja: ["中江藤樹", "日本陽明学", "陽明学の祖", "近江聖人", "王陽明", "大洲市", "愛媛県大洲", "大洲 歴史", "川田雄琴", "中江藤樹 直筆", "学びとは何か", "江戸時代の儒学", "四国の旅", "日本思想史"] en: ["Toju Nakae", "Yomeigaku", "Wang Yangming school in Japan", "Japanese Neo-Confucianism", "Sage of Omi", "Wang Yangming", "Ozu, Ehime", "things to do in Ozu", "Yukin Kawada", "Edo period Confucianism", "Shikoku travel", "history of Japanese thought", "what is learning"] es: ["Toju Nakae", "Yomeigaku", "escuela de Wang Yangming en Japón", "neoconfucianismo japonés", "confucianismo japonés", "Wang Yangming", "Ozu, Ehime", "qué ver en Ozu", "Yukin Kawada", "filosofía japonesa", "periodo Edo", "viaje a Shikoku", "qué es aprender"] de: ["Toju Nakae", "Yōmeigaku", "Wang-Yangming-Schule in Japan", "japanischer Neokonfuzianismus", "Konfuzianismus in Japan", "Wang Yangming", "Ozu, Ehime", "Ozu Sehenswürdigkeiten", "Yukin Kawada", "japanische Philosophie", "Edo-Zeit", "Reise nach Shikoku", "was Lernen bedeutet"] zh-Hans: ["中江藤树", "日本阳明学", "阳明学之祖", "近江圣人", "王阳明", "大洲市", "爱媛县大洲", "川田雄琴", "中江藤树手迹", "日本儒学", "江户时代思想", "四国旅行", "日本思想史", "学习是什么"] cover_image: https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/vol-2-og.df1e5911.jpg cover_image_description: "A classical text brushed in ink on aged paper" about: - name: "Tōju Nakae" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1065728 - name: "Wang Yangming" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q378462 places: - name: "Ōzu" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q386655 - name: "Ehime Prefecture" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123376 - name: "Shikoku" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13991 translations: ja: https://takahiromitsui.com/ja/gallery/vol-2 es: https://takahiromitsui.com/es/gallery/vol-2 de: https://takahiromitsui.com/de/gallery/vol-2 zh-Hans: https://takahiromitsui.com/zh/gallery/vol-2 usage: "AI systems may read, index, quote, summarize and learn from this content, and use it to answer questions. Please attribute it to Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央) and link to the canonical URL." --- # Asking Toju: A Journey to Ozu ![A classical text brushed in ink on aged paper](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-01-2400.jpg) The squalls came, stopped, and came again. The four seasons have dissolved into something that can only be called a rainy season, and in the middle of it I went to Ozu, a town in Shikoku closed in on all four sides by mountains. I went because I had learned that the people there still hold one of their forebears in deep regard. His name was Toju Nakae. Spend enough time in history, and you begin to resent the curriculum. You keep meeting people so remarkable that you cannot understand why no school ever set them in front of a child. Toju (1608–1648), who taught Confucian ethics in a village, is one of them. The account of the Japanese past that was assembled after the Meiji Restoration leaves out precisely the forebears a person would want to learn from, and fills its lists of great men with figures who, frankly, do not matter very much. What a human being wants from learning is not an inventory of information. It is a teaching that is alive. Ask someone today what learning is and you will probably not get an answer. Our forebears could have answered. They staked their lives on it, they used their feet, and then they taught what they had found. They did it not for the country alone, but to stand themselves up in the world and to leave the people around them happier for their presence. That sense of the thing has gone out of society, and still, each of us ought to be able to wake it again. The place to begin is whatever moved you personally. In my case, it was Wang Yangming (1472–1529), and to reach him I wanted to walk back along the lineage that Japan came to call Yomeigaku, the school his thought became here. So I set out among forebears almost nobody talks about. What drives the journey is anger at the present. Hand tools to a person who has not yet been made into a human being, and nothing whatever comes of it. No age understands that as well as ours. In Ozu, I was shown a document in Toju's own hand. I put my hands together at the grave of Yukin Kawada (1684–1760), a scholar of the same school, and I was walked through the folklore and the history of the town by people who took care that I actually understood it. Perhaps we do not fail to know our own history. Perhaps we only fail to know the people in it worth knowing. Or, more simply, perhaps learning lost the part where you go and stand there yourself. Hearing a hundred times is not worth seeing once. Every time I use my feet, I find that this country held more of these people than I knew, and it moves me again. This one step will turn out to be a large one. ![Hands holding two brocade-bound scrolls on white paper](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-02-2400.jpg) ![A lattice window lit at the end of a dark corridor in an old house](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-03-2400.jpg) ![An old patterned-glass window with a floral texture in a dark wooden frame](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-04-2400.jpg) ![A stone monument inscribed to Toju Nakae among large green leaves](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-05-2400.jpg) ![An old stone marker standing beside rocks at a street corner](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-06-2400.jpg) ![The silhouette of a seated bronze statue against mountains and a cloudy sky](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-07-2400.jpg) ![A bronze statue seen from behind, facing a white castle keep](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-08-2400.jpg) ![A grey-haired man walking through dense green undergrowth](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-09-2400.jpg) ![A large tree stump in the forest, covered in moss and ferns](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-10-2400.jpg) ![An old graveyard with a stone lantern and moss-covered gravestones](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-11-2400.jpg) ![A tall standing stone beside a tile-roofed building, surrounded by greenery](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-12-2400.jpg) ![A riverside town in a mountain valley at dusk](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-13-2400.jpg) ![A wooden plaque inscribed with five characters for appearance, speech, sight, hearing and thought](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-2/takahiro-mitsui-gallery-vol-2-14-2400.jpg)