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[[Image:Keichu02.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Keichū]]
{{nihongo|'''Keichū'''|契沖|}} (1640 – April 3, 1701) was a Buddhist priest and a scholar of [[Kokugaku]] in the mid [[Edo period]]. Keichū's grandfather was a personal retainer of [[Katō Kiyomasa]] but his father was a ''[[rōnin]]'' from the [[Amagasaki]] fief. When he was 13, Keichū left home to become an acolyte of the [[Shingon]] sect, studying at Kaijō in [[Myōhōji]], [[Imasato]], [[Osaka]]. He subsequently attained the post of [[Ajari]] (or Azari) at [[Mount Kōya]], and then became chief priest at Mandara-in in [[Ikutama]], Osaka. It was at this time that he became friends with the poet-scholar [[Shimonokōbe Chōryū]] (下河辺長流, 1624–1686).
However, he disliked the worldly duties of his work and, after wandering around the [[Kinki]] region for a while, made his way back to Mount Kōya. Deeply influenced by the thinking of [[Kūkai]], he also read widely in the Japanese classics under the patronage of [[Fuseya Shigeta]] (伏屋重賢), a patron of the arts in [[Izumi Province]]. After serving as chief priest at Myōhōji, Keichū spent his last years at Enju’an in Kōzu in the Province of [[Settsu Province|Settsu]].
His prolific works set a new standard in the study of the classics, though building on recent revivals of interest in the subject. When the ''[[daimyō]]'' of [[Mito Domain|Mito]], [[Tokugawa Mitsukuni]], decided to sponsor an edition of the [[Man'yōshū]], he commissioned Shimonokōbe Chōryū, heir to the learning of the great poet and Man'yō expert [[Kinoshita Chōshōshi]] (木下長嘯子, 1569–1649), to undertake the project. However his dilatory approach, combined with illness, and finally death, impeded his work and the task fell to Keichū, a close friend. The result was the latter's  ''Man'yō Daishōki'' (万葉集大匠記, 1687–1690), which had a profound effect on [[kokugaku]] scholarship. In particular, applied methods borrowed from Chinese [[Kaozheng]] philology with rigid [[empiricism]].<ref name="invention">{{cite book|last=Josephson|first=Jason Ānanda |title=The Invention of Religion in Japan |date=2012|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|page=110|isbn=9780226412351 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gxzuzIszO60C}}</ref> He used this hermeneutic to philologically critique [[Buddhism]] and instead located [[Shinto]] as the indigenous Japanese religion.<ref name="invention"/>
Similarly his ''[[Waji]] Shōranshō'' (1693: ''A Treatise on the Proper way to Write Japanese Words'') challenged the standard orthographical conventions set by [[Fujiwara no Teika]] and reconstructed distinctions in the old Japanese lexicon based on the earliest texts. In addition to these Keichū wrote the ''Kōganshō'' (厚顔抄 1691 ''A Brazen-faced Treatise'', the ''Kokin Yozaishō'', the ''Seigodan'', the ''Genchū Shūi'', and the ''[[Hyakunin Isshu]] Kaikanshō''.
==See also==
* [[Hirata Atsutane]]
* [[Japanese poetry]]
* [[Kada no Azumamaro]]
* [[Kamo no Mabuchi]]
* [[Kaozheng]]
* [[Kokugaku]]
* [[Motoori Norinaga]]
==References==
<references />
== Bibliography==
*Susan Burns. 2003. ''Before the Nation.'' Duke University Press, pp.&nbsp;49–52.
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[[Category:Japanese writers of the Edo period]]
[[Category:1640 births]]
[[Category:1701 deaths]]
[[Category:Japanese Buddhist clergy]]
[[Category:Shingon Buddhist monks]]
[[Category:Edo period Buddhist clergy]]
[[Category:People from Amagasaki]]
[[Category:Kokugaku scholars]]
[[Category:17th-century Japanese philosophers]]
[[Category:18th-century Japanese philosophers]]