Rai Sanyo Living Room (Historic Site)

This room is known as the place where Rai Sanyo, born in Osaka in 1780, spent his childhood and where he wrote the draft of Nihon Gaishi. Sanyo's father, Shunsui, was born into a townsman's family in Takehara, but excelled in Chinese poetry and prose, and traveled to Osaka to study, becoming famous as a Neo-Confucian scholar and was appointed to the Hiroshima Domain's academic office. At the time, some townspeople and farmers who had accumulated wealth through economic development also demonstrated their talents in the fields of academia and the arts, and some, like Shunsui, became famous as scholars. Sanyo, the eldest son of Shunsui, showed talent for poetry and prose from an early age and had a deep interest in history. At the age of 21, while Shunsui was stationed in Edo, he escaped from the domain and headed for Kyoto, but his worried uncles, Shunsui and Kyohei, immediately brought him back and confined him to their home in Fukuromachi for five years. It is said that it was at this time that he began writing the famous "Nihon Gaishi." In Bunka 2 (1805), he was released from captivity and took refuge with Kan Chazan in Kannabe, after which he went to Kyoto in Bunka 8 (1811) and opened a school near Sanjo Higashiyama. He subsequently made a name for himself as a Confucian scholar and man of letters, and wrote numerous books until his death in Tenpo 3 (1832). *It was completed in Bunsei 9 (1826) after 25 years of work. Spanning 22 volumes, it is a history book that summarizes the rise and fall of the samurai families from the Genpei clan to the Tokugawa clan. Its ideology of revering the Imperial Court had a major impact on the movement to overthrow the shogunate, and it was considered essential reading for patriots at the end of the Edo period. Date of designation: September 3, 1936 (Showa 11).