Ninomiya Sontoku

Sontoku Ninomiya (二 宫 尊 徳Japanese, born Ninomiya Kinjiro (二 宫 金 次郎, or金治郎); born September 4, 1787 Kayama, † September 17, 1856 in Imaichi ) was a Japanese agricultural reformer.

Biography

Ninomiya was born into a farming family, who lost their property during the period of his childhood by a tsunami. At the age of sixteen he was an orphan and had to pay for their own and the livelihood of his siblings. Through wise management and constant autodidactic education, he brought his property again to prosperity. He was then charged with the reform of the possessions of various impoverished daimyos and 1822 used by Okubo Tadazane fief lords of Odawara. Since 1843 he was in the service of the shogun Tokugawa dynasty.

Ninomyas agrarian reform was based on the shinto - buddhist embossed principle of hōtoku kyō (报 徳 教), which meant that farmers should seek the benefits that they receive from heaven, earth and human repay. He called it a traditional virtues of honesty, hard work, thrift, and gave the peasants by the formation of credit mutuals ( hōtukusha ) implement the possibility of technical innovations in agriculture.

Ninomiya enjoys in Japan great reverence. In the Meiji period Shinto shrines were dedicated to him ( Hōtoku Ninomiya Jinja ), first in 1894 and 1897 in Odawara Imaichi, later came more than ten add more. In the 1930s, he became a role model for virtuous life in the textbooks, and in numerous primary schools statues were erected by him - as a school child wearing firewood on his back and doing a book reading. Ninomiyas collected writings ( Ninomiya Sontoku Zenshu ) have been published in thirty-six volumes. On the one - yen note in 1946 a portrait Ninomiyas was printed.