Is the first study of Ogyū Sorai to appear in English in many years.

Is written by the foremost specialists in the field, in Japan, Taiwan, and the West.

Is for specialists in Japanese Studies, Sinologists, and others interested in East-Asian approaches to common philosophical problems.

W.J. Boot studied Japanese, Korean and Chinese Studies at Leiden University and Kyoto University. He specialised in the history of Japanese Thought. He took his PhD in 1983 (The Adoption and Adaptation of Neo-Confucianism in Japan: The Role of Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan), and was appointed professor of Japanese and Korean studies at Leiden University in 1985 (until 2012). He published numerous papers on the intellectual history of Early Modern Japan and on Japanese poetics.

Daiki Takayama studied at the University of Tokyo (College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) and took his PhD at the same university (School of Humanities and Sociology) in  2011. After being employed as postdoctoral researcher for several years, he was recently appointed at Komazawa University as lecturer of Chinese literature (Kanbun) in Early Modern Japan and the History of Thought of this same period. He recently published Kinsei Nihon no 'reigaku' to 'shūji': Ogyū Sorai igo no'setsujin' no seido kōsō  (2016).