born August 1583, Kyōto, Japan
died Feb. 4, 1657, Edo
Japanese Neo-Confucian scholar.
Originally a student of Buddhism , he became a loyal adherent of Neo-Confucianism , and from 1607 he served the Tokugawa shogunate. He established the Neo-Confucian teachings of Zhu Xi as the ideology of the shogunate, emphasizing loyalty and a hierarchical social order. Hayashi also reinterpreted Shintō from the point of view of Zhu Xi's philosophy, laying the foundation for the Confucianized Shintō of later centuries. In 1630 the third Tokugawa shogun gave him an estate in Edo, where he founded an academy.