ANDO SHOEKI

flourished c. 1750 Japanese philosopher considered to be one of the forerunners of the 19th-century movement to restore power to the emperor. He was also one of the first Japanese to study European thought. Ando was a native of Akita. He practiced medicine at Hachinohe, in the present Aomori prefecture, but became prominent as a social thinker in the 1750s. Ando was critical of the feudal society of the Tokugawa shogunate. In his work Jinen shin'ei do (The True Way of Administering [the society] According to Nature), he called for the abolition of the warrior class and a return to agrarian egalitarian society, which was to be administered directly by the national government.