Kaibara Ekken (貝原 益軒, December 17, 1630 – October 5, 1714) or Ekiken, also known as Atsunobu (篤信), was a Japanese Neo-Confucianist philosopher and botanist.
[2] Kaibara's science was confined to Botany and Materia medica and focused on the "natural law".
The 19th-century German Japanologist Philipp Franz von Siebold called him the "Aristotle of Japan".
As an educator and philosopher, it appears that Kaibara's main goal in life was to further the process of weaving Neo-Confucianism into Japanese culture.
In this context, he is best known for such books as Precepts for Children and Greater Learning for Women (Onna daigaku); but modern scholarship argues that it was actually prepared by other hands.