Miura Baien (三浦 梅園, September 1, 1723 – April 9, 1789) was a physician, natural philosopher and scholar in mid-Edo Period Japan.

Miura Baien was born into the family of a village physician in Bungo Province on the island of Kyūshū, in what is now the Aki neighborhood of the city of Kunisaki, Ōita Prefecture.

When he was 28, he made a pilgrimage to the Ise Grand Shrine, and after returning to Nagasaki for a period, settled back in his home town of Kunisaki.

He refused repeated invitations to take office in the service of various local daimyō, preferring to develop his own school of philosophy and academic system, writing on a wide variety of topics ranging from medicine, poetics, social and economic history and critical theory.

Complex and enigmatic, his philosophical work fell into obscurity after his death until the two volumes of Baien Zenshū were published in 1912.

The house is located on the right bank of a river flowing south, facing east on a gentle slope.

Further south of the academy ruins is the family cemetery on a small hill, where his grave is located.

Approximately 189 square meters in area, the house is now maintained as the "Miura Baien Museum", and contains an observatory, a plum garden, etc., as well as a large collection of handwritten manuscripts.

Letter to Asada Gōryū, 1763 in Mercer: Before Our Very Eyes, PhD thesis, 1994, and Miura Baien Reader.

Shimada Kenji and Taguchi Masaharu (島田虔次, 田口正治): "Miura Baien", Nihon Shisō Taikei 41, Iwanami 1982.

One key jōri term is ki ( 気), to which Baien assigns unique meanings.

And so one piece of brocade has a nature that is endowed with two bodies, the raw side and the finished side, a clever seamstress brings spirit to it, objects are fixed to it by silk threads, and an incomprehensible human art attains the mystery of heaven's creation....”In the first pages of Honsō the metaphor of the robe illustrates his view of the universe.

Phoenixes and dragons may be mythical creatures but here they represent objects such as trees, stars and everyday things.

From Letter to Yunisaki Yoshitada: (Baien writes the characters for yin and yang without the left hand radical.

Although I Ching is an account of divination, to look at heaven and earth through that text is like scratching an itching foot without taking off one's sandal.

His individuality makes heavy demands on readers of Gengo, Eastern and Western alike.

You learned about the phases of Venus, the movements of the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter, and the orbits of the planets around the sun.

Although I cannot understand all your methods you have given me a great notebook for the study of jōri.” Asada Gōryū was the son of Baien's teacher in the village of Kitsuki.

Asada independently discovered Kepler's 3rd law of planetary motion when Japan was closed to the West apart from the Dutch visitors to Nagasaki.

Information about European texts and ideas was could be brought overland from Nagasaki to Kitsuki and by sea to the Kaitokudō, stimulating scientific study there.

Baien himself strove to develop a philosophical unifying theory of everything in the universe rather than a specific science.

From Reiji 例旨, Section 3:“Oh, I may draw a flower with consummate skill, but it will not bear seeds.

The craft of heaven borrows nothing from man, and the craft of man can never imitate heaven.”Baien drew numerous diagrams illustrating parts of his theory but acknowledged that diagrams alone were inadequate to represent the vast and complex jōri system.

From “Reply to Taga Bokkei”“Because I do not have an accurate grasp of heaven and earth, my habits of thought must have led me to numerous errors.