Zhu Zhiyu

Born in Yuyao, Zhejiang, China, Zhu sailed to Japan for the first time in 1645 to request military and financial help for the Ming against the Manchus.

I therefore submit this letter ... asking Your Excellency to pass it to higher authorities... so that I may be allowed to remain for a time in Nagasaki...." His application was refused, and he travelled instead to Annam.

At first, life was hard as he had little money, but in 1664, Zhu received an invitation from Tokugawa Mitsukuni, grandson of Ieyasu and daimyō of Mito to go to Edo as a senior lecturer in the Toku School.

He personally wrote The Collected Works of Zhu Shunshui, and directly influenced Mitogaku and helped to initiate the Confucian intellectual movement known as kogaku (古学).

[1] There is a monument marking where Zhu Shunshui died inside the main gate of the College of Agriculture at the University of Tokyo, which was shifted from the road of Kototoi.