Yamai Kanae 山井鼎 (Shānjǐng Dǐng)
Japanese: Yamai Kanae 山井鼎. Style name Kunki 君彜 (Chinese: Jūnyí); sobriquet Konron 崑崙 (Chinese: Kūnlún). Born c. 1690, died 1728. The leading Japanese Confucian textual scholar of the early Tokugawa period, working from the Ashikaga 足利 school in Shimotsuke 下野 (modern Tochigi Prefecture). Identified in the WYG tíyào by his Tokugawa office: Xītiáo zhǎngshūjì 西條掌書記 (Saijō shoki — bookkeeper of the Saijō house, a branch of the Tokugawa shogunate based at Saijō 西條 in Iyo 伊予 province, modern Ehime Prefecture).
The Ashikaga School (Ashikaga gakkō 足利學校) was the surviving great-medieval Japanese seminary, founded in the Heian or Kamakura period and rebuilt by Uesugi Norizane 上杉憲実 in the 1430s. It was the principal repository of Sòng-cut and pre-Sòng-cut Confucian classics in Japan, including: a Sòng cut of the Wǔ jīng zhèng yì; old-recension copies (kohon 古本) of the Zhōu yì, Shàngshū, Máoshī, Lǐjì, Lúnyǔ, Mèngzǐ, Xiàojīng; Huáng Kǎn’s 皇侃 Lúnyǔ yì shū; an Ashikaga-bon (足利本) of the Lǐjì; and Ming cuts of Zhèngdé 正德, Jiājìng 嘉靖, Wànlì 萬曆, and Chóngzhēn 崇禎 (= the Jígǔgé 汲古閣 cut) editions of the Shísān jīng zhùshū.
Yamai’s monumental work — completed during a three-year leave of absence (sì gào 賜告) at the Ashikaga School — is the Qī jīng Mèngzǐ kǎo wén 七經孟子考文 (“Critical Collation of the Seven Classics and Mèngzǐ”), a complete cross-collation of the Yì, Shū, Shī, Lǐjì, Lúnyǔ, Xiàojīng, Mèngzǐ (the seven canonical books in the Ashikaga holdings, omitting the Chūnqiū sān zhuàn and Zhōulǐ-Yílǐ) against multiple Sòng cuts, kohon, and Míng cuts. The work was supplemented after Yamai’s death by Mononobe Mitsuyoshi 物觀 (物觀) and printed as the Qī jīng Mèngzǐ kǎo wén bǔ yí 七經孟子考文補遺 (KR1g0020) in 199–200 juàn. The work transformed the late-Tokugawa philological understanding of the Confucian canon and, when it was reimported into China in the eighteenth century, became one of the foundational philological resources of the Qing kǎozhèng movement (Wáng Niànsūn, Duàn Yùcái, and others all drew on it).
The Tokugawa Bakufu had — through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries — provided the Ashikaga school with the resources necessary for this scholarly labour. The Ji-gǔ-gé Sòng cut and the Héběn (Ashikaga-bon) referenced in Yamai’s fán lì are central to the project’s methodological foundations.
Standard reference: Imanaka Kanshi 今中寛司. Yamai Kanae kenkyū 山井鼎研究. 1969.