Abstract

Seidan contains Ogyū Sorai’s ideas about institutional reform; it was written in answer to a request for advice by the reigning Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune 徳川吉宗. It seems to have been presented to the shogun in Kyōhō 11. On the last page, Sorai had written that he wanted the book to be burnt after reading, but gradually its contents spread, and in the final years of the bakufu it was printed.