麻豆APP

Ninomiya Sontoku. Photo by outsourced from

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Ninomiya Sontoku

Ninomiya Sontoku was an influential agrarian reformer and economic thinker of the late Edo period (1600-1868).

He was born to a peasant family; he educated himself and overcame entrenched class division to become a distinguished agricultural administrator, financial innovator, and economic philosopher.

Ninomiya rose from a peasant to a local administrator and his economic ethics and philosophical ideas have been adopted widely.

He started his financial institution called gojoukou, which created a shape for forerunners of credit unions.

Discover more about Ninomiya Sontoku in these top 10 fascinating facts.

1. Ninomiya Sontoku was born to a poor peasant family

He was born in `1787 to a poor peasant family with the name of Kojiro in Kayama Ashigarakami-gun, Sagami province.

The family prospered until 1791, when catastrophic flooding destroyed most of their fields. His dad spent five years rebuilding the farm, but the struggle took its toll.

His father passed away in 1880, the family was plunged into poverty, and two years later, his mother passed.

At i6 years Ninomiya went to live with his uncle. During the day, he toiled in his uncle鈥檚 field; at night, he studied by lamplight.

2. Ninomiya Sontoku was self-educated

When Ninomiya was living with his uncle, he would study and farm at the same time.

Unfortunately, his uncle considered learning a useless affectation for a farmer and a waste of lamp oil.

Ninomiya started making use of some abandoned land. He planted oilseed rape and traded his crop for lamp oil to study.

3. Ninomiya Sontoku restored his family fortune

When Ninomiya was 20, he returned to his birthplace and set about buying back the family farm one piece at a time.

He raised money by hiring himself out to other households and by selling the crops he grew on the land he had.

By the time he was turning 24, he had amassed 1.4 hectares of farmland and restored the family fortunes.

He restored family fortunes through a combination of good farming practices and savvy financial management.

4. He served as a local administrator

Ninomiya Sontoku. Photo outsourced from

Ninomiya Sontoku was then recruited to run a small feudal district facing considerable financial difficulty.

He managed to revive the local economy, mainly through agricultural development.

When the Daimyo heard of his achievement, he eventually recruited Sontoku to run Odawar Domain in the Sagami province.

During his administration at Odawara Domain, famine struck Odawara Sontoku, and he proposed opening up the granaries to feed the starving population.

Fellow bureaucrats opposed this suggestion but quickly changed their minds and decided that the people should be fed with immediate effect since it was an emergency.

At long last, he was entrusted with one of the Shogunate鈥檚 estates which was a great honor for someone of his low origin.

5. Ninomiya Sontoku economic ideas

Ninomiya Sontoku statue. Photo by Cassiopeia Sweet on

Sontoku emphasized the importance of compound interest, which was not well understood among Samurai and peasants.

He calculated the maturity of each interest rate for 100 years to show its significance by using the Japanese abacus.

Ninomiya viewed agricultural village life as communal were surplus from one year was interested in developing other land or saved for worse years and shared by a community member.

He knew that developed land had a lower tax base than established agricultural land. He was good at financial management, which he applied to his estate.

Ninomiya used to encourage migrates from other estates and rewarded them if they successfully established an agricultural household.

6. Ninomiya Sontoku started his financial Institution

He started his financial institution called gojoukou, which created a shape for forerunners of credit unions.

Through his financial institution, each member of the village union could borrow interest-free funds for 100 days.

In case the member defaulted to pay back, the entire membership shared the cost.

The combination of land development, immigration and communal finance, all managed under the diligent use of abacuses, was a success and became the standard economic development methodology in feudal Japan.

7. Ninomiya Sontoku popular culture

Statue of Ninomiya Kinjir艒 – Kyoto, Japan. Photo by Daderot on

It is common to see statues of Ninomiya in or in front of Japanese schools, especially elementary schools.

The statue typically shows him as a boy reading a book while walking and carrying firewood on his back.

These statues depict popular stories that said Ninomiya was reading and studying every moment he could.

There is also a reference to him in the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa. The father often tells the story of Ninomiya Sontoku to his children.

8. Ninomiya Sontoku’s philosophical ideas

He saw agriculture as the highest form of humanity because it was the cultivation of resources given by the Kami.

Sontoku centered his philosophy around repaying the kindness received from humanity’s labors and acts upon thankfulness.

Sontoku hotoku philosophy stressed behaviors consistently with a sense of gratitude towards one鈥檚 family, ancestors, the larger community and the earth.

His philosophy of hotoku inspired some of the most iconic and pivotal figures in the economic history of modern Japan.

9. Ninomiya Sontoku’s achievements have often been overshadowed

His achievements have been overshadowed by his symbolic role in pre-world War II moral education.

After the war, many Japanese schools removed all his images and the shrine-like hoanden.

The hoanden shrine was destroyed to stamp out emperor worship and other aspects of prewar nationalist ideology and forbade recitation of the imperial rescript.

Today Ninomiya is staging a comeback on several fonts, and his statues are reappearing in front of school buildings.

In 2018 he secured a place in government-approved textbooks used to teach the now moral curriculum.

10.  He was awarded the name Sontoku

Ninomiya Sontoku grave. Photo by Indiana Jo on

Sontoku philosophy and methodology became a standard feudal land development and economic management format.

The name 鈥淪ontoku鈥� was given to him for his accomplishment. After his death, the emperor awarded him with Juji鈥橧, which was the lower fourth honor under the ritsuryo rank system.