Born in Sanuki Province on Shikoku, he grew up in a samurai household tied to the Takamatsu domain. Early exposure to domain administration and local industries shaped his later interest in practical knowledge and commerce.

As a youth he pursued medicine, materia medica, and natural history, fields central to Edo intellectual life. He learned to classify plants and remedies while questioning inherited authority, favoring observation and experiment.

He sought advanced teachers and books in the commercial and cultural hubs of Kansai. In Osaka and Kyoto he encountered merchants, physicians, and writers whose pragmatism encouraged his later blend of scholarship and enterprise.

Drawn to Edo’s markets for ideas and curiosities, he positioned himself among scholars interested in Western learning. He began cultivating contacts who could access imported texts and instruments despite Tokugawa restrictions.

He immersed himself in rangaku, using Dutch sources to learn about anatomy, physics, and new technologies. Working around language barriers, he compared foreign claims with Japanese practice and promoted empirical verification.

He entered the lively world of Edo print culture, producing witty works that mocked fashionable pretensions and stale scholasticism. His humor targeted hypocrisy across classes, making him admired by readers and risky to patrons.

He advised domains and merchants on developing specialty goods, an approach later associated with bussan and regional revitalization. Blending science and salesmanship, he encouraged better processing methods and stronger branding.

Fascinated by reports of electricity, he investigated imported devices and descriptions circulating through Nagasaki trade. He aimed to reproduce the effects for both medical claims and public demonstrations that could fund his research.

He became associated with the Erekiteru, an electrostatic generator derived from European models. Demonstrations drew crowds and patrons, turning science into spectacle while also provoking skepticism from conservative scholars.

He marketed electrical shocks as potentially therapeutic, reflecting global fascination with electrotherapy in the eighteenth century. Collaborating with interested physicians and curious elites, he tested effects while navigating Edo’s medical orthodoxies.

His career oscillated between official ties and freelance ventures, a precarious path for a samurai-born intellectual. He leveraged introductions and gifts to secure projects, but unstable financing repeatedly forced new reinventions.

As urban consumer culture expanded, he wrote more pointed satire about money, status, and corrupt expertise. The works resonated with townspeople yet increased the chance of censorship and backlash from those lampooned.

He proposed practical projects involving minerals and extraction, reflecting Edo interest in domestic resources and technology. Such ventures required capital and political backing, and setbacks deepened his financial and social pressures.

His notoriety attracted both admirers and enemies among writers, booksellers, and officials regulating print. He adapted by using pseudonyms and shifting genres, but the constant scrutiny constrained his freedom to experiment publicly.

Repeated project failures and debt strained his relationships with sponsors and collaborators. Edo’s competitive intellectual marketplace left little room for prolonged setbacks, and his behavior grew more volatile under mounting stress.

He became embroiled in a deadly quarrel and was taken into custody by Edo authorities. Imprisonment cut him off from work and patrons, and the episode eclipsed his public image as an inventive entertainer-scholar.

He died while imprisoned, ending a life defined by audacious curiosity and social provocation. Later historians remembered him as a rangaku-minded polymath whose inventions and satire anticipated Japan’s modernizing impulses.