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= Aoki Konyō =

Biography
Aoki was born in the Nihonbashi district of Edo, as the first and only son of the commission fishmonger Tsukudaya Han’emon. Nothing is known about his childhood or early education. He later studied Confucianism for two years in Kyoto under Itō Tōgai, the son and successor of the Confucian philosopher Itō Jinsai. He returned to Edo in 1722 and opened a small Confucian school.

In 1733, he was given access to the Tokugawa shogunate's library, the Momijiyama-bunko, within Edo Castle through the intercession of Ōoka Tadasuke, the Edo machi-bugyō. During the middle of the Edo period, Japan frequently suffered from crop failures caused by inclement weather and natural disasters, resulting in widespread famine and political and social unrest. This included the Kyōhō famine of 1732 to 1733, which resulted in a population loss of 20% in some areas of western Japan.

However, it came to Aoki's attention that the island of Ōmishima in the Seto Inland Sea had largely escaped the effects of the famine as the islanders had planted a new type of sweet potato which had been grown in Satsuma Province since 1711. This new Satsuma-imo had arrived in Ming China from South America via the Philippines and to Satsuma from their overlordship over the Ryūkyū islands. Aoki wrote a treatise called "Thoughts on the Barbarian Yams" describing the new food source, which caught the attention of senior officials. He was appointed to an official post as "Satsuma-imo commissioner", thus making a change in status from a commoner to a samurai. In his new position he oversaw the successful cultivation of the new crop at the government's Koishikawa Botanical Garden and at experimental fields at villages called Makuwari (present day Hanamigawa-ku, Chiba) and Fudōdō (present day Kujūkuri, Chiba). The new crop proved to be an invaluable source of food in later famines. The village of Makuwari is now called Makuhari in what is now Chiba Prefecture, and the site of the experimental sweet potato field is a Chiba Prefectural Historic Site

In 1739, Aoki was entrusted with the acquisition of books and writings for the Momijiyama-bunko, and in this position he gathered historical documents from Kai, Shinano, Mikawa Province, and other locations, which he copied and annotated under the title "Ancient writings in some provinces" (Shoshū komonjo).

In 1740, together with the doctor and herbalist Noro Genjō (野呂元丈, 1693–1761), he was assigned to learn the Dutch language. Since the middle of the 17th century, translation and interpretation between the Japanese and Dutch East India Company post at Dejima in Nagasaki has been a monopoly held by a small group of hereditary "Dutch interpreters" who were appointed and supervised by the local governor. Under the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune this monopoly was broken, and the official policy of the government changed to more intensively acquire and disseminate European technology. Aoki moved to Nagasaki for a short time and was able to master Dutch to the extent that he wrote introductions to the Dutch language and script and produced fragmentary translations from Dutch works on natural science and herbology. Although he not get beyond comparatively rudimentary language skills and rough translations, he became a model for other scholars and the forerunner of the field of study which was later termed rangaku.

In 1744 Aoki was appointed fire guard of the Momijiyama-bunko library. Three years later he was transferred to the Hyōjōsho, the senior council within the shogunal administration. In 1767 he was appointed administrator of the Momijiyama-bunko library. Aoki died in 1769 during an influenza epidemic at the age of 72.

His grave at the temple of Ryūsen-ji in Meguro, Tokyo was designated a National Historic Site in 1943.

China
Before the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), the predominant sitting positions in the Han Chinese culture, as well as several of its neighbors, were the seiza and lotus position on the floor or sitting mats. The earliest images of chairs in China are from sixth-century Buddhist murals and stele, but the practice of sitting in chairs at that time was rare. It was not until the twelfth century that chairs became widespread in China. Scholars disagree on the reasons for the adoption of the chair. The most common theories are that the chair was an outgrowth of indigenous Chinese furniture, that it evolved from a camp stool imported from Central Asia, that it was introduced to China by Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century, and that the chair came to China from India as a form of Buddhist monastic furniture. In China today, both elevated living and mat level forms are still in use.

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
One type of ancient Mexican chair called the icpalli is mentioned by Jacques Soustelle. The icpalli can be seen in Diego Rivera's mural of the Aztec market of Tlatelolco, located in the Mexican National Palace. The icpalli is also featured in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis; dignitaries and emperors are depicted sitting in them.

New France & Québec
Unlike in France, the chair was widespread in the homes of Canadien peasants since the 17th century. Those could be divided into two main types of chairs :.

According to the 1748 customs tariffs, one needed to pay a custom fee when importing armchairs, chairs ("six sols cy" for both) and bergères (12 livres) from France.

Medieval
The chair of Maximian in the cathedral of Ravenna is believed to date from the middle of the 6th century. It is of marble, round, with a high back, and is carved in high relief with figures of saints and scenes from the Gospels—the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the baptism of Christ. The smaller spaces are filled with carvings of animals, birds, flowers and foliated ornament. The Chair of St. Augustine, dating from at least the early thirteenth century is one of the oldest cathedrae is not in use.

Another very ancient seat is the so-called "Chair of Dagobert" in the Cabinet des médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is of cast bronze, sharpened with the chisel and partially gilt; it is of the curule or faldstool type and supported upon legs terminating in the heads and feet of animals. The seat, which was probably of leather, has disappeared. Its attribution depends entirely upon the statement of Suger, abbot of St Denis in the 12th century, who added a back and arms. Its age has been much discussed, but Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early Merovingian times, and it may in any case be taken as the oldest faldstool in existence.

To the same generic type belongs the famous abbots’ chair of Glastonbury; such chairs might readily be taken to pieces when their owners travelled. The faldisterium in time acquired arms and a back, while retaining its folding shape. The most famous, as well as the most, ancient, English chair is that made at the end of the 13th century for Edward I, in which most subsequent monarchs have been crowned. It is of an architectural type and of oak, and was covered with gilded gesso which long since disappeared.

Passing from these historic examples we find the chair monopolized by the ruler, lay or ecclesiastical, to a comparatively late date. As the seat of authority it stood at the head of the lord's table, on his dais, by the side of his bed. The seigneurial chair, more common in France and the Netherlands than in England, is a very interesting type, approximating in many respects to the episcopal or abbatial throne or stall. It early acquired a very high back and sometimes had a canopy. Arms were invariable, and the lower part was closed in with panelled or carved front and sides—the seat, indeed, was often hinged and sometimes closed with a key.

That we are still said to sit "in" an arm-chair and "on" other kinds of chairs is a reminiscence of the time when the lord or seigneur sat "in his chair." These throne-like seats were always architectural in character, and as Gothic feeling waned took the distinctive characteristics of Renaissance work. The furniture makers also covered their crude work with gold which is called gilding.

Renaissance
In Europe, it was owing in great measure to the Renaissance that the chair ceased to be a mark of high office, and became the customary companion of whoever could afford to buy it. Once the idea of privilege faded the chair speedily came into general use. We find almost at once began to reflect the fashions of the hour. No piece of furniture has ever been so close an index to sumptuary changes. It has varied in size, shape and sturdiness with the fashion not only of women's dress but of men's also. Thus the chair which was not, even with its arms purposely suppressed, too ample during the several reigns of some form or other of hoops and farthingale, became monstrous when these protuberances disappeared. Again, the costly laced coats of the dandy of the 18th and early 19th centuries were so threatened by the ordinary form of seat that a "conversation chair" was devised, which enabled the buck and the ruffler to sit with his face to the back, his valuable tails hanging unimpeded over the front. The early chair almost invariably had arms, and it was not until towards the close of the 16th century that the smaller form grew common.

The majority of the chairs of all countries until the middle of the 17th century were of timber (the commonest survival is oak) without upholstery, and when it became customary to cushion them, leather was sometimes employed; subsequently velvet and silk were extensively used, and at a later period cheaper and often more durable materials. . In Abraham Bosse's engraving (illustration, left), a stylish Parisian musical party of about 1630 have pulled their low chairs (called "backstools" in contemporary England) away from the tapestry-hung walls where they were normally lined up. The padded back panels were covered with needlework panels to suit the tapestries, or in other settings with leather, plain or tooled. Plain cloth across the back hid the wooden framing. Stools with column legs complement the set, but aren't en suite. In seventeenth century France the bergère chair became fashionable among the nobility and was often made of walnut.

Leather was not infrequently used even for the costly and elaborate chairs of the faldstool form—occasionally sheathed in thin plates of silver—which Venice sent all over Europe. To this day, indeed, leather is one of the most frequently employed materials for chair covering. The outstanding characteristic of most chairs until the middle of the 17th century was massiveness and solidity. Being usually made of oak, they were of considerable weight, and it was not until the introduction of the handsome Louis XIII chairs with cane backs and seats that either weight or solidity was reduced.

Ghana
Stools are of great importance for the Akan people of Ghana, both as a status symbol, as a practical object for seating and as an object of great spiritual significance. Thus, according to Sarpong, the chair was only introduced through European contact and stools have remained the seating of choice for the Asante people. The Asante chairs designs (asipim, hwedom and akonkromfi or nnamu) appear to be based upon European mid 17th-century prototypes. Chairs were brought to Ghana by Europeans not for trading, but for their own use.

However, on the subject of the foreign origin of Ghanian chairs, Alex A. Y. Kyerematen says:

"It has been contended that the designs of the hwedom and the akonkromfi look foreign and may be copies of European designs introduced by early Portuguese and Dutch traders. If this view is established, however, it makes nonsense of the history given to me of the evolution of the asipim chair."

The asipim is the most common type of chairs; minor chiefs may have at least one, whereas wealthier chiefs may have several. Locally-made chairs are a royal prerogative, mainly used for stately matter. Osei Tutu made for himself the Hwedom chair. The Golden Stool was sat upon a chair with a longer seat so that it could be seen during public occasions called the Hwedom-Tea, or the slender Hwedom. Nowadays, chairs are preferred to ceremonial stools as seating. They are devoid of spiritual significance, probably because of their foreign origin.

Palanquins are used by the Asante, carried by four mens' heads.