Tsunoda Tadayuki
was a Japanese scholar of kokugaku and a Shinto priest. Biography Tsunoda Tadayuki was born in 1834 in the remote village of Nagadoro (now within the city of Saku, Nagano Prefecture), the second son of , a kannushi of the local Chikatsu Shrine. Additionally, his father served as a tutor to the Naitō daimyo of Iwamurada Domain and an instructor at the domain school, the . Little is known of his early life and childhood. In 1855, he absconded from his domain and travelled to Edo in order to study under the mitogaku theorist . Around that time, he formally became a disciple of the kokugaku theologian , heir to the legacy of Hirata Atsutane. Later, in 1863, Tsunoda was one of a group of anti-foreign extremists who carried out the at Tōji-in in the vicinity of Kyoto. He was thereafter hunted by shogunate spies and hid for several years in the residence of , a fellow Hirata disciple, in the Ina Valley of the Tenryū River. In 1867, with the imminent outbreak of the Boshin War, Tsunoda came out of hiding and, under the assumed name "Yonegawa Shinanō", entered into the service of . When Sawa was appointed governor-general