Kenkado Kimura, otherwise known as Kichiemon Tsuboiya, was born into a sake brewing family in Osaka in 1736. From an early age he was a keen scholar with interests in a wide range of academic disciplines as well as the arts. He was also an avid collector of books, paintings, calligraphy, stones and metals, implements, maps and flora and fauna samples. Such was his intellect that he became known as the Great Scholar of Naniwa.
His diaries, called the Kenkado Diaries, cover around 20 years of his life and record intellectual exchanges with some 40,000 people, including learned scholars of Japanese and Chinese classics, herbalists and botanists, artists, physicians, Buddhist priests, and daimyo (feudal lords).