Ji Zi

Also known as Zi Xuyu

Jizi was a noble of the late Shang; one tradition gives his personal name as Xuyu, and Ji is usually taken to be his fief. The 'Hereditary House of Weizi of Song' in the *Records of the Grand Historian* (*Shiji*) calls him a kinsman of King Zhou, whom early commentators variously made his uncle or his elder half-brother. In that account, when the king began eating with ivory chopsticks Jizi foresaw ever greater extravagance, and when his remonstrance went unheeded he let down his hair, feigned madness and lived as a slave, playing the zither in private grief. After King Wu of Zhou conquered the Shang he visited Jizi, who set out the nine divisions of the Great Plan, preserved as the 'Hongfan' chapter of the *Book of Documents* (*Shangshu*). The *Shiji* adds that King Wu enfeoffed him in Joseon without making him a subject, a claim that scholars widely dispute. In the *Analects* (*Lunyu*) Confucius names Weizi, Jizi and Bigan as the three men of humaneness of Yin.