← Fame through time1600-1699
The 17th century
Whose working lives fell in the 17th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 17th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Miyamoto Musashi2 decades - 2
Matsuo Bashō0 decades - 3
Koxinga10 decades - 4
Date Masamune0 decades - 5
Hasekura Tsunenaga0 decades - 6
Go-Yōzei0 decades - 7
Tokugawa Iemitsu0 decades - 8
Tokugawa Hidetada0 decades - 9
Toyotomi Hideyori0 decades - 10
Empress Meishōnot measured- - 11
Emperor Go-Mizunoo0 decades - 12
Sasaki Kojirōnot measured- - 13
Emperor Reigen0 decades - 14
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi0 decades - 15
Sanada Yukimura0 decades - 16
Go-Kōmyōnot measured- - 17
Go-Sai0 decades - 18
Izumo no Okuni0 decades - 19
Tokugawa Ietsuna0 decades - 20
Yamamoto Tsunetomo0 decades - 21
Chikamatsu Monzaemon0 decades - 22
Hishikawa Moronobu0 decades - 23
Amakusa Shirō0 decades - 24
Ihara Saikaku0 decades - 25
Tokugawa Ienobu0 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.