Born in 1730 in Matsuzaka in Ise Province (today Matsusaka, Mie) as the second son of the cotton merchant Ozu family. His childhood name was Tominosuke. He lost his father at eleven and tried to carry on the family business, but having little talent for commerce, at his mother's urging he went to Kyoto to study medicine. In 1757, at 28, he returned to Matsuzaka, set up a medical practice, and began his study of the classics in earnest. In 1763, during a visit by Kamo no Mabuchi en route to the Ise Shrines, he held a single night's exchange with him in Matsuzaka — the 'Night of Matsuzaka' — and entered his gate. Mabuchi entrusted him with the study of the Kojiki. Over the next 35 years, as a physician by day and scholar by night, he completed his commentary in 44 volumes, 'Kojiki-den,' in 1798 (begun in 1764). In his 'Genji Monogatari Tama no Ogushi' he drew forth from the Tale of Genji the essence of Japanese literature, 'mono no aware' (the pathos of things). He freed Shinto thought from the 'Chinese heart' of Confucianism and Buddhism and preached a pure Japanese spirit, 'Yamato-gokoro.' He carried on his scholarship at his home study, which he named 'Suzunoya,' the 'House of Bells.' He died in Matsuzaka in 1801 at 72.

A warm, sincere, and humble scholar. By day he saw townspeople as a physician; by night he immersed himself in the study of the classics in his study, the 'Suzunoya,' living a plain and steady life. Though preceded in death by his wife Tami, a daughter of a merchant-farming household, he gathered more than fifty disciples and taught his learning at home. Holding that 'poetry prizes rhythm,' he composed many waka of his own and loved the elegance of the Kokin Wakashu. Rejecting the formalism of Confucianism and Buddhism, he held fast to a way of life that prized the Japanese sensibility of 'feeling as one feels, naturally.'

Norinaga's 'Kojiki-den' is a monument that systematically deciphered Japan's oldest historical chronicle, and became the foundation of kokugaku and the study of ancient Japanese history. His theory of 'mono no aware' has been handed down since as the core of theories of Japanese literature and exerted influence on modern writers such as Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Kawabata Yasunari. Through Hirata Atsutane it developed into restoration Shinto and revere-the-emperor thought, and further into the late-Tokugawa Sonno Joi movement. After Meiji it also became one of the intellectual sources of State Shinto. On the other hand, Kobayashi Hideo's 'Motoori Norinaga' (1977) gave Norinaga's literary theory a modern re-appraisal and placed it as the 'point of origin of the Japanese spirit.' The Suzunoya (his old home in Matsusaka) is preserved today as the Motoori Norinaga Memorial Museum.