Born in 1666 in Edo as the second son of Ogyu Hoan, physician to the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi. When he was 14 his father incurred Tsunayoshi's wrath and was exiled to the village of Honno in Kazusa Province, where Sorai threw himself into self-study amid poverty. At 25 he returned to Edo, and in 1696 entered the service of the shogun's chamberlain Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu as a Confucian officer. For 14 years under Yoshiyasu he served as adviser on classical Chinese, policy, and the arts, deeply involved in Tsunayoshi's benevolent-rule policies including the Laws of Compassion for Living Things. In 1709, with Yoshiyasu's fall, he withdrew and opened the private school 'Kenenjuku' at Kayaba-cho in Nihonbashi. Early on he studied Zhu Xi learning and Jinsai's kogigaku, but he became absorbed in the Kobunjigaku of the Ming writers Li Panlong and Wang Shizhen, and holding that 'the words of ancient China must be read in their ancient meanings,' he established Kobunjigaku and criticized both Zhu Xi and Jinsai. His principal works include 'Bendo,' 'Benmei,' 'Rongo-cho,' and 'Seidan.' From 1716, at the request of the eighth shogun Yoshimune, he served as political adviser and submitted his radical proposal for reform of the Tokugawa shogunate in 'Seidan.' He died in Edo in 1728 at age 62.

A man of confidence — one might even say arrogance — and an original thinker. Holding the spirit of 'reconsidering Confucianism from its roots,' he criticized Zhu Xi learning and kogigaku without mercy. On the other side, as a pragmatist well acquainted with actual politics, he made concrete proposals on economic policy, city planning, and the control of the warrior class. A great eater and great drinker, he was open-hearted and loved by his disciples. His talent in poetry and prose was also outstanding, and in Chinese verse he was reckoned one of the foremost Japanese masters of his day.

Sorai's learning became the most influential school of thought in 18th-century Japan, producing outstanding disciples such as Dazai Shundai and Hattori Nankaku. His thought of 'managing the world and saving the people' became a forerunner of the late-Tokugawa Dutch learning and modernist currents. His 'Seidan' not only influenced Yoshimune's Kyoho Reforms but also contained pioneering proposals for the modern-state thought of the end of the 19th century. Maruyama Masao's 'Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan' (1952) reevaluated Sorai's learning as 'the starting point of Japanese modern thinking,' and became a monument of postwar Japanese intellectual history. On the literary side, his archaizing style spread and laid the foundation of the flowering of kanshibun in the late Edo period.