Mountain Goat

Eccentric Edo-era polymath who blazed entirely his own trail.

Hiraga Gennai was an 18th-century Japanese inventor, writer, painter, and satirist who defied every conventional category of his era — abandoning his samurai duties, studying Dutch science, inventing Japan's first static electricity generator, and writing ribald comic fiction under pseudonyms. His path was stubbornly unconventional, and he thrived in intellectual terrain where no one else ventured, embodying the mountain-goat's self-sufficient, contrarian genius. He ultimately died in prison after stabbing someone in a fit of rage, underscoring the mountain-goat's volatile side when cornered.