The ', or "Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books," was the Japanese institute charged with the translation and study of foreign books and publications in the late Edo Period.

Origin

The institute was founded in 1856 that catered to the samurai youth. It emerged out of the previous translation bureau called ''Yogakusho'', which also previously replaced the ''Banshowagegoyo''. The launch of the new institute was a reaction to the unimpeded arrival of the American warships in 1853 under the command of Admiral

Matthew C. Perry Matthew Calbraith Perry (April 10, 1794 – March 4, 1858) was a United States Navy officer who commanded ships in several wars, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War. He led the Perry Expedition that Bakumatsu, ended Japan' ...

. The foreigners also brought with them gifts, which baffled and unsettled the Tokugawa regime as they exposed the inferior state of the Japanese coastal defense. ''Bansho Shirabesho'' functioned as a sort of bureau of the

Tokugawa Shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

and considered a politically charged institution that emerged from the perceived imposition of foreignness on Japanese body politic. The establishment of Bansho Shirabesho as an independent institution was also partly attributed to the removal of the translation of sensitive military and political secrets from the Bureau of Astronomy. The activities and norms of the institution intersected with the translation initiatives of employed translators. The school eventually became the main institution of Western learning sponsored by the shogunate. It attracted some of the most outstanding scholars studying Dutch scientific works and documents, who also later studied English, French, German, and Russian texts.

Later period

It was renamed ' (institute for the study of Western books) in 1862, and ' in 1863. After the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

, it was again renamed and became the ', which was managed under the

Government of Meiji Japan The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empir ...

. As the ''Kaisei gakkō'', the institute became one of the predecessor organizations which merged to form

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

Footnotes

References

External links

* Government of feudal Japan 1857 establishments in Japan University of Tokyo Historic sites designated by Tokyo Metropolitan Government {{japan-hist-stub

Origin

Later period

See also

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links