Rangaku

''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: , ), and by extension , is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners from 1641 to 1853 because of the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of national isolation (sakoku).

Through Rangaku, some people in Japan learned many aspects of the scientific and technological revolution occurring in Europe at that time, helping the country build up the beginnings of a theoretical and technological scientific base, which helps to explain Japan's success in its radical and speedy modernization following the forced American opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854.

History

The Dutch traders at Dejima in Nagasaki were the only Europeans tolerated in Japan from 1639 until 1853 (the Dutch had a trading post in Hirado from 1609 till 1641 before they had to move to Dejima), and their movements were carefully watched and strictly controlled, being limited initially to one yearly trip to give their homage to the ''shōgun'' in Edo. They became instrumental, however, in transmitting to Japan some knowledge of the Industrial and Scientific Revolution that was occurring in Europe: In 1720 the ban on Dutch books was lifted and the Japanese purchased and translated scientific books from the Dutch, obtained from them Western curiosities and manufactures (such as clocks, medical instruments, celestial and terrestrial globes, maps and plant seeds) and received demonstrations of Western innovations, including of electrical phenomena, as well as the flight of a hot air balloon in the early 19th century. While other European countries faced ideological and political battles associated with the Protestant Reformation, the Netherlands were a free state, attracting leading thinkers such as René Descartes.

Altogether, thousands of such books were published, printed, and circulated. Japan had one of the largest urban populations in the world, with more than one million inhabitants in Edo, and many other large cities such as Osaka and Kyoto, offering a large, literate market to such novelties. In the large cities some shops, open to the general public, specialized in foreign curiosities.

Beginnings (1640–1720)

The first phase of Rangaku was quite limited and highly controlled. After the relocation of the Dutch trading post to Dejima, trade as well as the exchange of information and the activities of the remaining Westerners (dubbed "Redhaired people" ('' kōmōjin'')) were restricted considerably. Western books were prohibited, with the exemption of books on nautical and medical matters. Initially, a small group of hereditary Japanese–Dutch translators labored in Nagasaki to smooth communication with the foreigners and transmit bits of Western novelties.

The Dutch were requested to give updates of world events and to supply novelties to the ''shōgun'' every year on their trips to Edo. Finally, the Dutch factories in Nagasaki, in addition to their official trade work in silk and deer hides, were allowed to engage in some level of "private trade". A small, lucrative market for Western curiosities thus developed, focused on the Nagasaki area. With the establishment of a permanent post for a surgeon at the Dutch trading post Dejima, high-ranking Japanese officials started to ask for treatment in cases when local doctors were of no help. One of the most important surgeons was Caspar Schamberger, who induced a continuing interest in medical books, instruments, pharmaceuticals, treatment methods etc. During the second half of the 17th century high-ranking officials ordered telescopes, clocks, oil paintings, microscopes, spectacles, maps, globes, birds, dogs, donkeys, and other rarities for their personal entertainment and for scientific studies.

Liberalization of Western knowledge (1720–)

Although most Western books were forbidden from 1640, rules were relaxed under ''shōgun'' Tokugawa Yoshimune in 1720, which started an influx of Dutch books and their translations into Japanese. One example is the 1787 publication of Morishima Chūryō’s , recording much knowledge received from the Dutch. The book details a vast array of topics: it includes objects such as microscopes and hot air balloons; discusses Western hospitals and the state of knowledge of illness and disease; outlines techniques for painting and printing with copper plates; it describes the makeup of static electricity generators and large ships; and it relates updated geographical knowledge.

Between 1804 and 1829, schools opened throughout the country by the Shogunate (Bakufu) as well as '' terakoya'' (temple schools) helped spread the new ideas further.

By that time, Dutch emissaries and scientists were allowed much more free access to Japanese society. The German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, attached to the Dutch delegation, established exchanges with Japanese students. He invited Japanese scientists to show them Western science. In 1824, von Siebold began a medical school in the outskirts of Nagasaki. Soon this grew into a meeting place for about fifty students from all over the country. While receiving a thorough medical education they helped with the naturalistic studies of von Siebold.

Expansion and politicization (1839–)

The Rangaku movement became increasingly involved in Japan's political debate over foreign isolation, arguing that the imitating of Western culture would strengthen rather than harm Japan. The Rangaku increasingly disseminated contemporary Western innovations.

In 1839, scholars of Western studies (called 蘭学者 "''rangaku-sha''") briefly suffered repression by the Edo shogunate in the incident, due to their opposition to the introduction of the death penalty against foreigners (other than Dutch) coming ashore, recently enacted by the Bakufu. The incident was provoked by actions such as the Morrison Incident, in which an unarmed American merchant ship was fired upon under the Edict to Repel Foreign Ships. The edict was eventually repealed in 1842.

Rangaku ultimately became obsolete when Japan opened up during the last decades of the Tokugawa regime (1853–67). Students were sent abroad, and foreign employees ( o-yatoi gaikokujin) came to Japan to teach and advise in large numbers, leading to an unprecedented and rapid modernization of the country.

Types

Medical sciences

From around 1720, books on medical sciences were obtained from the Dutch, and then analyzed and translated into Japanese. Great debates occurred between the proponents of traditional Chinese medicine and those of the new Western learning, leading to waves of experiments and dissections. The accuracy of Western learning made a sensation among the population, and new publications such as the of 1759 and the of 1774 became references. The latter was a compilation made by several Japanese scholars, led by Sugita Genpaku, mostly based on the Dutch-language ''Ontleedkundige Tafelen'' of 1734, itself a translation of ''Anatomische Tabellen'' (1732) by the German author Johann Adam Kulmus.

In 1804, Hanaoka Seishū performed the world's first general anaesthesia during surgery for breast cancer (mastectomy). The surgery involved combining Chinese herbal medicine and Western surgery techniques, 40 years before the better-known Western innovations of Long, Wells and Morton, with the introduction of diethyl ether (1846) and chloroform (1847) as general anaesthetics.

In 1838, the physician and scholar Ogata Kōan established the Rangaku school named Tekijuku. Famous alumni of the Tekijuku include Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ōtori Keisuke, who would become key players in Japan's modernization. He was the author of 1849's , which was the first book on Western pathology to be published in Japan.

Physical sciences

Some of the first scholars of Rangaku were involved with the assimilation of 17th century theories in the physical sciences. This is the case of Shizuki Tadao ( :ja:志筑忠雄) an eighth-generation descendant of the Shizuki house of Nagasaki Dutch translators, who after having completed for the first time a systematic analysis of Dutch grammar, went on to translate the Dutch edition of ''Introductio ad Veram Physicam'' of the British author John Keil on the theories of Newton (Japanese title: , 1798). Shizuki coined several key scientific terms for the translation, which are still in use in modern Japanese; for example, , (as in electromagnetism), and . A second Rangaku scholar, Hoashi Banri ( :ja:帆足万里), published a manual of physical sciences in 1810 – – based on a combination of thirteen Dutch books, after learning Dutch from just one Dutch-Japanese dictionary.

Electrical sciences

Electrical experiments were widely popular from around 1770. Following the invention of the Leyden jar in 1745, similar electrostatic generators were obtained for the first time in Japan from the Dutch around 1770 by Hiraga Gennai. Static electricity was produced by the friction of a glass tube with a gold-plated stick, creating electrical effects. The jars were reproduced and adapted by the Japanese, who called it . As in Europe, these generators were used as curiosities, such as making sparks fly from the head of a subject or for supposed pseudoscientific medical advantages. In ''Sayings of the Dutch'', the ''elekiteru'' is described as a machine that allows one to take sparks out of the human body, to treat sick parts. Elekiterus were sold widely to the public in curiosity shops. Many electric machines derived from the ''elekiteru'' were then invented, particularly by Sakuma Shōzan.

Japan's first electricity manual, by Hashimoto Soukichi ( :ja:橋本宗吉), written in 1811 (and never published and only manually transcribed copies remain), describes electrical phenomena, such as experiments with electric generators, conductivity through the human body, and the 1750 experiments of Benjamin Franklin with lightning.

Chemistry

In 1840, Udagawa Yōan published his , a compilation of scientific books in Dutch, which describes a wide range of scientific knowledge from the West. Most of the Dutch original material appears to be derived from William Henry’s 1799 ''Elements of Experimental Chemistry''. In particular, the book contains a detailed description of the electric battery invented by Volta forty years earlier in 1800. The battery itself was constructed by Udagawa in 1831 and used in experiments, including medical ones, based on a belief that electricity could help cure illnesses.

Udagawa's work reports for the first time in details the findings and theories of Lavoisier