was a Japanese

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

and

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. Although he initially came from a line of Dutch translators, he was later able to learn English.

Biography

Born in

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

, he was the son of a Dutch translator. He was the translator of

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...

James Biddle James Biddle (February 18, 1783 – October 1, 1848), of the Biddle family, brother of financier Nicholas Biddle and nephew of Capt. Nicholas Biddle, was an American commodore. His flagship was . Education and early career Biddle was born in Ph ...

's 1846 letter at

Uraga Channel The is a waterway connecting Tokyo Bay to the Sagami Gulf. It is an important channel for ships headed from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Geography The Uraga channel is at the southern end of Tokyo Bay (formerly ...

. He was also present at Commodore Perry's arrival at Uraga on July 8, 1853, and served as an official interpreter. He told Perry in English "I can speak Dutch" and later began a conversation in Dutch with Anton L. C. Portman who could speak Dutch on Perry's ship. He was able to convince the Americans to allow him and Nakajima Saburōsuke (1821–1869), an officer of the Uraga magistracy, to board the USS Susquehanna, on which they delivered the order that all foreign ships were to be expelled from Japanese ports. He later went on to found an English-teaching school and published a manual on learning English. Tomb of Hori Tatsunosuke

When the American Lieutenant John Rodgers of the ''USS Vincennes'' landed at the port of Shimoda on 13 May 1855, Hori assisted in mediating the negotiations between Rodgers and Shimoda's governors. He had been learning English with the help of a

Webster's dictionary ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...

which had been donated by the Perry expedition. In 1862, Hori and others finished compiling the Eiwa taiyaku shūchin jisho (英和対訳袖珍辞書), an English pocket dictionary that was one of the most widely used from the later Edo period into the early

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. This dictionary's creation had been requested by the government, and was the second English dictionary overall but the first to be organised according to modern criteria. This dictionary has been credited as ushering in "the age of English studies" and consequently leading to a decline in importance in Dutch studies. That being said, it is known that this dictionary took heavy influence from H. Picard's ''A New Pocket Dictionary of English-Dutch and Dutch-English Languages'' from 1857. Hori later became the first English professor at what would later become

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

. Hori died in 1892.

References

{{authority control 1823 births 1892 deaths Writers of the Edo period Lexicographers 19th-century Japanese translators 19th-century lexicographers