Ōtsuki Gentaku

Ōtsuki Gentaku

Otsuki Gentaku ( Japanese 大槻玄澤 , also called Otsuki Bansui (大槻磐水) known; born 9 November 1757 in Ichinoseki in Mutsu Province (now Iwate Prefecture ); died 25. April 1827 ) was a Japanese doctor and Rangaku - Scholar.

life and work

Ōtsuki Gentaku was born the son of a doctor who worked for the Tamura resident in Ichinoseki , a relative of the Date clan . Ōtsuki went to Edo in 1778 and studied Western medicine there under Sugita Gempaku . He also studied Dutch under Maeno Ryōtaku . In 1785 he went to Nagasaki to study under Motoki Yoshinaga (1735-1794), an interpreter of the Tokugawa Shogunate who worked at the Dutch station Dejima .

1786 Ōtsuki got a job as a doctor at the residence of the Date clan in Edo and opened his own school under the name "Shirandō" (芝蘭 堂). Belonged to his students

• Inamura Sampaku (稲 村 三 伯; 1758–1811),
• Udagawa Genzui (宇田 川 玄 随; 1756–1798) and
• Udagawa Genshin (宇田 川 玄真; 1770–1835).

His textbook "Rangaku kaitai" (蘭 学 階梯) - something like "Steps towards Dutch Science" - was widely read. He celebrated New Year in his school according to the Dutch, so western calendar as "Oranda Shogatsu" (阿蘭 陀 正月), for which many of his colleagues appeared.

In 1811, Ōtsuki was appointed by the shogunate to be the "commissioned translator of foreign works" (番 所 和 下 御用 係, Bansho wage goyō-gakari) to do an annotated translation of a Dutch edition of the French work on agriculture "Agronome français dictionnaire économique" by Noël Chomel the year 1709.

Remarks

1. ↑ Painted by Oda Kaisen in 1827 (小田 海 僊; 1785–1862).
2. ↑ The translation under the working title "Kōsei shimpen" (厚生 新編) was never finished, but it was an important step in the development of the Rangaku.

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Ōtsuki Gentaku . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1173.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, name surname, first name , the first name.