Sagara Chian

Sagara Chian in Nagasaki

Verbeck and his students. Sagara Chian is on the left in the third row

Sagara Chian's brother Motosada, one of the first Japanese students in Berlin († 1875)

Tomb of Sagara Chian in the Jōun Temple (Saga)

Inauguration ceremony for the Sagara Chian memorial stone in the Faculty of Medicine, Tokyo University (1935)

Sagara Chian ( 相 良 知 安 ; born April 1, 1836 in Yae, Hizen Province ; † November 10, 1906 in Tōkyō ), partly incorrect Sagara Tomoyasu , was a Japanese doctor, bureaucrat and reformer who, against fierce opposition, achieved that Japan decided in 1870 to modernize medicine based on the German model.

Life

Sagara Chian was born in 1836 ( Japanese calendar : Tenpō 7) as the third son of the doctor Sagara Ryūan ( 柳 庵 ) in the village of Yae ( 八 戸 村 ) of the district of Saga ( province of Hizen ), now part of the city of Saga ), where the heads of family have been since Generations as surgeons in the service of the fief. The family moved twice during his childhood, but, as in the case of Yae, it was not far from the castle. His childhood name was Hirōsaburō ( 広 三郎 ), later he called himself Bunkei ( 文 慶 ), then Kōan ( 弘 庵 ) and finally Chian. Since his father received only a moderate income as a surgeon, Chian grew up in modest circumstances, as did Etō Shimpei ( 江 藤 新 平 , 1834–1874), who lived in the immediate vicinity and who was two years older and who also made his name in the history of the Meiji Left time .

Apart from a smallpox disease, nothing is known about Sagara's childhood. At the age of 16, Sagara began attending the School of Fief (Kōdōkan, 弘道 館 ), where he received training in Chinese literature and other classical disciplines. Among his classmates was the later founder of Waseda University and statesman Ōkuma Shigenobu . In the same year, the sovereign Nabeshima Naomasa ( 鍋 島 直 正 ) founded a school for Dutch studies ( rangaku ). Among the students chosen for this new institution was Sagara, who began studying the Dutch language under the guidance of Ōba Zessai ( 大 庭 雪 斎 , 1805–1873). In 1858 a school of medicine (Kōseikan, 好生 館 ) was set up in Saga . Sagara received medical training here, which he continued in 1861 with Satō Takanaka ( 佐藤 尚 中 ) in the Juntendō school ( 順 天堂 ) in Sakura . After only two years, in recognition of his achievements, he rose to head ( jukutō , in 頭 ) of this school, which at the time was one of the best institutions of its kind in Japan alongside Ogata Kōan's Tekitekisaijuku ( 適 々 斎 塾 ) in Osaka . Here Sagara established close relationships with some personalities who would later play an important role in the modernization of Japanese medicine: Iwasa Jun ( 岩 佐 純 ) from the Fukui fief , Hasegawa Tai ( 長谷川 泰 ) from the Nagaoka fief ( Echizen province ), Shiba Ryūkai ( 司馬 凌海 ) from Sado Island and Sasaki Tōyō ( 佐 々 木 東洋 ) from Edo . In 1863, Sagara went to Nagasaki on orders from Saga , where the Dutch naval doctor Anthonius Franciscus Bauduin (1820–1885), as the successor to the pioneer Johannes Pompe van Meerdervort, advanced the modernization of medical training and therapy. Here, too, he soon rose to the position of Japanese director of the Seitokukan ( 精 得 館 ) named institution since 1865 .

In 1865 the fiefdom Saga, which together with the Fukuoka fiefdom was responsible for the security of the sea area in front of the Nagasaki imperial domain, founded a language school in Nagasaki (Chienkan, 致遠 館 ), at which the Dutch-American missionary Guido Verbeck (1830-1890) for provided training in English.

In 1867 Chian went back to Saga, became assistant professor ( 教導 方差 次 ) in the Kōseikan feudal school and personal physician to the sovereign Naomasa, with whom he moved to Edo in 1868. In that year, the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns, which had lasted for almost 270 years, finally collapsed in the course of the so-called Meiji Restoration . Among the new decision-makers are numerous former samurai of the middle ranks, especially from the comparatively progressive fiefs in Kyushu and Tosa (Shikoku).

In 1869 Sagara Chian and the aforementioned Iwasa Jun were charged with reforming the medical system. Sagara, who as a kind of state secretary for university affairs ( daigakugon daijō , 大学 権 大 丞 ) was primarily responsible for training doctors, had come to the conclusion in the course of his long studies that German medicine offered the best model for Japan. According to him, the majority of the books translated so far from Dutch have been German works. German researchers such as Virchow, Koch, Krebs, etc. have made groundbreaking discoveries. Verbeck and Sagara's old-time companions Ōkuma Shigenobu , Soejima Taneomi and Etō Shinpei , who were teaching at the new Tokyo Medical School founded in 1869, also supported this point of view. However, under the impression of the great services that the doctor William Willis (1837-1894) had earned in caring for the injured in the struggles of the upheaval, as well as the energetic advocacy of the English ambassador Harry Smith Parkes (1828-1885) In the circles of the Meiji government well-known followers of British medicine such as Saigo Takamori , Yamauchi Yōdō ( 山 内容 堂 ), Ōkubo Toshimichi and Fukuzawa Yukichi .

The controversy, which was only partially conducted under medical aspects, ended with a victory for Sagara and his supporters. In October 1869 the cabinet decided to introduce German medicine. Willis, who was already working as a professor at the new university in Tokyo and was now disruptive, received an appointment to distant Kagoshima , where he laid the foundations for the later medical faculty of the University of Kagoshima .

In 1870 the first nine Japanese were sent to Berlin to study on a government grant. One of them was Sagara Chian's younger brother Motosada, who studied medicine to a doctorate. At the same time, the Prussian Minister- Resident Maximilian August Scipio von Brandt (1835–1920) sent a request to send two German doctors. In May, the decision was made in favor of the military doctor Benjamin Karl Leopold Müller and the naval staff doctor Theodor Eduard Hoffmann , but the Franco-Prussian War delayed their departure, so that both arrived in Yokohama in August 1871 and started working at the Tokyo Medical School. In the course of the following decade, 13 teachers came to Japan from German-speaking countries.

In these years of power struggles and intrigues, Sagara, who had achieved his goal against fierce resistance, did not go unscathed. One of his subordinates was suspected of financial irregularities, and Sagara has also been arrested. However, he regained his freedom in 1872 and became the first rector of Medical School No. 1. His influence continued to grow with his appointment as head of the Medical Office ( imukyoku , 医務 局 ) in the Ministry of Culture and at the same time head of the Building Office ( chikuzōkyoku, 築 造 局 ). In this function he drafted the statutes of the new medical system ( isei ryakusoku , 医 制 畧 則 ), but in 1873 he was suddenly released from all duties. His successor in the medical office was Nagayo Sensai ( 長 与 専 斎 ), a doctor and politician who was also fond of German medicine. Nagayo took over Sagara's draft and ensured that it came into force almost unchanged by proclamation in 1874.

The reasons for Sagara's release have not been satisfactorily clarified. He was not the only one whose life took such turns during these years of upheaval. He spent the following years in the ministry with no specific duties. In 1885 he retired from all positions.

Sagara, who had left his wife and children in Kyushu, still did not return to the family. The following, frequently changing addresses in Tokyo signal a rapid social decline. Eventually, Sagara even gave up all medical practice and made a living doing oracles in the Chinese style. In 1906 he died of a virus flu. He found his final resting place in the cemetery of the Jōun Temple (Jōun-in, 城 雲 院 ) in Saga.

In April 2012, Saga Prefecture created the "Itō Genboku - Sagara Chian Sponsorship Award" in cooperation with the Faculty of Medicine at Tokyo University .

literature

• Kagiyama Sakae: Sagara Chian . Tōkyō: Nihon ko-igaku shiryō sentā, 1973.
• Sagara Takahiro: Saga-han-i Sagara Chian to doitsu igaku . In: Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi . Vol. 55, no. 2, 2009, pp. 135-8.
• Shinoda Tatsuaki: Shiroi gekiryū - Meiji no ikan Sagara Chian no shogai . Tōkyō: Shinjinbutsu ōraisha, 1997.
• Hermann Heinrich Vianden: The introduction of German medicine in Japan during the Meiji period . Düsseldorf: Triltsch Verlag, 1985.

Web links

Commons : Sagara Chian  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Sagara Chian Life and Merit website (Japanese)

Remarks

1. ↑ According to the Japanese calendar, 16th day, 2nd month, 7th year Tenpō. Date from a six-line résumé of Sagara in the Saga Prefectural Library, No. 54-1575 sa939
2. ↑ 相 良知 安 . In: デ ジ タ ル 版 日本人 名 大 辞典 + Plus at kotobank.jp. Retrieved October 25, 2012 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ Vianden gives a detailed description of the events after the decision to use German medicine. The life of Sagara has been followed several times by Japanese authors.
4. ↑ From the fragment of a curriculum vitae in the prefectural library Saga No. 54-1575 sa986.7
5. ↑ The theoretically possible reading Tomoyasu is not correct in this case. See u. a. the website run by the Sagara family and Sagara (2009) in the Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Medicine ( Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi ).
6. ↑ A curriculum vitae fragment in the prefectural library Saga No. 54-1575 sa986.7
7. ↑ For more on Verbeck, see William Elliot Griffis in Verbeck of Japan: a citizen of no country: a life story of foundation work inaugurated by Guido Fridolin Verbeck. New York, Fleming H. Revell, 1900.
8. ↑ This institution, whose name was changed several times, expanded rapidly and finally found its final form as the Faculty of Medicine of Tokyo University.

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