Rangaku
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Rangaku, and by extension Yōgaku, 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 medicin
A meeting of Japan, China, and the West, Shiba Kōkan, late 18th century
Replica of an East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company/United East Indies Company (VOC)
Account of Foreign Countries (増補華夷通商考, Zōho Kaitsū Shōkō), Nishikawa Joken, 1708. Tokyo National Museum
Painting by Kawahara Keiga: Arrival of a Dutch Ship. Philipp Franz von Siebold at Dejima with his Japanese wife Otaki and their baby daughter Ine observing a VOC ship in Nagasaki Bay using a telescope
Fukuzawa Yukichi
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Fukuzawa Yukichi was a Japanese writer, educator, and philosopher who is regarded as one of the key figures of the Meiji era for his efforts to introduce and promote Western ideas and institutions in
Rangaku
…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 Introduction to the Study of Disease (病学通論, Byōgaku…
Fukuzawa in 1891
Fukuzawa's childhood home in Nakatsu, Ōita Prefecture
Fukuzawa in 1862
Fukuzawa posing in Utrecht as part of the First Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1862