The Tokugawa shogunate lifted a nearly century-long ban on books containing minor references to Christianity. In harmony with Shogun Yoshimune’s policy of promoting “practical learning,” the Japanese began to import science and technology books, most of which were well illustrated and were either Chinese translations of European works or books in Dutch. Christian religious books, however, remained banned.
A general ban on Christianity
Among the anti-Christian measures adopted was a ban on the importation or possession of any foreign books containing references to Christianity. Even nonreligious European books of all sorts were suspected by the Japanese authorities to contain peripheral references to Christianity. Such references put books on the forbidden list, no matter how unrelated they might be to the books’ main contents or topics. Virtually all European books, as well as books in Chinese dealing with European subjects, were effectively banned. Foreign books were assumed to have subversive content, and their importation and possession were forbidden as a matter of course.
Tokugawa Yoshimune became shogun in 1716 and retained that position for almost three decades, until his retirement in 1745. His immediate predecessors, Tokugawa Ietsugu (r. 1713-1716), who was shogun for four years and died at the age of seven, and Tokugawa Ienobu (r. 1709-1712), shogun for only three years, were controlled by powerful advisers. Yoshimune set aside most of the people and policies that had held sway, and on his own he began carrying out institutional change, known as the reforms of the Kyoho era
Yoshimune emphasized frugality in private and public life, the modernization of a moribund administrative system, and a pragmatic policy of encouraging jitsugaku, or useful learning,
Yoshimune wanted knowledge of Western science and technology to be available to merchants and artisans, as well as to privileged scholars, so foreign books began to sell and circulate quite freely in Japan. While only a limited number of Japanese specialists could read books in Dutch, many merchants and artisans were able to read a number of Chinese translations or summaries of important European books, summaries known as kanyaku yosho, or foreign books in Chinese translation, which also became readily available. Though Chinese rather than Dutch was often the language through which people acquired knowledge of the West, this emerging field became known as rangaku, Dutch studies
Because the emphasis was on the pragmatic acquisition and application of new information from Europe, and because Western religious works were still banned, relatively little attention was paid to European philosophy or political theory. However, practical applications of Western knowledge did eventually give rise to new developments in theories related to technology, science, and the arts.
A number of educated people in the urban merchant class had a special interest in mathematics because it had a direct application to business transactions. Such people were attracted to the newly available Chinese versions of European texts dealing with Western mathematics, but some of them went on to study other European innovations in science and technology. In addition, a growing interest in European styles and techniques of drawing and painting began to develop, largely because of the detailed and realistic
In addition to making Western books generally accessible to the reading public, Shogun Yoshimune had more personal interests in the promotion of European science and technology. He was so impressed with the Confucian scholar Aoki Kon’yō, who was studying the newly approved books in Chinese to master the basics of Western learning, that he appointed Aoki shomotsu-kata, the official in charge of collecting books and gathering documents for the shogunate library in Edo Castle. Aoki was instructed to collect a basic library of Chinese books on Western subjects, as well as works in Dutch. Yoshimune also had Aoki learn the Dutch language and arranged for him to have periodic conferences on Western learning with officials from the Dutch trading enclave in Nagasaki.
One of the shogun’s own doctors, Katsuragawa Hochiku, used Western
Yoshimune also had his court herbal physician, Noro Genjō, learn Dutch, so Noro could learn about pharmacology
Yoshimune also applied the foreign data Noro and other shogunate scholars gathered on botany and agriculture
Under the rules of Tokugawa Yoshimune and his successor, the irresponsible Shogun Ieshige, the main focus of learning Western knowledge remained that of “useful learning” and its practical applications. The next generation contained numbers of people who were able to learn directly from books in Dutch. There was continued progress in Japanese technology, art, and education, in part because of the increasing practical application of Western learning. A famous example is a research team led by Maeno Ryotaku (1723-1803), a student of Aoki Kon’yō, and Sugita Genpaku (1733-1817), who had learned Western medicine from a shogunate physician. This team worked from a 1734 Dutch translation of Anatomische tabellen
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Boxer, Charles R. Papers on Portuguese, Dutch, and Jesuit Influences in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Japan: Studies in Japanese History and Civilization. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. A detailed account, by a recognized authority, of Japan’s early encounters with European cultures and religious ideologies. -
Goodman, Grant Kohn. Japan and the Dutch, 1600-1853. Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon, 2000. Examines 250 years of an exclusive relationship between Tokugawa Japan and the Netherlands. Extensive and detailed bibliographical references. -
Johnson, Hiroko. Western Influence on Japanese Art. Amsterdam: Hotei/KIT, 2004. A historical study of the Akita Ranga School, an artistic by-product of rangaku, or Dutch studies, in eighteenth century Japan. -
Kasaya, Kazuhiko, ed. Dodonaeus in Japan: Translation and the Scientific Mind in the Tokugawa Period. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2001. Explores how the European pharmacological tradition in Dodonaeus’s book of herbs was adapted by Tokugawa intellectuals, and its effect on the development of modern scientific discourse in Japan. -
Keene, Donald. The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969. Keene examines the relaxation of the ban on Western books, which ultimately resulted in a nationalistic Japanese version of Western medicine. -
Sansom, George Bailey. The Western World and Japan; A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures. New York: Random House, 1974. A classic history of cultural relations between Japan and the West, containing many interesting anecdotes.
Chikamatsu Produces The Love Suicides at Sonezaki
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Chikamatsu Monzaemon; Hakuin; Honda Toshiaki; Ogyū Sorai; Suzuki Harunobu; Tokugawa Yoshimune.