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Image of The Western World 99

The document discusses the introduction of Western learning to Japan during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It describes how some Japanese scholars embraced Western science and medicine but expressed ideas that concerned authorities. This led to increased restrictions on access to Western knowledge. However, some scholars were then employed by the government to study and translate Western texts, which shaped their relationship to authority.

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90 views3 pages

Image of The Western World 99

The document discusses the introduction of Western learning to Japan during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It describes how some Japanese scholars embraced Western science and medicine but expressed ideas that concerned authorities. This led to increased restrictions on access to Western knowledge. However, some scholars were then employed by the government to study and translate Western texts, which shaped their relationship to authority.

Uploaded by

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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IMAGE OF THE WESTERN WORLD 99

ever, Matsudaira Sadanobu was not blind to the value of Western-style


learning. He wrote in his autobiography:
I began about 1792 or 1793 to collect Dutch books. The barbarian nations are
skilled in the sciences, and considerable profit may be derived from their
works of astronomy and geography, as well as from their military weapons
and their methods of internal and external medicine. However, their books
may serve to encourage idle curiosity or may express harmful ideas. . . . Such
books and other foreign things should therefore not be allowed to pass in
large quantities into the hands of irresponsible people; nevertheless it is
desirable to have them deposited in a government library .*»
Sadanobu had also reduced the number of Dutch ships permitted to
enter Nagasaki, lengthened the interval between Dutch trips to Edo
from two to four years, and restricted access to the Dutch while they
were in Edo. Edo scholars had earlier been free to bring their students
to the question-and-answer sessions with the Dutch doctors, but after
Kansei, such access was limited to daimyo doctors. It all made for
difficult communication. In 1794 Otsuki Gentaku, unable to get the
floor in Edo with a question he had prepared for the Dutch, reflected
stoically that he would have to wait four years for another opportunity
to get it answered.70
Some of the writings of rangaku scholars may be cited to illustrate the
grounds for Sadanobu's decision that access to Dutch learning should
be controlled. Kudo Heisuke's writings about developments to the
north have already been mentioned; Sugita Gempaku, it will be remem-
bered, as early as 1775 had written a dialogue in which he separated the
country of China from the central cultural tradition of East Asia. He
declared: "The earth comprises a single great globe, and the myriad
countries are distributed upon it. Every place is the center. One can call
any country the central country. China is only a small country on one
border of the Eastern Sea." He then went on to say: "The books of
China are concerned with techniques and not with principles; they are
not lacking in principles, but the provenance of those principles is not
clear." Dutch medicine, based on facts, was also based on principles,
and those principles were equivalent to the true teachings of the sages,
who sought to improve human life. Thus the practicality of Western
medical science was fully compatible with explicit adherence to the
Sages and the essence of the East Asian tradition.

69 Quoted in Keene, Discovery ofEurope, pp. 75-6.


70 Tadashi Yoshida, "The Rangaku of Shizuki Tadao: The Introduction of Western Science in
Tokugawa Japan," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1974.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


IOO JAPAN IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

But then in 1807, in Yaso dokugo, Gempaku made it clear that in his
opinion Japan, no less than China, had departed from the wisdom of
that great tradition. In a dialogue (presumably not published, as it
ends with injunctions to maintain secrecy) Gempaku now called for a
restoration (chuko) of the state before its illness should become termi-
nal. Evidence of the problem was to be found in Russian encroach-
ment on Japan's northern shores, followed by the appearance of
Rezanov at Nagasaki in 1804. It was Japanese duplicity that had
prompted the permit for Laxman to enter Nagasaki, and Rezanov's
irritation on discovering that deception had led to the raids by
Khostov and Davydov in the north. After all, the doctor's interlocutor
in the dialogue explains, Russia is young and vigorous, an expanding
nation that has accomplished wonders since its remarkable beginnings
under Peter. In fact, its vigor is comparable to that Japan showed in
the days of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Japan's leaders now face one of two
choices: an affirmative response to the Russians' request, or prepara-
tion for the war that will follow rejection of that request. Unfortu-
nately Japan's fighting qualities have disintegrated under generations
of peace. "Bushido has waned by stages, so that even among hatamoto
and gokenin, who ought to be the first to come forward, seven or eight
out often are like women. Their spirit is mean, like that of merchants,
and they seem to have lost their sense of honor as samurai." The
bakufu's samurai are unable to make an arrowflytwo feet and cannot
ride horses even "when the horses are more like cats than steeds"; they
are hopelessly encumbered by urban luxuries and the debts that accom-
pany them; and they are not even very effective against unarmed
peasant rabble. The Russians, in contrast, have recently been able
even to stand up against the might of K'ang Hsi to gain the treaty of
Nerchinsk.?1
Arguments of this sort reappeared in future debates. The immediate
danger was exaggerated (the Russians did not reappear for almost a
half-century), but the alarm was not entirely misplaced because the
West as a whole would shortly become steadily more intrusive. Sugita
realized that Japan was virtually defenseless but had no solution to
propose. Like Tokugawa Nariaki after the coming of Perry, Sugita
proposed using whatever time remained to
foster the people, drill the troops, reform and sustain our customs, and put
everything in order. . . . Our first priority is to save our world: if we are
71 Haga, ed., Sugita Gempaku, Hiraga Gennai, Shiba Kokan, pp. 269-95, f° r t e x t -

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008


IMAGE OF THE WESTERN WORLD IOI

forced to permit trade for now, we must, even though it is a disgrace; at a


later time we will be able to redeem our honor.

He then offered proposals for institutional reforms that would turn the
clock back to an earlier day: Warriors should return to the land; there
should be less commercialism; and the cities should be reduced in size.
The bakufu should even out the distinctions between tozama and fudai
daimyo in order to encourage a shared sense of crisis and duty, and it
should make higher posts accessible to men of ability, even though
their samurai rank might be low. Thus intellectual awareness of the
West was accompanied by calls for retreat into an institutional past in
order to hold that West at bay. A half-century later, similar reasoning
would provide the first steps on a bridge to the reforms that produced
modern Japan.
For scholars of Dutch learning, the aftermath of the Kansei punish-
ment for unauthorized publications like Hayashi Shihei's was a closer
identification with authority. Because Sadanobu and his successors
collected books and saw value in them, government employment pro-
vided the best path to support and safety. Inevitably this had conse-
quences for attitudes as well. The case of Otsuki Gentaku is instruc-
tive. In 1803 Otsuki and a friend were ordered to translate Lalande's
astronomical tables. Shortly afterward Nagasaki officials tried to use
him as a channel to power brokers in Edo. In 1809, in the hope of
easing the financial hardships that the merchants were suffering be-
cause of the interruption of trade with the Dutch, the Nagasaki magis-
trate got the Nagasaki interpreters to have Otsuki propose that trade
with the Ryukyu Islands be authorized as a substitute. Otsuki's con-
nection with authority soon became formal with the establishment in
1811 of a separate Translation Office in the Bureau of Astronomy.
Now began the recruitment of other linguists to work on a large-scale
project to translate selected portions of a 1743 Dutch translation of
Noel Chomel's Dktionnaire Oeconomique. The work in question, a by-
product of the eighteenth-century encyclopedist tradition, promised
information for every means "D'augmenter son bien et de conserver sa
sant6" and appeared frequently on the order lists that were given to
the departing Dutch vessels thereafter. Although the project was
never completed, three hundred articles were produced in 135 Japa-
nese hand-sewn volumes. For the scholars so employed, Western learn-
ing (for from this time work also began on other European languages
through the medium of Dutch) was no longer simply a matter of

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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