, also known as , was a Japanese

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

and

herbalist Herbal medicine (also herbalism) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. With worldwide research into pharmacology, some herbal medicines have been translated into modern remed ...

, known as the "Japanese

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

". Ono's real surname was ; his adult given name was . became his

art name An art name (pseudonym or pen name), also known by its native names ''hào'' (in Mandarin), ''gō'' (in Japanese), ''ho'' (in Korean), and ''tên hiệu'' (in Vietnamese), is a professional name used by East Asian artists, poets and writers. The ...

and his Chinese style

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theobald ...

. He was born in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

to a courtly family, and studied in his youth under Matsuoka Shoan. In 1754, he opened a school of botanical pharmacology (

pharmacognosy Pharmacognosy is the study of medicinal plants and other natural substances as sources of drugs. The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical, and biological properties of drug ...

) which enjoyed considerable success, with over a thousand pupils enrolling. One student who studied under Ono at this time was

Kimura Kenkadō was a Japanese scholar, artist and art connoisseur. Kimura's family were sake merchants, and he followed the family trade, but was obliged to move into the stationery business after being convicted of excessive alcohol production. At an early ag ...

. In 1799, he was given a post at the Seijūkan, the country's major government medical school in

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

. Here he worked extensively on a translation into Japanese of

Rembert Dodoens Rembert Dodoens (born Rembert Van Joenckema, 29 June 1517 – 10 March 1585) was a Flemish physician and botanist, also known under his Latinized name Rembertus Dodonaeus. He has been called the father of botany. Life Dodoens was born Rember ...

' herbal guide, the ''Cruydeboeck''. Ono was familiar with Western herbalism (making use of the work of Johann Wilhelm Weinmann in his translation) and had studied both

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of action ...

and Western medicine as well. Some of Ono's own works on Japanese botany were translated by the French botanist

Ludovic Savatier Paul Amedée Ludovic Savatier (19 October 1830 – 27 August 1891) was a French naval doctor and botanist. Savatier was born on the Atlantic island of Oléron, off La Rochelle and Rochefort, in 1830. He studied medicine at the Naval Medical Schoo ...

. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Ono travelled around Japan gathering information on botanical remedies, which culminated in his most important literary work, the , which was edited by his botanist grandson Ono Mototaka, and first published in 1803–1806. It was a piece on natural history espousing viewpoints independent from China's ''Honzō Kōmoku'' (the ''

Bencao Gangmu The ''Bencao gangmu'', known in English as the ''Compendium of Materia Medica'' or ''Great Pharmacopoeia'', is an encyclopedic gathering of medicine, natural history, and Chinese herbology compiled and edited by Li Shizhen and published in the ...

''). Despite Ono's knowledge of Western and Chinese botany, this was one of the first books in the Japanese natural sciences to advocate experimentation and research rather than reliance on the

Chinese Classics Chinese classic texts or canonical texts () or simply dianji (典籍) refers to the Chinese texts which originated before the imperial unification by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, particularly the "Four Books and Five Classics" of the Neo-Confucian ...

. Ono never married, but fathered a son with one of his household servants. After his death in 1810 he was interred at

Asakusa is a district in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is known as the location of the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several other temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals, such as the . History The ...

; however, his remains were moved to

Nerima is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward in Tokyo, Japan. The ward refers to itself as Nerima City. , the ward has an estimated population of 721,858, with 323,296 households and a population density of 15,013 persons per km2, while 15,326 f ...

in 1927 after the graveyard was damaged in the

Great Kantō earthquake Great may refer to: Descriptions or measurements * Great, a relative measurement in physical space, see Size * Greatness, being divine, majestic, superior, majestic, or transcendent People * List of people known as "the Great" *Artel Great (born ...

. The barberry species '' Ranzania japonica'' was named in his honour.

Editions

References

{{Authority control 1729 births 1810 deaths 19th-century Japanese botanists Japanese pharmacists People from Kyoto 18th-century Japanese botanists