was a Japanese interpreter and

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

. Although he initially came from a line of Dutch translators, he was later able to learn English.

Biography

Born in

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

, he was the son of a Dutch translator. He was the translator of

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore, a ...

James Biddle James Biddle (February 18, 1783 – October 1, 1848), of the Biddle family, brother of financier Nicholas Biddle and nephew of Capt. Nicholas Biddle, was an American commodore. His flagship was . Education and early career Biddle was born in Ph ...

's 1846 letter at

Uraga Channel The is a waterway connecting Tokyo Bay to the Sagami Gulf. It is an important channel for ships headed from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Geography The Uraga channel is at the southern end of Tokyo Bay (formerly ...

. He was also present at Commodore Perry's arrival at Uraga on July 8, 1853, and served as an official interpreter. He told Perry in English "I can speak Dutch" and later began a conversation in Dutch with Anton L. C. Portman who could speak Dutch on Perry's ship. He was able to convince the Americans to allow he and Nakajima Saburōsuke (1821–1869), an officer of the Uraga magistracy, to board the

USS Susquehanna Four ships of the United States Navy have been named USS or USNS ''Susquehanna'', for the Susquehanna River which rises in Lake Otsego in central New York and flows across Pennsylvania and the northeastern corner of Maryland into the Chesapeake B ...

, on which they delivered the order that all foreign ships were to be expelled from Japanese ports. He later went on to found an English-teaching school and published a manual on learning English. Tomb of Hori Tatsunosuke

When the American Lieutenant

John Rodgers John Rodgers may refer to: Military * John Rodgers (1728–1791), colonel during the Revolutionary War and owner of Rodgers Tavern, Perryville, Maryland * John Rodgers (naval officer, born 1772), U.S. naval officer during the War of 1812, first na ...

of the ''USS Vincennes'' landed at the port of Shimoda on 13 May 1855, Hori assisted in mediating the negotiations between Rodgers and Shimoda's governors. He had been learning English with the help of a

Webster's dictionary ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...

which had been donated by the Perry expedition. In 1862, Hori and others finished compiling the ''Eiwa taiyaku shūchin jisho'' (英和対訳袖珍辞書), an English pocket dictionary that was one of the most widely used from the later Edo period into the early

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

. This dictionary's creation had been requested by the government, and was the second English dictionary overall but the first to be organised according to modern criteria. This dictionary has been credited as ushering in "the age of English studies" and consequently leading to a decline in importance in

Dutch studies Dutch studies may refer to: * the academic study of Dutch culture and language ('' Neerlandistiek'') * Japanese Rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: /Shinjitai: , literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge ...

. That being said, it is known that this dictionary took heavy influence from H. Picard's ''A New Pocket Dictionary of English-Dutch and Dutch-English Languages'' from 1857. Hori later became the first English professor at what would later become

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

. Hori died in 1892.

References

{{authority control 1823 births 1892 deaths Japanese translators Japanese writers of the Edo period Lexicographers 19th-century Japanese translators 19th-century lexicographers