was a prominent scholar of ''

Rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: /Shinjitai: , literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of West ...

'' (western science) during the

Bakumatsu period was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji governm ...

in Japan.

Life

Chōei was born as Gotō Kyōsai, the third son of Gotō Sōsuke, a middle-ranking

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They ...

Mizusawa Domain The was a feudal domain in Mutsu Province of Japan (present-day Mizusawa-ward, Ōshū, Iwate) during the Edo period. It was a subdomain (支藩) of the Sendai Domain. Sometimes it was suggested that the domain be called "Naka-Tsuyama han" (中� ...

Mutsu Province was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the co ...

in what is now part of

Iwate Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It is the second-largest Japanese prefecture at , with a population of 1,210,534 (as of October 1, 2020). Iwate Prefecture borders Aomori Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefectu ...

. At an early age, however, he was adopted by his uncle Takano Gensai who had studied medicine under Sugita Genpaku and influenced Chōei to follow in the same profession. He first studied medicine 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 ...

in 1820 after winning money in a lottery that he used to pay his way. There he first studied under Sugita Hakugen, then Yoshida Chōshuku, who gave him the name Chōei. After the death of his teacher in 1824 he took over some of the teaching duties in the school. A year later he left for

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 ...

to study under

Philipp Franz von Siebold Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (17 February 1796 – 18 October 1866) was a German physician, botanist and traveler. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna and the introduction of Western medicine in Japan. He w ...

. There he paid for his education by writing papers about Japanese life and culture for von Siebold, gathering plants and translating books from Dutch to Japanese. One of his fellow students was

Watanabe Kazan was a Japanese painter, scholar and statesman member of the samurai class. Biography He was born Watanabe Sadayasu in Edo (now Tokyo) to a poor samurai family, and his artistic talent was developed from an early age. His family served the ...

. After the school was shut down and von Siebold expelled from Japan in 1828, Chōei was forced to flee. He finally settled in Edo in 1830 where he wrote his ''Fundamentals of Western Medicine''. There he was reunited with Watanabe Kazan, and both attended meetings of ''Shōshikai'', a study group of intellectuals interested in foreign affairs. In 1838 Chōei married and then published ''Yumemonogatari'' (''The Tale of a Dream''), a book critical of the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

's handling of the 1837 Morrison Incident. Since he was of samurai status he was dealt with harshly by the authorities and sent to the Kodenmachō prison where he spent five years of his life sentence in the commoners' section. While in prison he wrote a treatise on Western learning in Japan called ''Bansha Sōyaku Shōki'' ("A Short Record of a Meeting with Misfortune"). The book examines the history of Western knowledge entering Japan from the

Sengoku Period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

to the 1830s. In 1844 he arranged to have a fire started in the prison and made his escape. He then spent the rest of his life in hiding using various aliases. At one point he is said to have poured acid on his face to disguise his appearance and elude arrest. He returned to Edo in March 1850 and lived in hiding in Aoyama Hyakunin-cho (present-day Minami Aoyama). The area had a concentration of official residences of the Shōgun's foot soldiers and Chōei ran a medical practice under a false name. However, on the last day of October in the same year, an informant told police official where he was hiding, and the Edo Machi-bugyō sent a number of men to arrest him. The actual course of events is uncertain, but Chōei was severely beaten with '' jitte'' as he resisted arrest and was killed. Official reports stated that he drew a dagger and stabbed himself in the neck during the melee. A stone monument, inscribed with "The hiding place of Doctor Chōei Takano", commemorates the location, and his grave at the temple of Zenko-ji in Kita-Aoyama has an inscription by

Katsu Kaishū Count , best known by his nickname , was a Japanese statesman and naval engineer during the late Tokugawa shogunate and early Meiji period. Kaishū was a nickname which he took from a piece of calligraphy (Kaishū Shooku ) by Sakuma Shōzan. H ...

Takano Choei former residence

The house where Chōei lived until he left for Edo at the age of 17 in

Ōshū, Iwate is a city located in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 114,620 and a population density of 120 persons per km² in 45,728 households. The total area of the city is . Ōshū is famous for its Maesawa Beef, numero ...

has been preserved as a memorial museum. This

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 character ...

samurai residence was designated a National Historic Site. on April 13, 1933. The house was extensively restored in 1876, but retains two rooms facing the front courtyard on the west side in the original condition in which they were used by Chōei. However, as the house is in private hands, the rooms are not normally open to the public.Ōshū City tourist guide

Works

* Fundamentals of Medicine, vol.1 in five books (1832) * Treatise on Two Things for the Relief of Famine (1836) * Treatise on Contagious Diseases, including Methods of Avoiding Epidemic Diseases, in two volumes (1836) * The Tale of a Dream (1838)

References

Biography

* ** original Japanese version:

Others

* ''Practical Pursuits: Takano Choei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth Century Japan'', Ellen Gardner Nakamura; Harvard University Press, 2005

External links

*
Prominent People of Minato City

Choei Takano Memorial Hall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Takano, Choei People of Edo-period Japan Rangaku 1804 births 1850 deaths