was an

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Japanese

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

of popular fiction who also wrote a number of works in the field of

rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: , ), and by extension , is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the countr ...

(Western studies). He wrote under many

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

s, including Manzōtei, Shinra Manzō (or, conventionally, Shinra Banshō), and

Tenjiku Tianzhu () is one of the historical ancient Chinese names for the Indian subcontinent. Tian (天) means heaven, and Zhu (竺) means bamboo in Chinese. Tianzhu was also referred to as ''Wutianzhu'' (, literal meaning is "Five Indias"), because ...

Rōjin ("old man from India"). The latter constituted an allusion to the pen name Tenjiku Rōnin ("masterless samurai from India"), used by

Hiraga Gennai was a Japanese polymath and ''rōnin'' of the Edo period. He was a pharmacologist, student of ''Rangaku'', author, painter and inventor well known for his '' Erekiteru'' (electrostatic generator), ''Kandankei'' (thermometer) and ''Kakanpu'' ...

, to whom Chūryō was the principal literary successor. Chūryō co-authored several plays with Gennai early in his career, and went on to write in almost all of the many genres of popular fiction that were collectively known as

gesaku is an alternative style, genre, or school of Japanese literature. In the simplest contemporary sense, any literary work of a playful, mocking, joking, silly or frivolous nature may be called gesaku. Unlike predecessors in the literary field, gesa ...

. He also wrote

kyōka ''Kyōka'' (, "wild" or "mad poetry") is a popular, parodic subgenre of the tanka form of Japanese poetry with a metre of 5-7-5-7-7. The form flourished during the Edo period (17th–18th centuries) and reached its zenith during the Tenmei era ...

, or comic

waka WAKA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Selma, Alabama, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Montgomery area. It is owned by Bahakel Communications alongside Tuskegee-licensed CW+ affiliate WBMM (channel 22); B ...

poetry, under the pen name Taketsue no Sugaru. Chūryō was the younger brother of

Katsuragawa Hoshū was a Japanese physician and scholar of ''rangaku'' (Western studies). 1751 – August 2, 1809 He served the Tokugawa shogunate as a physician and as a translator of Dutch language, Dutch. He was the older brother of author and ''rangaku'' schol ...

, a shogunal physician and leading scholar of rangaku.

References

*Imaizumi Genkichi (1965). ''Rangaku no ie Katsuragawa no hitobito.'' Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morishima, Churyo 1756 births 1810 deaths Japanese writers Japanese scientists