Ogata Kōan

In this Japanese name, the family name is "Ogata".
Statue of Ogata Kōan at his birthplace in Okayama

Ogata Kōan (緒方 洪庵, August 13, 1810 - July 25, 1863) was a Japanese physician who lived in the Edo period.

He is well known for importing Western medical knowledge into Japan during Japan's isolationist era (see Rangaku), and for establishing the Tekijuku (適塾) school that later developed into Osaka University in 1938. Ogata used his small but precious collection of Dutch books, including a Dutch-Japanese dictionary and a Dutch encyclopedia, to teach his pupils to read scientific Dutch texts.

His house still exists in downtown Osaka. Built in a conventional eighteenth-century style, the students left their mark on the central post of the second-floor classroom, slashing and hacking it with their swords.[1]

Famous alumni

Alumni of the Tekijuku include Fukuzawa Yukichi, Ōmura Masujirō, Ōtori Keisuke, Takeda Ayasaburō, and the manga artist Tezuka Osamu's ancestor Tezuka Ryōan.

Books

He was the author of "Byōgakutsūron" (病学通論), which was the first book on pathology to be published in Japan.

Notes

  1. ↑ Finn, Dallas: Meiji Revisited: The Sites of Victorian Japan, page 6. Weatherhill, 1995.

External links