Biographical Spotlight: Ogata Koan

A step outside of Tohoku and on down to Osaka for this post. Our topic is Ogata Koan (1810-1863), a medical doctor of the late Edo period. This post is written with those of my readers in mind who practice traditional Chinese medicine, who would benefit from some observations on the life of a doctor in a "traditional" East Asian setting.

Ogata was a pioneering doctor in his time, adapting Western medical practices-- for example, in vaccination-- for use in Japan. But this was not all he did. His greatest and most enduring impact has been in the realm of education. He founded a school in Osaka, called Tekijuku, in 1838. The curriculum at Tekijuku covered far more than just medicine: foreign language (Dutch), military science, and engineering were also studied there. And Ogata's students came from all around Japan. Though he may not be remembered by name, his students are people who are household names in Japanese history: Fukuzawa Yukichi (founder of Keio University), Otori Keisuke (military officer and diplomat), Omura Masujiro (general, whose statue stands at Yasukuni Shrine), Takamatsu Ryoun (early Meiji era doctor), and many others.

(above: Tekijuku as it stands in Osaka today)

 Those of you who know manga, you're in for a bit of a surprise! You may have heard of Tezuka Osamu, the artist behind "Astroboy." His ancestor, Tezuka Ryoan, was also one of Ogata's students. Fukuzawa Yukichi's autobiography mentions him; there is an amusing anecdote of the two of them playing pranks on the people in houseboats on one of Osaka's rivers. Tezuka made a manga about his ancestor's life, titled Hidamari no Ki.

So, to sum up: what is there to be learned from Ogata's life? A doctor is more than a "body mechanic," a doctor is also an educator. Also, as one of my professors once said, "there's no such thing as wasted research." The breadth of Ogata's learning fed into his work as a physician and a teacher, and formed an important part of the education that empowered his students who went on to change Japan.

Works Cited and Further Reading

• Fukuzawa Yukichi. Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa. Translated by Eiichi Kiyooka. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
• McClain, James L, ed. Osaka: The Merchants' Capital of Early Modern Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• Nakata Masahiro. Ogata Koan: Bakumatsu no I to Oshie. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2009.
• Tekijuku picture at Wikimedia Commons (accessed 25 Mar. 2013)
• Tezuka Osamu. Hidamari no Ki. (multiple vols.) Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994.
• Yoneda Kaisuke. Koan no Kusuribako. Suita: Osaka Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001.

Preliminary Review: NHK series "Yae no Sakura"

(at left, a picture of Neesima (Yamamoto) Yae, who stands at right) Hello everyone! I wanted to take this opportunity to pop in and offer a brief, preliminary review of the series Yae no Sakura. This is this year's (2013's) history-themed series on the NHK network. The subject is Yamamoto Yae, a warrior woman of the 19th century who later became an educator and a co-founder of Doshisha University.

First, the makers of this series get huge props from me for situating Yae's story in a global context. She's known among some for her use of the American-made Spencer carbine, and the series opens not with fighting in Japan, but instead, Pickett's Charge, at the Battle of Gettysburg. The idea here is that the weapons used in the American Civil War were some of the weapons that were used in the Boshin War, just a few years later.

Another thing I have to applaud is that not everyone speaks the same way. Yae was born in the northeast, and both the child and adult actresses who play her at different ages seem to have been coached in what sounds, to my ears, like at least a reasonable approximation of the Aizu dialect. Characters from Kyushu sound like they're from Kyushu, characters from Edo sound like they're from Edo, and so on.

Further, the detail research, for the "stuff" in this series, is also solid! Here I mean details like crests, gear, and so on, are all solid, at least to my eyes. It's a lot to keep track of, but they're doing great so far.

My only complaint? Their Commodore Perry didn't have an American accent, and the American naval officers in the Perry scene seemed to be wearing Imperial Japanese Navy caps. Ultimately that's "small potatoes" compared to an overall well-executed series. I recommend it heartily.

For those of you who can read Japanese, here is the series' homepage.