PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN JAPAN. 247 



Knowledge of European geography had been introduced by Aral 

 Hakuseki in a jjreceding decade and was followed by the science of 

 cavalry and medicine. Now Yoshimune took the above mentioned 

 momentous steps because of his taste for astronomical knowledge. He 

 saw a Duch book on astronomy in his library and was quite struck 

 by the minute details of the pictures and figures in it and ordered, in 

 1739; his librarian, Aoki Konyo, to study the Dutch language. Konyo 

 began his lessons in Dutch with the ''Capitain" ( .^ ) (or the Resident) 

 of the Dutch Company in Nagasaki, who made his official visit to Yedo 

 once a year. He then went to Nagasaki where he learned the language 

 from the official interpreters who, as was said before, spoke the language 

 but were not allowed to read the printed books. Yoshimune at last 

 gave permission to the interpreters to read the Dutch books. When 

 Konyo returned to Yedo after some years' stay in Nagasaki, Yoshimune 

 was dead and thus a sudden stop was put to the forward progress of 

 the course of science. However, the impetus given by him to the 

 cultivation of science could not but constitute a great turning point and 

 the history of the progress of modern science in Japan entered the third 

 period. 



After the pioneering labors of Aoki Konyo, the number of students 

 of the Dutch language gradually increased in Yedo. While Aoki was 

 originally a Chinese scholar, his successors in the Dutch learning were 

 mostly medical men such as Maeno Ryotaku, Sugita Geupaku, and 

 Otsuki Gentaku among others ; and the translation and publication in 

 1774 of an anatomical handbook ''Kaitai-Shinsho" was an epoch-making 

 event in the history of European learning in Japan. Some of the official 

 interpreters in Nagasaki specialized in the medicine and surgery of the 

 Europeane school, some in the language, while others took up navigation, 

 astronomy, artillery and cavalry as their principal studies. Motoki Nidaiu 

 was one of the official interpreters who began to read printed Dutcli 

 books with Aoki Konyo and he early translated more than ten defierent 

 works on astronomy, calendology, and other subjects. The official 

 interpreters in Nagasaki bad heard from earlier days that the cosmology 

 then prevalent in Europe was the heliocentric theory in contrast to the 

 geocentric theory which was already out of vogue. They did not, how- 

 ever, dare to speak of it for fear of offending official and public opinion 

 of the day. When Motoki explained in detail this new theory, it 

 attracted attention as a marvelous view of the universe and spread 

 gTadually from Osaka to Yedo. Shiba Kokan, a famous painter of Yedo, 



