PHYSICAL SCIENCES FN JAPAN. 249 



and natural history was very great, the most prominent being books on 

 Physics by Hoashi Banri and Aoji Kinso and books on Chemistry by 

 Udagawa Yoan. 



The knowledge of magnetism in Japan dates from an early age, 

 when it was brought in from China. The knowledge of electricity, on 

 the other liand, was first brought in 1760 from Holland with the 

 importation of a frictioual electric machine. Hiraga Gennai made such 

 a machine for himself and the interest in this science spread to Yedo, 

 Osaka and other places. It was popularly called -'Electeer" and was 

 looked upon as one of immeasurable manifestations of unfathomable 

 European knowledge. A little later, Hashimoto Sokichi made somewhat 

 systematical experiments on electricity. 



During the feudal age of Japan, the education of a knight (Samurai) 

 comprised chiefly, besides the art of fighting with swords, the study of 

 the Chinese philosophy of Tsutsi (Chu-Tse) of the Sung dynasty. The 

 chief religion was Buddhism. It was in the latter half of the eighteenth 

 century that the school of ancient Japanese learning and the school of 

 Shintoism sprang up in addition to the school of Dutch learning as 

 discussed above. Although the last two schools represented two extremes, 

 the one ultra-nationalistic and the other the worship of foreign sciences, 

 yet they united in antagonizing the traditional influences of Confucianism 

 and Buddhism. Their relation to each other was somewhat similar to 

 that of the humanist and realist schools of the Renaissance period in 

 Europe which stood against the traditional scholastic school. The 

 analogy may be pushed a little further. The school of natural philosopy, 

 based on the monism of "Ki" (Matter), which flourished during the first 

 period gave way to the geocentric theory of the Aristotelian school 

 which in its turn was displaced by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, 

 ushered in by the rise of Dutch learning. These successive changes are 

 just like a miniature picture of the history of scientific progress in 

 Europe, which moved on from the period of the natural philosophy of 

 the Greek school to the period of the Renaissance following the Middle 

 Ages. 



The mathematics of this age in Japan had an indigenous develop- 

 ment along the line called '^Wasan", meaning Japanese mathematics. 

 Due to the scarcity of imported Dutch books on matliematics, the 

 native mathematicians had a certain degree of self confidence in the 

 practical side of their science. It was somewhat the same with medical 

 science and the physicians thought that, although Japanese medicine 



