Ogata Kōan

Who was Ogata Kōan?

Ogata Kōan 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, and for establishing the Tekijuku 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.