Takano Chōei

Who is Takano Chōei?

Takano Chōei was a prominent scholar of Rangaku of the late Edo period.

Chōei was born as Gotō Kyōsai, the third son of Gotō Sōsuke who was a middle-ranking samurai in Mizusawa Domain of Mutsu Province which is in present-day Iwate Prefecture. At an early age, however, he was adopted by his uncle Takano Gensai who had studied medicine under Sugita Genpaku and influenced Chōei to follow in the same profession.

He first studied medicine in Edo in 1820 after winning money in a lottery that he used to pay his way. There he first studied under Sugita Hakugen, then Yoshida Chōshuku, who gave him the name Chōei. After the death of his teacher in 1824 he took over some of the teaching duties in the school.

A year later he left for Nagasaki to study under Philipp Franz von Siebold. There he paid for his education by writing papers about Japanese life for von Siebold, gathering plants and translating books from Dutch to Japanese. After the school was shut down and von Siebold expelled from Japan in 1828 Chōei was forced to flee. He finally settled in Edo in 1830 where he wrote his Fundamentals of Western Medicine. There he met Watanabe Kazan, a government official sharing an interest in Western learning. They both attended meetings of Shōshikai, a study group of intellectuals interested in foreign affairs.