Famous Person
1.Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543~1616)
Japanese military leader and statesman, founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of shoguns. Born Matsudaira Takechiyo of the Matsudaira military clan, Ieyasu grew up in a chaotic period of feuding clans. He was sent at four years old as a hostage to cement a Matsudaira alliance with the neighbouring Imagawa clan in 1547, but was captured en route by their common enemy, the Oda clan. Held until his father's death in 1549, Ieyasu returned home briefly before going back to the Imagawa as a hostage. Their defeat by Oda Nobunaga in 1560 freed Ieyasu to regain leadership of the Matsudaira, and he immediately allied with Nobunaga, changing his name to Tokugawa Ieyasu and seizing Imagawa land.
In 1570 he moved his headquarters to former Imagawa territory and for the next 12 years expanded his lands and influence through Nobunaga's campaigns, despite being forced to kill his first wife and order his son's suicide in 1579 as proof of his loyalty to Nobunaga. He seized more land on Nobunaga's death in 1582, becoming master of five provinces by 1583. After inconclusive fighting in 1584, Ieyasu allied with Nobunaga's successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi and married his sister. Following victory at Odawara in 1590, which secured control of eastern Japan, Hideyoshi moved Ieyasu to new lands in the east to undercut his independence. Ieyasu began building an imposing new headquarters at a small fishing port called Edo, later Tokyo. Occupied in the east while Hideyoshi pursued his futile invasions of Korea, Ieyasu consolidated his new base and, shortly before Hideyoshi's death in 1598, swore with the other great generals to serve Hideyoshi's successor, his infant son Hideyori. Promptly breaking this oath, he began allying with other leaders and in 1600, aided by treachery, crushed his principal opponents at the battle of Sekigahara, normally taken as marking the beginning of the Edo period.
In 1603 he assumed the historic title of shogun, confirming his pre-eminence. In 1605 he passed the title to his son but retained paramount authority, organizing two attacks on Osaka Castle in 1614 and 1615 which finally defeated Hideyori and the remaining Toyotomi forces, thus completing the reunification of Japan under one government. He organized new laws to regulate the court and the military clans, and laid the foundations for over 250 years of peace under Tokugawa rule during the Edo period. After his death he was enshrined at Nikko as Tosho Daigongen, an aspect of the Buddha.
2.Genpaku Sugita (1733~1817)
Genpaku Sugita are docter and Dutch scholar in the mid edo era. He was born in edo. His father who surgeon work for advised Genpaku to learn Dutch medical science.
This work was co-translated by Gempaku together with Ryotaku Maeno, Jun'an Nakagawa, Genjo Ishikawa, Hoshu Katsuragawa etc., although Ryotaku's name is absent from the published edition. The events leading up to the publication of the work are described in detail in a later work by Gempaku, his Rangaku Kotohajime, where he states that in March 1771, Gempaku, Ryotaku and others observed the dissection of the body of a criminal executed at Honegahara in the Senju district of Edo. Comparing their findings with the Anatomische Tabellen, a Dutch translation of a work on anatomy by the German Johann Adam Kulmus, they were astonished at its exactitude, and undertook to do a Japanese translation, which they achieved after three and a half years of indescribable labor. This translation was published under the title Kaitai-shinsho. Volume 1 contains plates illustrating the internal organs, and volumes 2-4 contains the commentary to these, translated into kambun style prose.
The Kaitai-shinsho not only contributed greatly to the advancement of medicine in Japan, it also stimulated a wider interest in Rangaku or Dutch studies, and in this sense too it is a landmark work of classic translation.
3.Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794~1858)
Perry becomes East Indies fleet commander in chief and, in 1853, I lead four warship coughs and visit a shore in Uraga (Kanagawa). He handed Shogunate government official an autograph letter of President Fillmore and demanded the foundation of a country. In the next year, he led seven warship coughs and visited a shore again in the Kanagawa offing and succeeded in letting a Japan-U.S. sum parent treaty sign it.
Retreieved: http://www.library.pref.fukui.jp/genpaku/kaitai.html
http://brian.hoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/HST263/11.Nobunaga.Hideyoshi.html
Posted by Tatsuya Moriyama
