Sugita Genpaku

Born in the Wakasa-Obama estate of Feudal Lord Wakasa in 1733, Genpaku was the son of a physician, Hosen Sugita, who was the official doctor of Feudal Lord Wakasa. Genpaku's mother, daughter of Genkō Yomogida, died during childbirth. Around age 17, Genpaku began studying surgery under Gentetsu Nishi. He also studied Confucianism under Saburoemon Miyase. Genpaku moved away from his father's home at age 25 after being granted permission from his liege lord to begin working as a medical practitioner. His first business was located at 4-chōme, Nihonbashidōri and was attached to the home of painter Sekkei Kusumoto.[1]

Drawing of Sugita Genpaku

Genpaku was forced to relocate his medical practice from Nihonbashidōri-dōri to Hakoya-chō in 1759 and later to Horidome-chō in 1762, both due to losing his property from fires. He later left Horidome-chō and moved to property owned by Feudal Lord Sakai around 1770.

Under the rule of the Tokogawa shoguns, Genpaku lived in a period Japanese isolation from the Western world and most of East Asia. The period of isolation, sakoku, was driven by the shogun's desire to halt the spread of Christianity propagated largely by Portuguese missionaries. During this period, Nagasaki was the only port of entry and only Holland was allowed to enter Japan, as their transactions were understood to be exclusively pertaining to trade. In the early eighteenth century, Western texts were severely restricted in Japan and Western knowledge predominately spread orally, mediated through translators whose grasp of Japanese was limited.[2] As relations evolved with the Dutch, the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruled 1716-45), allowed Rangaku (Western learning) to take hold in Japan. Yoshimune launched efforts to systematically study Dutch in 1740, giving rise to the scholarly pursuit of rangaku, however this learning was still restricted from the general public. In many cases by the police who were known to destroy Dutch texts.[3][4] In mid eighteenth century, Dutch books became sought after as scholarly texts by the Japanese, and it was during this time that Genpaku came into the medical profession.

With the acceptance of rangaku, Dutch physicians presented lectures and demonstrations to the Shōgun in Edo. Genpaku attended one such demonstration in 1768 where a Dutch surgeon, Rudolf Bauer, cured a patient with gangrene of the tongue by drawing blood from the infected area.[3]

As a practicing physician and scholar of surgery, Genpaku was aware of physician Tōyō Yamawaki's (1705–62) observations through dissection, though only through second hand information from physician Genteki Kosugi.[1] Yamawaki first witnessed dissection of a beheaded criminal on February 7, 1754, and it is thought that his interest in witnessing dissection arose from his possession of a German anatomical text Syntagma Anatomicum. An account of Yamawaki's observations were published as Zōshi (Description of the organs), and this text is credited as the beginning of experimental anatomy in Japan.[4] Also in possession of a Western anatomical text, Ontleekundige Tafelen, Genpaku was interested by the opportunity to witness a dissection.[1]

As a physician practicing during the Tokugawa shogun, Genpaku and his contemporary physicians are often referred to as “Tokugawa physicians.”[5] Collectively, these physicians shared a sentiment of radical social equality. Genpaku wrote in Keiei yawa:

Other than the differences between males and females, there are no distinctive differences between human beings, from the emperor to all commoners. Where there are no differences, then, humans themselves have artificially created above and below, and the names of the four social statuses. Yet there is no difference between us, because we are all human.[5]

Such ideas of equality were not widely accepted in the class based Japanese society, but particularly before Western learning from Dutch travellers began to spread within scholarly communities, Japanese physicians already have a belief in nature as the foundation for truth and the body as an extension of nature. Tokugawa physicians expanded their regard for the body to a responsibility to protect the wellness of the body as a shared logic of nature. The introduction of Western medicine in Japan occurred without colonization efforts, which allowed the Tokugawa physicians to use Western medicine for performing humanitarian medical acts without the spread of western religions that usually comes with it.[5]

Bronze statue of Genpaku Sugita in Fukui Prefecture Obama, Fukui. It is installed in front of Sugita Genpaku Memorial Obama Municipal Hospital

Genpaku continued to collect Dutch texts and build a robust medical library.[1] After mentoring many students in Rangaku—including Gentaku Otsuki, Shojuro Arai, and Genzui Udagawa—Genpaku began spending more time working as a physician than as a scholar towards the end of his life. One of Genpaku’s last students was Genshin Udugawa, a man who came to know Genpaku through a mutual fascination in the Dutch language. At this time in his old age, Genpaku was looking to adopt a son who could succeed him in taking his home, profession, and legacy of medical service to Japan. Genpaku initially took Genshin in as a student and prospective son to inherit his estate. A young man, Genshin was temperamental and did not heed Genpaku’s wishes to better his behavior. As such, Genpaku disowned Genshin. A few years passed and Genshin continued his studies of Rangaku and bettered his ambitions, eventually gaining favor of the Udagawas who were friends of Genpaku. With the change in Genshin’s behavior, Genpaku re-welcomed him as a son, and left him to inherit his estate.[1]

Above all, Genpaku’s legacy is that of a teacher and physician with the goal to better the health of Japanese citizens through the knowledge of foreign nations. The path of learning Genpaku set his students on fostered a generation of scholars that would come to introduce Western medicine to Japan.[8] In addition to his influence on Japanese medicine, Genpaku’s Japanese translations of Dutch texts were translated into Chinese. These works were among the first Western medical texts in Chinese.[9]

Although Genpaku is most well known for his translation of Ontleekundige Tafelen, he published many other works including medical, political, and historical works.[6]

• Yoka Taisei (A Handbook of Surgery)
• Rangaku Koto-hajime (A History of the Development of Rangaku)
• Teriakaho-San (Concerning Theriac)
• Kei-ei Yawa (Conversations with the Shadows of Men. A work on medical politics and ethics)
• Oranda Iti Mondo (Dialogues on Dutch Medicine), 1795

• Nochi-Migusa (Essays in Hindsight)[10]
• Yojo-Schichi-Fuka (Seven Articles About Hygiene)

• 
  Japan's first translation of a Western book on anatomy, published in 1774 (National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo)
• 
  Sugita Gempakus reminiscences Rangaku Kotohajime (The Beginnings of Dutch Studies, printed for the first time in 1869)
• 
  Sugita Genpaku's grave in the Eikan-Temple (Eikan-in, Tōkyō, Minato-ku)
• 
  Drawing of Sugita Genpaku

• Beukers, H; Luyendijk-Elshout, A. M.; van Opstall, M. E.; Vos, F. (1991). Red-Hair Medicine Dutch–Japanese medical relations. pp. 1–114. ISBN 90-6203-680-5. PMID 11622823. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
• Bowers, John (1970). Western Medical Pioneers in Feudal Japan. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press.
• Fujikawa, Y (1934). Japanese Medicine. New York: Paul B Hoeber Inc.
• Josephson, Jason Ā. (2012). The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 118–9. ISBN 9780226412351.
• Lock, Margaret M. (1980). East Asian medicine in urban Japan : varieties of medical experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03820-7. OCLC 6175233.
• Nakamura, Ellen Gardner, b. 1971 (2005). Practical pursuits : Takano Chōei, Takahashi Keisaku, and western medicine in nineteenth-century Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 0-674-01952-0. OCLC 57531412.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Sugita, Genpaku (1969). The Dawn of Western Science in Japan. Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan: Hokuseido Press.
• Whitney, Norton (1885). Notes on the History of Medical Progress in Japan. Yokahama : R. Meiklejohn & Co.

• Kaitai shinsho. Selected pages scanned from the original work. Historical Anatomies on the Web. US National Library of Medicine.