Meirinkan

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  • Established: 1719/1/12
  • Japanese: 明倫館 (Meirinkan)

The Meirinkan was the chief domain school in Chôshû han. Established as a rangaku school in 1719, in the Bakumatsu period it became a center of Western studies more broadly.

Korean embassies to Edo are known to have engaged in scholarly and artistic exchanges with figures based at the Meirinkan, when the Koreans passed through Chôshû on their way to or from Edo.[1]

Yoshida Shôin led efforts to revive the school in 1848; over the next several years, it was expanded, and a section for military science (heigaku) established.[2]

In 1856/11, the domain combined several other academies - the Kôseikan 好生館 and the Seiyô gakusho (Western Studies Institute) - into the Meirinkan.[3]

References

  1. Chôsen tsûshinshi to Okayama, Okayama Prefectural Museum, 2007, 55.
  2. Ishin Shiryô Kôyô 維新史料綱要, vol 1 (1937), 51, 164, 184, 186.
  3. Ishin Shiryô Kôyô 維新史料綱要, vol 2 (1937), 273.