Sugita Genpaku

• Born: 1733
• Died: 1817
• Japanese: 杉田玄白 (Sugita Genpaku)

Sugita Genpaku was a prominent Rangaku (Dutch Studies) scholar and physician of the Edo Period. He is known for his engagement with Dutch medicine, and his criticism of Chinese medicine and other aspects of Chinese science & philosophy which he believed had been proved invalid and incorrect by Dutch science.

Active in cultural and scholarly circles, Genpaku collaborated or associated with many prominent figures of his time, including Sô Shiseki and Hiraga Gennai, and studied under Yoshio Kôsaku. Alongside shogunal physician Katsuragawa Hoshû, Nakagawa Jun'an, and a number of others, he was a member of the team which translated the Ontleedkundige Tafelen, producing in 1774 the Kaitai shinsho, the first major translation & publication in Japan of a European anatomy book.

Selected Works

• Kaitai shinsho (1774) - translator, along with a group of other scholars; Genpaku also wrote the Preface
• Kyôi no gen ("Words of a Mad Doctor," 1775)
• Nochimigusa (1787)
• Keiei yawa (1802)
• Yasô dokugo (1807)

References

• Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan, Harvard University Press (1992), 40-46.