Shizuki Tadao
- Other Names: Nakano Ryûho
- Japanese: 志筑忠雄 (Shizuki Tadao)
Shizuki Tadao was a Rangaku scholar, best known for his 1801 text Sakokuron, the first work in Japanese to use the word "sakoku."
Shizuki worked for a time as a Dutch language interpreter in Nagasaki, and is known for his translations of a number of significant Western works, including selected writings of Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler, translated in Shizuki's Rekishô shinsho.
Sakokuron was a translation of an essay written by Engelbert Kaempfer as an appendix to Kaempfer's History of Japan. Kaempfer characterized Japan's foreign policy as exclusionistic and isolationist, and discussed this favorably. Shizuki's own translator's notes indicate an attitude that isolationist policies were reasonable, logical steps to take to protect Japan from "having our customs disturbed and our fortunes plundered by foreigners."[1] He describes the threat of Russian incursions in the north as a healthy pressure, not only against complacency, but also as a stimulus for national feeling. Shizuki writes that he prepared a translation of Kaempfer's work in order to help inspire in readers a sense of their good fortune to have been born Japanese, and of gratitude to the nation for being the great nation it is, both in terms of its natural beauty and natural bounties, and its sage teachings and customs; by contrast, he informs his readers of the barbaric customs and violent nature of Westerners.
Though originally written in 1801, Sakokuron was not published until the late 1840s or early 1850s. However, it circulated in manuscript copies, and is known to have been read by, among other prominent figures, Ôta Nanpo, who wrote his own preface to the text. In it, he critiqued approaches to foreign relations which threatened to allow undesirable foreign customs to infiltrate the land, corrupting, destroying, or replacing native (Japanese) customs, which he saw as being more practical.
References
- Mitani Hiroshi, David Noble (trans.), Escape from Impasse, International House of Japan (2006), 20-22.
- ↑ Mitani, 20.
