#rangaku

In all taiga-drama, movies or books I could read about Edo period or Bakumatsu...the japanese scientists who studied rangaku spoke Dutch. 

Recently, I thought that Yukimura Kodo must certainly speak Dutch. Mostly he is the specialist uses by the Bakufu for the ochimizu’s experciences. It makes sense. 

When I talked about that with @kazama-hime​ , she also added that maybe Kodo wrote some of his notes in Dutch. Convenient if you don’t want people read what you do. 

I also guess this is why Niimi or Sannan have some problem after Kodo’s disparition they find it difficult to resume the experiments of the ochimizu without him...and without explanations about his notes.

The game explains also that Chizuru helped Kodo during his consultations. She is the ones in many routes who creates the panacea for the rasetsu’s blood thirst. 

Sooo what if Chizuru can read and speak a little Dutch ?

Maybe this headcanon is all wrong but to me it makes a lot of sense and I like this idea so much because Chizuru shows some curiosity about West. This curiosity is not totally a headcanon...because her father studies rangaku so they must have in their home books, illustrations, maps or objects about Westerners. Aaaand in Shinpachi’s route (Stories of the Shinsengumi and Shinkai) she says she like watch animals from the west at the foot Ryokoku bridge.

As the daughter of a rangaku doctor it would not surprise me if she could speak a little Dutch. 

For more informations about Rangaku : 

- Hakuouki-History : Rangaku (the Dutch Learning) - Medicine.

Some books or movies where you can find Rangaku : 

Princess Celestia by Rangaku

Princess Luna by Rangaku

Princess Cadance by Rangaku

from Kulmus, Johann Adam. Kaitai shinsho. (Tōbu [Edo]: Suharaya Ichibē shi, An'ei 3 [1774]). Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

In Hakuouki, the late-and-largely-unlamented Yukimura Koudou was a Rangaku Doctor. So was the Shinsengumi's real-life consulting doctor Matsumoto Ryojun. So what exactly was Rangaku?

Rangaku 蘭学literally means "Dutch learning," but all Western studies fell under the name Rangaku. The origin of the name goes back to the years when the small Dutch trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki was the only Western presence in Japan. (Holland as pronounced in Japanese is 'Oranda.' So the kanji 蘭 (orchid) with the reading of 'ran', was assigned to write Dutch.)

Rangaku Medicine has a fascinating story. The skeletons above are from a Japanese translation of Dutch translation of a German anatomical text. The book entered Japan via Dejima, and then was translated by a very motivated group of Japanese doctors. These doctors had to learn Dutch with very limited resources just to translate the book. 

How the ‘modern’ code was cracked is a really good short retelling of the story published in the Japan Times. It begins with the 1771 autopsy of an obscure murderer known to history as The Green Tea Hag. 

The headless body of a woman in her 50s was laid on a straw mat inside a hut at Kotsukahara in Edo’s Senju area. Born in Kyoto and nicknamed “Aochababa,” sketchy court records indicate the woman had been convicted of killing her adopted children. She had been executed by beheading that very morning, March 4, 1771.

Forty-seven year-old Maeno Ryotaku, Sugita Genpaku, 37, Nakagawa Jun’an, 31, and several other doctors in the hut were eagerly waiting for dissection to begin on this rare occasion when permission for the procedure had been granted.

Read More of the article here.

On a more scholarly note, you could read this six-page article by John E. Van Sant: Rangaku Medicine and “Foreign” Knowledge in Late Tokugawa Japan (pdf). This article covers some of the same ground as the Japan Times article, then outlines Rangaku medicine up to the last years of the shogunate. 

Dr. med. von Siebold (Philipp Franz von Siebold) / Kawahara Keiga

施福多先生文献聚影 シーボルト先生畫像　川原慶賀　1828年

Shokubutsu Zusetsu Zassan / Ito Keisuke

植物図説雑纂. [9]　伊藤圭介 編著　江戸末期-明治時代

"最上大粒撰 西洋いちご"

"英國中大半ノ地方ニ在リテハ和蘭苺ヲ他物ニ雜ヘス生食シ或只砂糖を抹スルノミ斯ノ如クシテ尾食等ノ用ニ供スルニハ其枝莖ヲ去ラズシテ食卓上ニ登ボセ以テ把持ニ便ナラシム然レドモ蘇葛蘭土ニ於テハ之ヲ食フノ法健康ヲ保スルノ則ニ愜ヒテ遥ニ英國ノ風習ニ勝レリ其法ハ先果実ヲ枝莖ヨリ摘取シテ後之ヲ食卓ニ上ボセ乳漿ト砂糖ト調和シテ多量ノ冲水中ニ投シ食匙ニテ之ヲ勾出シ此水液ヲモ合セ啜ルヲ常トス"

※蘇葛蘭土＝スコットランド

rokumotsu shinshi

六物新志. 巻之上,下　大槻玄沢 訳考　杉田伯元 校訂　司馬江漢 画　1795年（1786年 序）

"是所載干勇斯東私禽獣蟲魚譜" ※ヨンストンス Jan Jonston

"是所載干安蒲兒止私巴亞列之書" ※アンブルシスパアレ Ambroise Paré

"是所載干花連的印東海諸島産物志" ※ハレンテイン François Valentijn