Sugita Genpaku

At 83 years old, Sugita Genpaku physical status not available right now. We will update Sugita Genpaku's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

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. As relations evolved with the Dutch, the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (ruled 1716-45), allowed ranganku (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. 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.

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. 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. Also in possession of a Western anatomical text, Ontleekundige Tafelen, Genpaku was interested by the opportunity to witness a dissection.

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

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.

On March 4, 1771 Genpaku and colleagues Maeno Ryōtaku, Hoshū Katsuragawa, and Junan Nakagawa witnessed a dissection of a female criminal, Aocha-Baba ("Green Tea Hag"), who was executed by beheading. According to court records, the woman was executed for killing her adopted children. Genpaku and Ryōtaku watched the dissection while referencing Ontleekundige Tafelen and were struck by the anatomical accuracy of the text, which different greatly from the Chinese texts and understanding of anatomy they previously held. On their walk home from the execution grounds where they witnessed the dissection, Genpaku and Ryōtaku decided to dedicate themselves to making a Japanese translation of Ontleekundige Tafelen.

Translating Ontleekundige Tafelen took Genpaku and Ryōtaku three full years and at least eleven manuscripts before the final product, Kaitai Shinsho, was published in 1774. With only Maeno's 600 word Dutch vocabulary to complete the translation, the first edition of Kaitai Shinsho was crude and contained errors and omissions. However, the text is still regarded as a turning point in the introduction of Western medicine in Japan.

Genpaku took on many students in the emerging field of Ranganku, including Gentaku Otsuki (1757-1827). Considered one of his most fastidious students in the study of Dutch, after six years of study under Genpaku, Otsuki went on to study Dutch more closely in Nagasaki. This education enabled him to become a proficient Dutch translator. Otsuki went on to rewrite the translation of Kaitai Shinsho, published in 1788, and publish an original text Yōi Shinsho (New book on surgery) in 1790. Otsuki is most recognized for his work Rangaku Kaitai (Ladder to Dutch study) published in 1788, which was a text credited with fostered Dutch and Western learning in Japan.

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