Popular science and personal endeavor in early-Meiji Japan: The case of Hatsumei Kiji

Meade, Ruselle ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1428-3489 2017. Popular science and personal endeavor in early-Meiji Japan: The case of Hatsumei Kiji. Historia Scientiarum 26 (2) , pp. 77-92.

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Abstract

During the late 1860s and early 1870s, many science books were translated into vernacular Japanese from Chinese and European languages. These works rendered science accessible to non-scholarly audiences, thereby opening up scientific knowledge for appropriation in various ways. This paper focuses on one work that drew together material from such translations to promote a particular message. The book in question, Hatsumei Kiji (Accounts of Invention), was created by an Osaka-based merchant who adapted, supplemented and vernacularized scholarly translations to produce a work which aimed to persuade tradesmen that science promised a means of securing their future in the unsettled social and economic landscape of the early Meiji period. This paper examines the methods used by the book

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DS Asia Q Science > Q Science (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	science popularization, translation, early-Meiji science, artisans
ISSN:	0285-4821
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 March 2017
Date of Acceptance:	11 October 2016
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 09:12
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/98650

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