Popularizing Knowledge
Zōho Minyō Seiu benran 増補民用晴雨便覧
Creator: Nakamura Takafusa 中村敬房, ?-?
Publisher: Ōsaka : Maekawa Buneidō 大坂 : 前川文榮堂
Publication year: 1767
This two-volume set is a practical manual for weather observation and forecasting. Its compiler, Nakamura Takafusa was a bookshop owner and mathematician in 18th-century Osaka. The book’s main text is printed in two vertical columns. The first volume starts with an introduction to basic astronomical knowledge, including a star chart, the relationships among the stars, between the sky and earth, earth and sun, etc. It then introduces some meteorological phenomena, including fog, rain, thunder, snow, clouds, etc. The latter part of the first volume uses Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (Tokyo) as examples to show how to predict the weather based on the shapes and conditions of the clouds. It also includes elaborate terrain maps of the three urban areas. The second volume includes more forecasting methods by observing the movements of the stars (sun, the Big Dipper, meteors, etc), wind, earthquakes, etc. It also contains examples of using these various methods to produce forecasts. The book is an illustrative example of East Asian natural or environmental theories in work. It incorporates astronomical, astrological, and fengshui theories with empirical observations of clouds, winds, optical phenomena in the atmosphere, and terrains.
Tango zue 單語図会
Creator: Saitō Yukinao 斎藤幸直, ?-?
Publisher: Chōhatsu gakkō 暢発学校
Publication year: 1875
Pages: 20 leaves
This short illustrated primer was published by the Chōhatsu gakkō 暢発学校, an institution established by the Kumatani Prefecture (part of today’s Saitama and Gunma Prefectures) in the early Meiji era (1868–1911) to train teachers. The book was likely printed using colored woodblock printing techniques. The vocabulary illustrated includes natural objects and phenomena, such as the sun (hi 日), dew (tsuyu 露), and rainbow (niji 虹), parts of the human body, colors, writing tools and stationary, household tools, botanical names, and animals. All the words include kanji characters and hiragana written in the cursive style. The author compiled the book to “correct the children’s old pronunciation, familiarize them with new objects and phenomena” after the Meiji government’s new education policies (gakusei 学政) in 1872. The vocabulary and illustrations also reveal what daily life was like for the Japanese people during the early years of the Meiji era. For example, we see both Western and Japanese styles of clothing being introduced, and the illustration for “books” includes both Japanese/Chinese and Western styles of binding.
Meiji jidai bunpan 明治時代文範.
Editor/Compiler: Okada Masayoshi 岡田正美, 1871-1923
Publisher: 大日本図書 Dai Nihon Tosho
Publication year: 1901
This is a textbook compiled by the Meiji-era literary scholar Okada Masayoshi 岡田正美 (1871–1923). The book was intended for use at normal schools or high school-level Japanese (kokubun 国文) classes. Part of the new Meiji education system, normal schools were established by the government to train teachers for elementary and secondary schools. The set of the essays were selected to reflect the rapidly changing social, political, technological, and economic realities in domestic and internatinoal settings since the Meiji Restoration. Essays’ topics include world geography, Meiji political system, the Meiji Constitution, the First Sino-Japanese war, the Boxer Rebellion, and traditional literary works. In addition to a normal table of content, the author offers a second one that arranges the essays by their difficulty to comprehend or appreciate.