Hiraga Gennai
Hiraga Gennai (Japanese平 贺 源 内, also:风 来 山人, Furai Sanjin; * 1728 in Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku, † January 24, 1780 ) was a Japanese scholar, inventor and writer.
Life
Hiraga, who showed great talent even as a schoolboy, was built in 1744 set as the herbalist by Prince Matsudaira Yoritaka of Takamatsu and in 1752 sent to Nagasaki, where he studied the pharmaceutical use of animals, plants and minerals. 1754 he went to Edo and studied herbal medicine at the botanist Tamura Ransui. In 1763 he published his six-volume work pharmacological Butsurui hinshitsu (物 类 品 隲).
About Sugita Genpaku he came up with the so-called Dutch studies ( Rangaku ), the development of contemporary Western science, in contact. Versatile interested he dealt with the medical use of electricity and the classification of plants according to the teachers of materia medica and invented, among other things a thermometer, a technique for the production of ceramics, refractory ceiling of asbestos and other. In it was possible to make an above -ground by the Dutch in Nagasaki defective instrument for electrostatic voltage generator 1777 provides a workable device.
Hiraga, are handed down from the painting in the Western style, taught the daimyo of Akita, Satake Shozan (佐 竹 曙 山), the times when he was called from this to drain the mines there. Together with a subordinate, Odano Naotake (小 田野 直 武), Shozan thus became the founder of the school Akita ( Akita ha ) of Ranga (兰 画, painting in Western- style orientiereten ).
Hiraga published the satirical novels Nenashigusa (根 南志 具 佐) and Fūryū Shidōken - the (风流 志 道 轩 伝, 1763) and the self-deprecating humorous essays Hō -hi ron, Hō -hi ron Kohen (放屁 论,放屁 论 后 编, two " discourses on the fart "). Since the recognition of his achievements, he remained largely denied in Japan, Hiraga had increasingly psychological problems. He killed in 1779 in a fit of madness and a student died in prison in 1780.
In his hometown of Kagawa Prefecture Shido yet be house with herb garden there, next is his monument. Next there is a Hiraga Gennai - Museum in the town.