Kikuchi Dairoku
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Kikuchi Dairoku (菊池大麓 Kikuchi Dairoku?); (17 March 1855 – 19 August 1917) was a mathematician, educator, and educational administrator in Meiji period Japan.
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[edit] Kikuchi's life and career
Kikuchi was born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), as the second son of Mitsukuri Shuhei. After attending the Bansho Shirabesho, the shogunal institute for western studies, he was sent to Great Britain, in 1866, at age 11, the youngest of a group of Japanese sent by the Tokugawa bakufu to the University College School, on the advice of the then British foreign minister Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby.
Kikuchi returned to England in 1870, and was the first Japanese student to graduate from Cambridge University (St. John's College) and the only one to graduate from London University in the 19th century. His specialization was in physics and mathematics.
After returning to Japan, Kikuchi later became President of Tokyo Imperial University, Minister of Education (1901-1903) and President of Kyoto Imperial University. His textbook on elementary geometry was the most widely used textbook in Japan until the end of World War II.
He was made a baron in 1902, and was the eighth president of Gakushuin and briefly the first President of the Science Research Institute of Japan (Rikagakukenkyusho or RIKEN, the equivalent of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University). He died in 1917.
[edit] Mitsukuri family
Kikuchi was a member of Japan's most distinguished and outstanding family of scholars, the Mitsukuri family, and at the centre of Japan's educational system in the Meiji Era. His grandfather had been a student of Dutch studies(rangaku). His father Mitsukuri Shuhei had taught at the Bansho-shirabesho(Institute for Investigating Barbarian books). His children were famous scientists, and his grandson Ryokichi Minobe became Governor of Tokyo.
[edit] See also
[edit] General
- Japanese students in Britain
- Tokyo Imperial University
- Cambridge University
- Anglo-Japanese relations
- Hayashi Tadasu — another member of the group who went to Britain in 1866, sent by the Bakufu
- Imperial Rescript on Education
[edit] Japanese at Cambridge
Other Japanese who studied at Cambridge University after Kikuchi:
[edit] British contemporaries at Cambridge
British contemporaries of Kikuchi at Cambridge University:
- Donald MacAlister
- Karl Pearson — a close friend and contemporary of Kikuchi at University College School and Cambridge University
- Charles Algernon Parsons
[edit] References & further reading
- Cobbing, Andrew. The Japanese Discovery of Victorian Britain. RoutledgeCurzon, London, 1998. ISBN 1-873410-81-6
- Keane, Donald. Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852-1912. Columbia University Press (2005). ISBN: 0231123418
- 'Kikuchi Dairoku, 1855–1917: Educational Administrator and Pioneer of Modern Mathematical Education in Japan,' by Noboru Koyama, Chapter 7, Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume 5, Global Oriental 2005, ISBN 1-901903-48-6
[edit] External links
- Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868–1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan, by Noboru Koyama, translated by Ian Ruxton [2], (Lulu Press, September 2004, ISBN 1-4116-1256-6). Kikuchi is the central figure in this book.
- Portrait of Kikuchi Dairoku on the National Diet Library database, Tokyo
