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The Magic Lantern as a Lens for Observing the Eye in Tokugawa Japan: Technology, translation, and the Rangaku movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2019

LEWIS BREMNER
LEWIS BREMNER*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the thoughts and ideas associated with magic-lantern technology in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Japan. Its primary focus is on trends in Japanese thought from the 1770s until the 1820s, with specific reference to the Rangaku (‘Dutch Studies’) movement. The article examines connections between the magic lantern and a wider discourse within Japan on epistemology, knowledge about nature, and the study of the human body, centring upon the device's vital role in the endeavour to understand the workings of the human eye. Through this lens, a fresh perspective is offered on the role of critical analysis in the translation and interpretation of European texts in Tokugawa Japan, as well as on the shifting prominence of empiricism and deductive reasoning in Japanese epistemology. In this way, the history of the magic lantern is used to look beyond the prevailing West-centred narrative of global technological and intellectual development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 691 - 729
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies for their detailed feedback on this article. Archival research was made possible by the support of the Toshiba International Foundation, Toyota-Shi Trevelyan Trust, and St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. This article benefited from suggestions made by participants at the Oxford Japanese History Workshop at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, to whom I am deeply grateful. My thanks go also to Professor Sho Konishi at the University of Oxford for his generous support and advice.

References

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66 Rather than being placed into the lenses, the glass slide is placed in between either two lenses or two sets of lenses in the magic lantern, depending on the complexity of the device. The lens or set of lenses behind the slide is known as the condenser, and acts to converge the light from the lamp to illuminate the image on the slide. The lens or set of lenses in front of the slide is typically located in the outer tube and is known as the objective. It is this convex element that inverts the image and projects it outwards into an enlarged picture on a surface such as a screen or wall.

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79 Shiba, Oranda tensetsu, p. 24.

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81 The work was released across the country in various forms. These included an expanded five-volume set released by Ōtsuki himself, with an appended sixth volume containing diagrams and illustrations copied from the 1774 version, and a nine-volume work released by the prominent Edo publishing house, Suharaya-Mohē.

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85 Ibid.

86 Ibid., p. 25.

87 Ibid., p. 24.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

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97 Ibid.

98 Ibid., pp. 11–14.

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101 Keill, Veram astronomiam, p. 2.

102 Shizuki, Rekishō shinsho, 1798, vol. 1, unpaginated; Shizuki, Rekishō shinsho, 1913, pp. 103, 105.

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109 Shizuki used the characters for the important Taoist term bianhua, or henka in Japanese, for ‘transformation’, and mentioned the founder of Taoism, Laozi, by name. Shizuki, Rekishō shinsho, 1798, vol. 1, unpaginated; Shizuki, Rekishō shinsho, 1913, pp. 148–149.

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117 Ōtsuki, Chōtei kaitai shinsho, vol. 5, p. 25.

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119 Ibid.

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