[Teiho Shimamura (1830-1881), his life and work]

The author reported on the career and work of Teiho Shimamura, a last Dutch scholar in Japan. He was born in Okakyama, 1830 as the second son of Koan Tsuge and was adopted into the Shimamura family at age four. When he was 23 years of age, he started to study Dutch learning at Teki-Juku. Later he went to Edo and engaged in translation of Dutch books into Japanese. In 1866, he translated D. Lubach's book of physiology and S.D. Gross's book of surgery and published them with favorable criticism. In 1868, he was appointed as a professor of Higasi-ko, the predecessor of Tokyo University and the lectures of Dr. Wilson and Dr. Bauduin were edited and published as [Japanese word] in 1869 and 1870 respectively. These owe much to Teiho's effort as a person in charge, from his preface. At the early years of Meiji, many English books were also translated into Japanese and these were mostly proof read and corrected by Teiho because of his Chinese knowledge. In his later years, he was sickly and died at the age of 52 in 1881.