Kichibe Nishi and His Son Kichijuro, Official Interpreters of the Dutch Language at Nagasaki during the Period of the Opening of Japan (2)
Chiefly on Kichijuro and the Nishi Family
2006 Volume 2007 Issue 39 Pages 19-44
Details
2006 Volume 2007 Issue 39 Pages 19-44
Kichijuro Narinori Nishi (1835-1891) was a 12th generation Nishi. In 1839 he was employed as pupil interpreter at the age of 4, the youngest of all the interpreters in Japanese history. Kichijuro was one of the compilers of Egeresugo Jisho Wage, the second English-Japanese dictionary compiled in Japan (1850-1854). He was one of the interpreters to Admiral E.V. Putyatin's Russian squadron that visited Nagasaki in 1853. In 1858 he was assigned, together with Eizaemon Narabayashi, as head of Nagasaki Eigo Denshujo, an institution for the study of English. Shortly after this assignment, he was summoned to Edo to serve as an interpreter for the visits of English and Russian representatives to Edo. Subsequently, he was taken into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Tokugawa government. He acted as interpreter at the most important conferences between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and foreign representatives in the days when Japan was opened to foreign commerce for the first time. In close cooperation with Takichiro Moriyama, he was involved in translating the related correspondences and other documents including treaties. He went to Europe as the principal interpreter of the Japanese embassy in 1864.
With the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868, when the Tokugawa family surrendered Edo Castle and was forced to return to Suruga (Shizuoka), their homeland, Kichijuro decided to accept the appointment to accompany the family to be in chage of the teachers of foreign languages at a school to be established there. But, in fact, it turned out that he served not as a teacher but as an administrative official.
In 1871, he was taken into the Ministry of Justice of the Meiji government, where he spent the rest of his career, being promoted to President of the Supreme Court.
This paper reports with special emphasis on Kichijuro's earlier half of his career, of which, to-date, little has been known. A family tree of the Nishi, from Kichibe Nishi at the beginning of the first generation in 1616 to Shigendo Nishi, the 16th contemporary generation, is presented.
