Abstract
This paper concerns with the role behaviors of the Dutch Scholars (Rangakusha) during the final years of Tokugawa period. We already have many studies made in this fields by the historians of science, education and western science. Our focus is, in contrast with these historical works, certain category of Dutch Scholars whose scientific and technological activities command our special attention. Such activities are analyzed by us in terms of role behaviors of various kinds.
Our sample are from Ogata Koan's students at his famous “Tekijuku”. Their activities are analyzed by such sociological concepts as status, role and social structure which are in turn further subcategorized into the concepts of traditional status, modern status, private status, public status and so on. Using these concepts, basic and derivative, two hypotheses were presented and examined. The first was, “Did the Dutch Scholars develop new statuses in pursuit of their activities?” The second, “Did they form a new independent institution for their own activities ?”
In examining the first hypothesis, tried to discern various kinds of role behavior in their trials to adapt themselves into the then existing and newly developing social structures. As the results, we obtained such subcategories as “medical role behavior”, “educational role behavior” and “military role behavior”, and so on. After pursuing their activities in terms of these derivative concepts, we could show that these Dutch Scholars did parform “medical role behavior” and “military role behavior” and that they did get “modern-public status” in the military field.
For the second hypothesis, we found that those new statuses were established on the already existing traditional social structure, such as han and Shogunate goverments, but new structures independent from these traditional entities, having their own system of norms and evaluations, i.e., a new institution, were never formed.
