Abstract
There exist two monuments at Tohni-cho in Kamaishi-city (Iwate pref.) built by Kasai Masahiro in 1814, in the commemoration of the land survey carried out by Inoh Tadataka in 1801.
The decipherment and its interpretation were made out in previous paper Tamura, (2000). Kasai has described about the gradual fine motion of the earth which was the concept of European astronomy for that days. Tamura (2000) proposed the interpretation about such gradual fine motion as the nutation which was the concept inported from Europe. Kasai desired to confirm that, but it was not possible due to insufficient precesion of measurement of Latitude. He requested to the future generation about the confirmation on the gradual fine motion of the earth.
This is the third paper on these monuments. The author intends to make the profile of the erector Kasai Masahiro, as well as to investigate the background of Kasai’s learning about European Astronomy. The motive for this paper is due to the discovery of Inoh-daizu in USA and to make public in 2004 as well as the recent discovery of the map of Tohni village at Meiji era. The new information obtained from newly found maps give us to should revise previous basic facts. We obtained Kasai’s family history and suspect his personal circumstances at the time of Inoh’s land survey.
The one of subjects of this paper is to clarify Kasai’s learning on Astronomy where and when. Several key persons are investigated about their personal relationships with Kasai Masahiro.
We suspected that the place of Kasai’s learning should be Sendai based upon his exchange with his acquaintance and scholars.
