In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Tokugawa Shogunate promoted the introduction of Western science and technology in order to keep up with the changing world outside Japan. Alarmed by the Phaeton incident in 1808, the Shogun Tokugawa Ienari ordered the translation of the Dutch encyclopedia Huishoudelijk Woordenboek. The project started in 1811 involving the eminent scholars of Dutch studies. Decades of efforts resulted in 91 volumes of Kosei Shinpen in the second half of the 19th century. While this very first translation of a Western encyclopedia may have had a fundamental impact on the development of Japanese dairy technology, little has been reported about the texts related to cheese in it. This introductory article provides a general account on this subject. The article describes the historical background and the actual undertaking of the project followed by the articles about cheese from Kosei Shinpen. Subsequently the corresponding Dutch articles in the Huishoudelijk Woordenboek (1770)* are presented with tentative Japanese translations. The article is concluded with an evaluation of the influence of Kosei Shinpen on the development of Japanese dairy technology. This article demonstrates that relatively detailed knowledge about Western cheese and cheese making was made available in Japan by Kosei Shinpen. A number of translations and handbooks about the subject followed this work in rapid succession. Kosei Shinpen unleashed the spread of knowledge which finally heralded the dawn of modern dairy farming in Japan.

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I published articles concerning Maeda Tomekichi’s dairy at Yokohama in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate in the first and fourth issues of the Journal of Dairy History, and in those articles doubted the existence of the dairy. But I did not forget to state that I would reconsider that conclusion, if a new document about Maeda Tomekichi’s dairy was found. In the late issue of the Journal of Dairy History, a new article entitled Great Dairy Merchant Maeda Tomekichi was published, therefore I needed to revisit my study of Maeda Tomekichi’s dairy. Subsequently I formed my opinion as summarised below. 1. The new document provided information that was not of a different kind to that already known, for example the information found in ‘Biography of Maeda Tomekichi’ written by Kaneda Kohei in The Series of Biographies on Stock Farmers of Pasturing Cattle in Japan. 2. The westerners in the foreign settlement at Yokohama by whom Maeda had been employed on a dairy as a dairyman, for example Beroh the Dutch, Bohro the English and Suneru the Dutch were not found at that time in Yokohama. 3. The existence of the dairy founded by Maeda at Otamachi 8 chome was not supported by the documents written at that time. Consequently, I must say again that the existence of Maeda Tomekichi’s dairy in Yokohama during the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate is doubtful.

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