Born at Shiba, Edo, died at Nakano, Tokyo at the age of 70. Among the members of Sapporo Band, he was the first convert to Christianity as he was baptized by Rev. Walter Dening at the official residence of Dr. William S. Clark on the day of his arrival, July 31, 1876. It was just two weeks before the opening ceremony was held at Sapporo Agricultural College.
After leaving school, he engaged in marine product iftdustries both gavernmental and private.
At the beginning of 1900, he was invited to the important post in chief management and removed to the oil company in Niigata Prefecture. During his term of office, he translated English word“efficiency”into Japanese word“noritsu”.
At the end of Meiji Era, his original Japanese word for“efficiency”was added to the newly compiled English-Japanese Dictionary.
As a faithful disciple of Dr. Clark, he was a wellbehaved leader in temperance movement of Japan.

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Shigeko Uriu, nee Masuda is one of the first Japanese girl students sent to the U.S. in 1871. When she arrived at Washington D.C., she was only ten years old. In 1872 she was placed in the care of Rev. Dr. John S.C. Abbott in Fair Haven, Conn., and his daughter Miss Nelly Abbott became her second mother and teacher. For seven years she was brought up by Miss Abbott till she entered the Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N. Y..
In 1881, on her graduation from the Vassar College she came back to Japan. Next year she became a music teacher at the request of the Ministry of Education, and at the end of this year she got married to Sotokichi Uriu, a naval officer who was the first Japanese graduate of Annapolis. Thereafter besides teaching music and English at many schools, such as Tokyo Higher Girls' School, Tokyo Music School, and Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School, she lived to be a good wife and wise mother.
On the 3rd of November, 1928, suffering from cancer of the rectum, she died at the age of sixty-seven.
Now her fourth son is alive and has many articles left by his parents. Among them I found two interesting pieces of writing.
One is her diary written in a notebook when she was at thirteen and fourteen years of age and the other is a document under the title of‘My recollections of the Early Meidji days’.
The former is written in fairly good English, though it was only a few years since she began to learn English. According to her diary she often made a trip around New England with Miss Abbott every summer vacation, and in July the 7th, 1875, after listening to Longfellow ricite his poems, she met him in Brunswick, Main. She also confessed the Christian faith in this diary of hers.
The latter written in 1927, the year before she died, was printed in the Japan Advertiser on the 11th of September that year. In this article the observation of her childhood and the various amusing events which happened before and after her sending to America are described vividly, and it is concluded with the following:
Our stay of three years in America was prolonged to ten years during which time we enjoyed perfect freedom as all American young girls of good families enjoy and the memory of our young lives in that dear country will nevelr fade.

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I have reported an unknown and important reproduction of an American Physics book at the end of Tokugawa Era. “First Lesson on Natural Philosophy” by Mary Swift was a book for beginners on physics, which was widely used as a textbook for beginners of English in Japan just before the Meiji Period.

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On the 11th of September, 1885, the American bark Cashmere, bound on a voyage from Philadelphia to Hiogo (Kobe), Japan encountered a violent typhoon near the coast of Tanegashima Island. The twelve survivors of the bark Cashmere, however, managed to reach the shores of Tanegashima after many difficulties. There they received indescribably kind and humane treatment from the inhabitants of the is land, and then all of the twelve people came back to the U.S. safely.
The U.S. government appreciating very much the kindness of the islanders presented $5, 000 as a gratuity by act of Congress of March 1889 to the villages, Iseki and Anjo. The villagers purchased government bonds as the common property of the villages and the yearly interest was enough to support the schools of both villages.
In order for the justice of the U.S. Government to be long remembered, the villagers erected monuments in both Iseki and Anjo Elementary Schools. At Iseki, every year, they still celebrate September 20th as their memorial day, showing their gratitude to the United States of America and as a memorial to the crew members who died.

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A·B·Mitford was an English author and 2nd secretary in the British Legation at Edo (later Tokyo) from 1866 to 1870.
His Tales of old Japan is one of the first popular books in English on Japanese customs and folktales.
This paper aims to examine how his book is appreciated among other English books on Japanese customs and folktales.
The author chose 233 books published between 1871 (the year his book was published and 1925 the end of Taisho period).

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Charles Wirgman was a special correspondent and artist of the Illustrated London News. He came to Japan in 1861 and died in Yokohama in 1891.
In June, 1861, he traveled from Nagasaki to Edo with the British Minister Rutherford Alcock and some other British and Dutch diplomats.
They took the route from Osaka to Edo by way of Nara, since they were not allowed to go through Kyoto.
It is understood that hundred of Japanese people helped the party consisting of five Europeans and about twenty Japanese officials, carrying their baggage or driving horses from station to station, just like the procession of Daimyos.
About the articles on their journey which Wirgman contributed to ILN, two points had not been clarified. One was whether the party had visited Daibutsu, the great image of Budda in Nara, and the other was where they had put up at on the next day they had left Nara. (According to Wirgman the place name of the latter is Seranyi.)
The old diary of a town official of Nara tells us that the party did not visit Daibutsu though the program to visit there had been made. I considered the reason and concluded that it was due to their experience in Osaka on the day before they left there.
As for Seranyi, several documents were discovered in May this year at the house which used to be an official inn, Honjin as it was called, at Shimagahara near Ueno in Mie Prefecture. These documents say that British minister and Dutch consul stayed there on June 20. 1861. Seranyi proved to be Shimagahara. Why did Wirgman spell Shimagahara Seranyi? This is also the point of consideration of this essay.
The second part of this essay is about the articles Wirgman contributed in 1872 in Kyoto. He visited the Kyoto Exhibition and also the Japanese ballet that was held as an entertainment of the exhibition.
This exhibition was an important event since foreigners, who had not been allowed to ramble further than 25 miles from any open port, were permitted to visit under the special passport system. And 770 foreign people are said to have visited the event.
Wirgman also commented on the attitude of Japanese people at a dinner party to which he was invited.

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English Education in Europeanism of the Meiji era was most stressed on the training for imitation and transference of English mode. How to teach English at school at that time was dependent upon how to change English into Japanese and how to force the students to follow English ways of life and thinking. So it was natural consequences that English text books were drill books for the students to be interpreters of English.
And Meiji era changed to Taisho era, when thought and movement of its own was increasing and developing among the Taisho generation; they should have the new appreciation of their own ways of life and thinking as well as they should get a taste for that of English. And they hoped it would lead to mutual understanding and exchange of each way of life and thinking, on an equal basis.
One of English text books, “CROWN READERS”published under such a current met with the demand of the Taisho generation and, at the same time, became a bestselling book.
And, even now, a lot of people know well of Crown Readers; how much it had shared the dreams and hopes with beys and girls at that time, and how much it had done for English education in Japan for a long time.
But it is uncertain by whom and how it was written.
I'd like to show the writer of Crewn Readers and its birth, according te new materials and data. So you will be able to find“CROWN”worth while being hlgher appreciated than usual.

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Egeresugo Jisho Wage, Engelsch en Japansch Woordenboek, 1851-1854, is the second English and Japanese dictionary compiled in Japan. The compilers, Kichibe Nishi and Einosuke Moriyama and eight others, were the interpreters trained in Dutch, who had the government orders to study English and Russian languages besides Dutch and to compile such a dictionary. Based on John Holtrop's English and Dutch Dictionary, 1823, seven volumes consisting of four on A and three on B (up to the word“Brewis”) were completed and submitted to the govenment in four years up to November 1854, when the compilation had to be stopped because the interpreters became so busy with their primary professional work involved in one of the biggest events in the history of this country, the opening of Japan, that they could not have time to spare for the dictionary.
The seven volumes of this unfinished dictionary in manuscript remain in the Nagasaki Prefectural Library. The results of the analysis of these volumes as well as of the personal histories of its compilers given in this paper have revealed the deep significance of this dictionary and the compilers in the history of English teaching and learning in Japan.

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