In 1886 Clara A. Sands went home on furlough, leaving seven girls in the care of Mrs. Charlotte W. Brown, the recent widow of the missionary, Dr. Nathan Brown. Mrs. Brown taught the girls in a little house which Dr. Brown had used for a printing house. A year later Amy Comes, later known as Chiyo Yamada, came as an assistant to Mrs. Brown. As the number of girls increased, Mrs. Brown asked the Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society for a teacher and money to erect buildings for a girls' school in Yokohama. A fund for the buildings was raised, and Clara A. Converse was sent as a teacher.
Clara Converse was born in Grafton, Vermont, on April 18, 1857. After graduating from the Vermont State Normal School at age 16 and working as a public school teacher, she entered the newly established Vermont Academy in 1876. Graduating with the Class of 1879, she was one of Vermont Academy's first female graduates. After receiving a degree from Smith College, she returned to Vermont Academy, where she taught Greek, German, rhetoric, and mathematics from 1884 to 1889.
Clara Converse felt compelled to serve the Lord and resigned her post in 1889 to apply for a missionary position with the Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. She began her new responsibilities in January, 1890.
Over the next thirty-five years, Clara Converse built this school which adopted the name “Soshin Jogakko, ” meaning Truth-Seeking Girls School into a respected institution of women's education in Japan. Without her efforts, prayer, and faith in God, Soshin Jogakko would not exist.

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An English and Japanese and Japanese and English Vocabulary, compiled by Walter Henry Medhurst in 1830 is considered to be most valuable in two points for the study of Japanese and that of English : first, it was written by an English native speaker; second, it was compiled using a number of Japanese native works which were mostly dictionaries and small sized encyclopedia. The writer discusses in this paper how this Vocabulary was widely and popularly used not only by Western scholars and missionaries but also by enthusiastic English learners in Japan.
All such pioneer Missionaries as S.R.Brown, G.H.F.Verbeck and J.C.Hepburn started their Japanese language study using Medhurst's Vocabulary. This Vocabulary was imported to Japan and reprinted by Murakami Eishun as a Japanese version, eigosen that contributed greatly to the promotion of English studies in Japan.

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It is said that Japanese people showed interest in things foreign, in particular things occidental, with the introduction of guns by the Portuguese in 1543 and of Christianity by St. Francis Xavier in 1549. We understand the advent of these two novelties in Japan as culture shock from the Western world, the former as material culture shock and the latter as spiritual culture shock, in terms of metaphor in my interpretation. Since that time a lot of things Western have flowed into Japan along with much knowledge of and information about Western culture and customs.
There was a time of seclusion from the rest of world during the Edo period; however, Japanese people were rather avid for Western culture and civilization as they glimpsed it through the small window of Dejima (a tiny reclaimed island) in Nagasaki, where only the Dutch were allowed to step foot and to trade with the Japanese. Through this window flowed much information and knowledge about the Western world, and Japanese scholars began to write and publish essays on Western people and culture, customs and habits, material civilization and so on, with the help of Chinese translations of books on the Western world. By the end of Edo period, a large amount of knowledge and information about the Western world had been introduced into Japan in spite of the “Sakoku-policies” of Bakukhu.
With the birth of the Great Empire in Britain during the 19th century, propelled by the Industrial Revolution, Japanese people in the Meiji era paid much attention to that country, particularly in terms of acquiring its language and culture. English language was just spreading to the the rest of the world and starting to become the lingua franca. Okakura Yoshisaburo, a scholar of English linguistics and teaching methodology, put emphasis on cultural background with regard to language acquisition. He learned this importance of cultural background in terms of language acquisition when he was studying English teaching methodology in Germany during the Meiji era, where he came across the subject called “Realien” in which English culture and customs were taught to English learners.
After returning to Japan he began to give lectures in which he emphasized the importance of teaching cultural background to the students. This importance was acknowledged by many of the English teachers and scholars so rapidly and prevailingly that, following this trend, many essays and a series of books on British culture and customs were published thereafter.
This paper deals with the genealogical study of such books with some explanation of the unique situation of English learning conditions in relation to Japanese people at that time.

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Henry Dyer (1848-1918) contributed to laying the foundations of sound engineering education in Japan as Principal, and also Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo (known locally as the Kobu-Daigakko), the forerunner of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Tokyo, during 1873-1882.
After returning to his country, Dyer continued to study Japanese affairs, resulting in the publication of works such as Dai Nippon, and Japan in World Politics. He was appointed financial and industrial correspondent to the Japanese government in 1902, and provided Japanese students in Scotland with support for their dailylife, and educational matters. He also gave guidance and encouragement to his former students, who visited him during their travels abroad.
When Dyer died on 25 September 1918, the news was sent to Japan through Reuters' in London, and many obituaries and memorial writings appeared in the major newspapers and magazines in Britain, as well as in Japan. However, strangely enough, the time and cause of his death were not mentioned in either country. My investigation of his Register of Death showed that he died of pneumonia at his home at 5 : 30 pm on 26 September after falling ill just one day before.
It merits attention that, in obituaries and memorial writings and also inscription on his tombstone in the Nekropolis Cemetery, Glasgow, Dyer was praised for his activities as a pioneer of International Interchange between Britain and Japan. On his epitaph there is specific mention of his two main careers in life : 'Formerly Principal of the Imperial college of Engineering, Tokyo, Japan, ' as well as 'Chairman of the Schoolboard of Glasgow'. Who Was Who also lays speciai stress on his career as a promoter of interchanges between the two countries.

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Makino Tomitaro (1862-1957) was a well-known scholar of botany and the creator of an original Japanese botanical system. He succeeded in this because he was able to surpass the boundaries of botany, engaging himself in the study of the humanities on the basis of not only botanical works but also of works related to English Studies.
A visit last year by Tomoo Endo and me to the Makino Library of the Prefectural Makino Botanical Garden in Kochi and an on-site research of his library and library catalogues enabled us to conclude that Makino Tomitaro was not only a botanist but also a scholar of English Studies. In this case the conventional notion of English Studies should be broadened and redefined as 'humanities', in the sense of the literae humaniores or the 'moral science' of 18th century England and Scotland. Just as the scope of Rangaku or the Study of Western sciences in Japan in the Edo period (through the Dutch language) went beyond Dutch Studies alone, English Studies were not restricted to English philology or English literature but treated by means of the English language all the Western sciences.
This shows us once again what remarkable man Makino Tomitaro actually was.

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In Makino Library (on the grounds of Kochi Prefecture's Makino Botanical Garden), the writer made a close examination of a first-edition copy of A Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese Language (sic) . The copy of that rare book is one of only seventeen still in existence, out of the two hundred copies printed in the Edo era in 1862. Dr. Tomitaro Makino, a worldfamous botanist, possessed a first edition of the Dictionary, and also had six copies of the Dictionary. Why did he have so many copies of the Dictionary and how did he use them in his study of botany?
In the preface for the second edition of theDictionary, the composer HORIKOSI KAMENOSKAY (sic) said that the first edition contained a number of errors regarding the Japanese and Chinese names of Plants, Animals and Minerals that needed to be corrected and that he had done so with the kind assistance of his learned friends YANAGAWA SUNSAM (sic), TANAKA YOSIWO (sic) & others.
When Dr. Makino was a young man, he visited Dr. Yoshio Tanaka, a noted naturalist, and Dr. Tanaka remained one of Dr. Makino's most important mentors throughout his life. No doubt Dr. Makino frequently consulted the second edition of the Dictionary to help him choose the exact equivalent in Japanese terms when he was writing An Illustrated Flora of Japan.
This report is based on the paper read by the writer at the regular monthly meeting on November 2, 2002.

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