In 1822, five years after the Meiji Restoration, the Ministry of Education established the Shojaku-kan, the National Library of Japan, at Yushima in Tôkyô.
Just before that, Ichikawa Seiryû, a govemment official of the Ministry of Education, presented a memorial to the Minister that he should establish a National Library open to the public as a reference library. Also Ichikawa described in detail the administration of the British Museum Library in London which he had previously visited. The memorial was so effective that the library was established. This is a well known fact in the history of Japnese libraries. However, we did not know anything about Ichikawa Seiryû.
In 1976, I wrote an article about him and described him as Ichikawa Wataru, one of the servants of a member of the Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1862. He wrote an account of the trip. Sir Emest M. Satow, a member of the Embassy of Great Britain in Japan, translated it into English. The title was “Diary of a member of the Japanese Embassy to Europe in 1862-1863, a confused account of a trip to Europe, like a fly on a horse's tail.”
The Chinese and Japanese Repositry, which serialized the article, discontinued in December, 1869, because the firm went bankrupt, and one third of the account was not printed.
The account was not published in printed book form in Japan. It was read by means of transcribed copies. We can now find eight copies listed in the Union Catalog of Old Books in Japan. I have seen all of them and do not believe, however, that they are in his hadwriting. The British Library has a copy also which was obviously written by Ichikawa himself and sent to the Library by Sir E. M. Satow in May, 1874. At the end of this copy, Ichikawa wrote two Japanese poems beautifully in a postscript, and it shows that he belonged to the Chikage-ryû school of Katô Chikage, one of Japan's famous calligraphers.
At first, Ichikawa's forename was Akira or Wataru. After 1870 he changed his forename to Seiryû. Also he had the pseudonymous names Baizan, Baizan-ufu, and Ôha. There are a few books which use only his pseudonyms.
From 1870 on, just after the Meiji Restoration, he became a petty official of the Miinistry of Education. His job was the proofreading of textbooks. According to another authority, it also meant writing for woodcut block printing. We can find his name as a proofreader of several books published by the Ministry of Education.
There are five or six books with the preface written by Ichikawa at that time. He wrote several books for young adults to study Japanese history, edited a dictionary of personal names, and also a few dictionaries of clsssical Chinese in Japanese. Ichikawa was the publisher of twelve or more volumes of books other than his own works. At that time, the publisher had to apply to the Ministry of Education for permission to publish a book, so the publisher would ask officials of the Ministry to be publishers to get permission easily.
In 1867, Ichikawa published a word book of English for beginners. It contained 1470 words, nouns only, with Japanese translations and pronunciations with Kana-Japanese phonetic signs. He tried to add an illustration for each word, which he found difficult. In 1872, he published it again with illustrations, even for abstract nouns. It is a very interesting book. I do not know when he leaned English.
His last work was a small dictionary of classical Chinese quotations in the fall of 1878. We do
not know th date of his death.
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