37 - Sakurai Jōji, (1858-1939): Leading Chemist and Nō Drama Specialist

Summary

INTRODUCTION

TRAINED IN Tokyo and London with two British chemists, Sakurai started his career as one of the first Japanese chemistry professors at Tokyo University in 1882. He then came to play a pivotal role in the promotion of scientific research in Japan in the twentieth century as a founder of: the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Rikagaku Kenkyūjo, or Riken, in 1917), the National Research Council of Japan (Gakujutsu KenkyūKaigi, or Gakken, in 1921) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai or Gakushin, 1931). He was also one of the authors of a pioneering study in English published in 1913 of the Japanese classical drama, Nō. Sakurai was a loyal friend of his co-author, paleobotanist turned birth control advocate, Marie C. Stopes (1880–1958).

CHILDHOOD IN KANAZAWA

Sakurai Jōji, or Jōgorō as he was called in his childhood, was born in 1858 as the sixth son of a samurai family of the Kaga domain in Kanazawa, the domain capital. Sakurai lost his father, Jintarō, in 1863 at age four, so he was raised by his mother, Yao, who played a role in determining his academic path. To put Sakurai's early education into context, it is useful to compare it with the parallel case of the ‘first generation’ of Japanese physicists in the early Meiji period. It is characterized as a group of boys born in the 1850s, all from samurai families, who were trained in the Chinese classics up to age fifteen at a domain school. They were then chosen by their domains to pursue Western learning either in Japan or abroad according to the kōshinsei system of the Nankō (the antecedent school of the Tokyo Kaisei Gakkō). The kōshinsei literally meant the students offered to Emperor Meiji (1852–1912, r. 1867–1912) by domain lords.

Though a son of samurai, Sakurai's early educational background deviated from this pattern in several important ways. First of all, he entered the Nankō in 1871 not as a kōshinsei, for which he was too young (the age range being sixteen to twenty), but under the new selection system by means of written and oral examinations in a Western language.