Ogata Kōan

Born on July 14, 1810 (Bunka 7) at Ashimori in Bitchū Province (the modern Ashimori in Kita Ward, Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture) as the third son of the lower-ranking warrior Saeki Sezaemon.

His real name was Saeki Akira; he later took the Ogata surname and the medical name Kōan. In 1825, he went to Ōsaka and studied rangaku under Naka Ten'yū, and in 1831 moved to Edo to become a student of Tsuboi Shindō.

Further, in 1836, he traveled to Nagasaki for study, receiving direct instruction from the Dutch factory physicians. In 1838 (Tenpō 9), he opened the rangaku school 'Tekijuku' (officially Tekitekisai-juku) in Ōsaka.

For the next twenty-five years, Kōan bore rangaku and Western medical education there. The disciples of Tekijuku exceeded three thousand across his life, and produced the core figures of Japan's modernization from the Bakumatsu through early Meiji — Fukuzawa Yukichi (founder of Keiō Gijuku), Ōmura Masujirō (founder of the modern army), Hashimoto Sanai, Sano Tsunetami (founder of the Japanese Red Cross), Nagayo Sensai (founder of modern medical administration), and others.

In 1849, Kōan began seed-pox (smallpox vaccination) in earnest in Ōsaka, realizing a watershed enterprise in the history of Japanese public health.

In 1862 (Bunkyū 2), he was called to Edo as bakufu Okuishi and head of the Institute of Western Medicine. The following year, on June 10, 1863, he died suddenly in Edo.

He was fifty-three. Tekijuku became the origin of the Faculty of Medicine of Ōsaka University, and the lineage of Kōan's descendants and disciples is the foundation of contemporary Japanese medicine and education.

“Medicine is the art of benevolence; benevolence is the way of humanity. Learning is a tool to save people.”

Kōan holds an extremely important position as one of the ideological and educational sources of modernization in Bakumatsu Japan.

As one who was not a warrior, he does not appear in a general 'samurai archive,' but in the transmission of the thought and technology that moved the Bakumatsu, he had influence equal to or greater than Sakamoto Ryōma or Saigō Takamori.

Keiō Gijuku, founded by his Tekijuku disciple Fukuzawa Yukichi, connects to today's Keiō University; the modern army founded by Ōmura Masujirō became the basis for the army that fought the Russo-Japanese War; the modern medical administration founded by Nagayo Sensai became the origin of Japan's public health system today.

Tekijuku itself connects directly to the present as the origin of the Faculty of Medicine of Ōsaka University. The seed-pox enterprise from 1849 was the starting point of the history of Japanese public health, and the foundation of the leap-forward extension of Japanese average life expectancy thereafter.

'Tekijuku' in Chūō Ward, Ōsaka City, is preserved as an Important Cultural Property, and has become a pilgrimage site for contemporary medical students and researchers.