Background
Ogata Koan was born in 1810 in a family of low-ranking samurai of Ashimori Domain in Bitchū Province in what is now part of the city of Okayama.
Ogata Koan was born in 1810 in a family of low-ranking samurai of Ashimori Domain in Bitchū Province in what is now part of the city of Okayama.
Ogata Koan moved to Osaka in 1825 with his father, and began studies in rangaku and medicine at a private academy run by Naka Tenyu from 1826. In 1831, he relocated to Edo to continue his studies in western medicine, returning to Nagasaki in 1836 to study under the Dutch doctor Erdewin Johannes Niemann, despite the Tokugawa shogunate's strict national isolation policy.
Returned to Osaka (1838) and practiced medicine and opened a school of Dutch learning. Later named Tekitekisai-juku, his school trained many prominent men in the Meiji Era, including Yukichi Fukuzawa, founder of Keio University.
He went to Edo (1862) at the request of the Shogunate and became physician in ordinary to the Shogun and concurrently head of the Shogunate medical school.
