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Hiraga Gennai [Shiroishi; Kyukei; Furai Sanjin]
(b Shido, Sanuki Prov. [now Kagawa Prefect.], 1728; d Edo [now Tokyo], 1780). Japanese writer, naturalist, scholar and painter. He was born into a low-ranking samurai family in the Takamatsu Domain (now in Kagawa Prefect.) on Shikoku. His interest in the natural sciences developed while working in the medicinal herb garden of his lord, Matsudaira Yoritaka. In 1752–4 he was sent to study in Nagasaki, where he encountered Western and Chinese scientific ideas and methods. After studying in Osaka with the herbalist Toda Kyokuzan (1696–1769), Gennai travelled c. 1757 to Edo, where he became a student of the government physician and naturalist Tamura Genyu (1718–76). Through Tamura he met the physician and scholar of Western learning Sugita Genpaku (1733–1817) and others interested in empirical science. This group conducted symposia, investigating the properties of a wide range of materials. Drawing on these studies, Gennai wrote his most important book, Butsurui hinshitsu (‘Classification of various materials’; 1763), which contained descriptions of some 360 specimens. It was illustrated mainly by the Nagasaki school painter SO SHISEKI, whose work displays the close observation of nature consistent with Gennai’s methodology (see also JAPAN, §VI, 4(vi)(c)).
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