Dutch and German

Abstract

European scientific knowledge entered Japan through Dutch translations of Latin, French, and German texts subsequently translated into Japanese. Dutch rapidly became a transfer or ‘mediator’ language, the most important foreign language aside from Chinese, stimulating wider interest in European scholarship as rangaku (‘Dutch learning’ or ‘Western learning’) schools opened in Nagasaki, Osaka, and Edo. As Japan embarked on modernization, it granted German a prominent position adopting from German linguistic culture the notion of a ‘national language’ (kokugo), which favoured monolingualism. In Japanese medicine, German was a prominent language of instruction and publication. The German impact on Japanese law remains strong and German is still an important language for Japanese legal scholars. German as a foreign language is studied at numerous universities.