Chapter 1 From Birth until Leaving Japan 1. Birth and Childhood On February 12th, 1843, (January 14th in the old calendar), Joe Neesima was born into the house of the Annaka Prefectural Prince, in the Kanda area of Edo(Tokyo). He was the oldest boy after his 4 sisters, so they were happy to have a son to be the successor in the family. He was originally named Shimeta, and there are two explanations for this. The first is that he was named after the Shimenawa that was displayed in his house around the New Year, when he was born. The second is that his grandfather yelled “Shimeta!” in rejoice when he was born and that became his name. Neesima liked to play outside, especially flying kites, and he sometimes enjoyed it so much that he forgot to go home in the evening. To warn him not to do that, his father Tamiji took his kites off him, but he often found parts and made himself new kites. When he was 8 years old, he fell off the fence of the garbage dump and badly injured above his eye, so he decided to stop playing outside and dedicated his time to study. Neesima’s father Tamiji was very good at writing and had a job as a registrar, so he started learning calligraphy from when he was 5 years old. He also started learning Chinese characters at 10 years old, but the head of his fief Katsuakira Itakura, who had encouraged his studies, saw his potential and made him study Dutch. After coming of age at 14, he was told to follow in his father’s footsteps and help as a registrar, but he was so absorbed by his studies of Dutch that he often neglected his work and went out to study at the Dutch school. Katsuakira’s younger brother Katsumasa, who had followed in the footsteps of Katsuakira, wasn’t interested in studies, and tried to stop Neesima from studying, but Neesima did his best to show that he wanted to continue his studies, so it was accepted that he could go to school. 2. As a Young Man In November of 1860, at 17 years old, Neesima joined the Naval Academy and met Manjiro Nakahama, who was a teacher there. Manjiro Nakahama was a fisherman from Tosa. While out fishing in 1841, he became lost, but was saved by an American whaling ship that took him to Massachusetts, where he was able to study and become a navigation officer before coming back to Japan. Neesima enthusiastically studied math, navigation, and surveying.
元のページ ../index.html#3