Page:A history of Japanese mathematics (IA historyofjapanes00smitiala).pdf/13



The history of Japanese mathematics, from the most remote times to the present, may be divided into six fairly distinct periods. Of these the first extended from the earliest ages to 552, a period that was influenced only indirectly if at all by Chinese mathematics. The second period of approximately a thousand years (332-1600) was characterized by the influx of Chinese learning, first through Korea and then direct from China itself, by some resulting native development, and by a season of stagnation comparable to the Dark Ages of Europe. The third period was less than a century in duration, extending from about 1600 to the beginning of Seki’s influence (about 1675). This may be called the Renaissance period of Japanese mathematics, since it saw a new and vigorous importation of Chinese science, the revival of native interest through the efforts of the immediate predecessors of Seki, and some slight introduction of European learning through the early Dutch traders and through the Jesuits. The fourth period, also about a century in length (1675 to 1775) may be compared to the synchronous period in Europe. Just as the initiative of Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz prepared the way for the labors of the Bernoullis, Euler, Laplace, D’Alembert, and their contemporaries of the eighteenth century, so the work of the great Japanese teacher, Seki, and of his pupil Takebe, made possible a noteworthy development of the wasan of Japan during the same

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