Page:A history of Japanese mathematics (IA historyofjapanes00smitiala).pdf/7



Although for nearly a century the greatest mathematical classics of India have been known to western scholars, and several of the more important works of the Arabs for even longer, the mathematics of China and Japan has been closed to all European and American students until very recently. Even now we have not a single translation of a Chinese treatise upon the subject, and it is only within the last dozen years that the contributions of the native Japanese school have become known in the West even by name. At the second International Congress of Mathematicians, held at Paris in 1900, Professor Fujisawa of the Imperial University of Tokio gave a brief address upon Mathematics of the old Japanese School, and this may be taken as the first contribution to the history of mathematics made by a native of that country in a European language, The next effort of this kind showed itself in occasional articles by Baron Kikuchi, as in the Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde, some of which were based upon his contributions in Japanese to one of the scientific journals of Tokio, But the only serious attempt made up to the present time to present a well-ordered history of the subject in a European language is to be found in the very commendable papers by T. Hayashi, of the Imperial University at Sendai. The most important of these have appeared in the Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde, and to them the authors are much indebted.

Having made an extensive collection of mathematical manuscripts, early printed works, and early instruments, and having