4.4.2 Hiraga Gennai

Hiraga Gennai was a clansman of the Sanuki Takamatsu han (feudal domain) in the Edo period about 200 years ago. He was a pharmacologist. Later in life, he went to Edo and Nagasaki and was exposed to books and other ideas imported from the West. He was active in various fields: he invented a hand-operated electric generator and a thermometer and also wrote plays. He was a Renaissance man of a kind rarely seen in his day.