The Genealogy of the English Language that Began in Prison: The Foreigner Ranald MacDonald and His Fourteen Disciples (Kaei Nenma)

The Genealogy of the English Language that Began in Prison: The Foreigner Ranald MacDonald and His Fourteen Disciples (Kaei Nenma)

In Japan during the Kaei era, English was not an institutionally taught subject, and there was a serious shortage of human resources in the field of diplomacy. While in prison, the foreigner Ranald MacDonald taught English to fourteen foreign correspondents over a period of about seven months. Although the lessons were informal, they focused on practical matters such as pronunciation, conversation, and comprehension of English sentences, and the students were directly introduced to real-life English. McDonald's students included Moriyama Einosuke, who later became active in late-bakumatsu diplomacy, compiling dictionaries, and serving as interpreters, laying the foundation for English studies in Japan. McDonald was neither a scholar nor a bureaucrat, but his personal actions anticipated institutional development and influenced it until the Meiji period and beyond. This event symbolizes that knowledge transfer in modern Japan began with people-to-people relationships.