Nishi Amane and Mori Ogai are two of the most famous sons of Tsuwano, the small castle town in the mountains of Shimane.
Though located a little outside the main tourist area of the town, their childhood homes are still standing and in close proximity to each other, and offer visitors the opportunity to see some traditional architecture.
Nishi Amane (1829-1897), was born to a family of physicians and spent the first twenty years of his life in this house. Actually the main house burned down, and this in the ancillary building where he had his study. He is known as the father of Western Philosophy in Japan and spent time as a bureaucrat in the Meiji Government.
Said to be a child prodigy, he studied in the local domain school before heading to Edo in 1853 to study "Dutch Learning". Along with Fukuzawa Yukichi and others, he was a champion of Western Learning and in 1863 went to the Netherlands to study and, incidentally, was inducted into Freemasonry.
He came back to Japan in 1865 and was a tireless advocate of Western philosophy as the basis for Japan's future. He was a staunch anti-Confucianist.
Mori Ogai (1862-1922) was an Army Surgeon and writer, and credited with introducing Western poetry into Japan. His former home and an attached museum to him is across the river from the Nishi Amane House.
The Mori were also a family of physicians, in fact, head physicians to the daimyo. Mori Ogai also studied at the local domain school, but in 1872, the family moved to Tokyo. He stayed with Nishi Amane for a while to study German before attending medical school. He graduated with a medical license at the age of 19 and became an Army doctor.
The army sent him to Germany to study for 4 years, and he eventually became Surgeon General. he is perhaps most well known as a writer. The only work of his I am familiar with is Sansho Dayu, and Edo Period story which he rewrote. His version was made into a movie by Kenji Mizoguchi and was the movie that introduced me to Mizoguchi's awesome movies.
Both houses are along the river, south of the main tourist area. When I last visited they were both free to view but could not be entered. Another of Mori Ogai's homes can be seen in Kokura.
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