Tekijuku

Tucked away between towering glass-and-steel office buildings in Osaka’s Yodoyabashi–Kitahama area is an eye-catching structure built in the late 18th century. At the tail end of Japan’s period of samurai rule, which ended with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the building hosted the Tekijuku – a school founded by the Dutch studies scholar and physician Ogata Koan. Counting among its alumni the educator Fukuzawa Yukichi and the military theorist Omura Masujiro, the Tekijuku is open for visits. The most famous room in the building used to hold the school’s only Dutch–Japanese dictionary and is said to have been lit around the clock to accommodate even the most committed of students.