page_title: Rangaku
section_title: Magic lanterns
hierarchical_section_title: Rangaku / Types / Optical sciences / Magic lanterns
context_page_description: Rangaku is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641–1853, because of the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of national isolation.
  Through Rangaku, some people in Japan learned many aspects of the scientific and technological revolution occurring in Europe at that time, helping the country build up the beginnings of a theoretical and technological scientific base, which helps to explain Japan's success in its radical and speedy modernization following the forced American opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854.
context_section_description: Magic lanterns, first described in the West by Athanasius Kircher in 1671, became very popular attractions in multiple forms in 18th-century Japan.
  The mechanism of a magic lantern, called "shadow picture glasses" (影絵眼鏡, Kagee Gankyō) was described using technical drawings in the book titled Tengu-tsū (天狗通) in 1779.
caption: Mechanism of a magic lantern, from Tengu-tsū, 1779
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