[A bibliographical study on sixteen extant manuscripts of "Tonka Hiketsu" translated by Sadayosi Baba].

Goroji Nakagawa, a chief keeper of a trading house on Iturup Island, was brought unwillingly to Siberia by Russian vessels in 1807. In 1812, after about five years of hard life in Siberia, he was permitted to return to his homeland with two Russian books on vaccination. Sadayosi Baba, who stayed at Matsumae in 1813, happened to read one of the two books that had been published in 1803 in Peterburg and he translated it into Japanese. Within several months Baba finished his translation, however, he was clearly aware that the translation was far from perfect. Baba revised his draft in 1820 and titled it "Tonka Hiketu" or "The complete method for relieving small pox infection." But it remained unpublished until 1850, when Sen-an Tosimitsu obtained one of the manuscripts at Nagasaki and published it as "Rosia Gyuto Zensho" or "A Synopsis of Russian Vaccination." At present, sixteen manuscripts of "Tonka Hiketu" are extant in Japan and most of them are in public libraries. Bibliographical considerations of their contents, phonogramic descriptions of the original Russian title, comparisons of their illustrations with the originals and differences among Japanese translations reveal to us that the manuscript "Takeda A," among sixteen extant manuscripts, is the closest to the original manuscript of Sadayosi Baba, which remains lost.