The development of mathematics in Japan did not really start until the late 1600s. Mathematical treatises from China were the source of inspiration that kick-started further discoveries from Japan. As noted earlier, the Introduction to Mathematical Studies by Zhu Shijie, the great early-fourteenth-century Chinese mathematician, was eventually translated into Japanese and had a great influence in Japan.

 

“... the history of mathematics in Japan ... did not really begin until the end of the 16th century ...”(1)

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• Seki Kowa

 

Footnotes:

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(1) Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 3 - Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, (Cambridge, 1959), p. 3.