Rangaku, literally "Dutch Learning", and by extension "Western learning") 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 (sakoku).
Japanese artists learned Western techniques independently, mainly from illustrations or prints in Dutch books. 

Shiba Kokan (1747-1818), a Western-style painter representing the Edo period, created the first Japanese etchings based on illustrations in a Dutch everyday encyclopedia, the Dictiotiare Oncyclopedia, edited by Noel Chomel (1633-1712). 

Kokan obtained from the Amsterdam copper printer Jan Luiken prints from his popular work "Spiegel van Het Menselyk Bedryf," and he produced the first real oil paintings in Japan based on this work. He named these oil paintings "Ranga" (Dutch paintings).

Through Rangaku, 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 opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854. 

Due to Dutch presence; 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 opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854.

Rangaku, literally "Dutch Learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima.

Optical prints
The optical mirror or Zograscope and the optical prints imported from the Netherlands stimulated Japanese painters who applied Western vision to express landscapes. This Western vision also inspired the woodblock prints of landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige. Dutch art played a significant role in cultivating an understanding of Western rationality, while Dutch maps gave the Japanese a new perspective on the world at the end of the 19th century, when modern civilization began to be absorbed in earnest.

It is a matter of fact that the Rangakusha (Japanese practisers of Dutch studies) had great interest in the optical prints and the application, as appears a.o. from a manuscript dated 1784 by Shiba Kokan in which he explains the operation.
See our section on "From Optical Prints to Ukie to Ukiyoe" [+].

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