幕府の洋学の役所は九段坂下でオランダ語から始まり、のちに英語を正式の科目に加えた

In the first month of 1855, the second year of Ansei, preparations began for a shogunate office of Western learning, under the name "Yogakusho."

The history of the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages writes that the translation office for barbarian books, made independent of the observatory, was moved to the foot of Kudan Slope and renamed Yogakusho.

In the second month of the following year, 1856, the office was named the Bansho Shirabesho, the Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books.

The students studied Dutch from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, using two introductory Dutch grammar books.

In the tenth month of 1857, Consul General Harris came to Edo, stayed at the Bansho Shirabesho, and pressed on with the treaty negotiations with the shogunate.

Because the institute was chosen as Harris's lodging, the scholar Mozumi Jitsuo writes, it was forced to move soon after it opened.

The treaty wording quoted in a shogunate document said that official letters from British diplomatic and consular agents to Japanese officials would henceforth be written in English.

For five years from the signing, a translation into Japanese or Dutch was to be attached.

At the request of the British minister, students of the institute were to be sent to the minister's lodging to study.

But the students sent earlier were returned, their age and other things not matching what the British side had in mind.

In the eighth month of 1860, the first year of Man'en, Chimura Goro and Takehara Yushiro were appointed teachers of English, and English became a formal subject.

That same year, the institute moved from the foot of Kudan to Ogawamachi.

In 1861 it added French to the languages it taught, and German and Russian the following year.

And in 1862, it built a new school outside the Hitotsubashi Gate and changed its name to the Yosho Shirabesho, the Institute for Western Books.