Takano Ch?ei (擃??? ?瑁??) was born as Got? Ky?sai, the third son of Got? S?suke who was a middle-ranking samurai in Mizusawa Domain of Mutsu Province which is in present-day Iwate Prefecture. At an early age, however, he was adopted by his uncle Takano Gensai who had studied medicine under Sugita Genpaku and influenced Ch?ei to follow in the same profession.

He first studied medicine in Tokyo Edo in 1820 after winning money in a lottery so as to pay his own way. There he studied under first Sugita Hakugen, then Yoshida Ch?shuku who gave him the name Ch?ei. After the death of his teacher in 1824 he took over some of the teaching duties in the school.

A year later he left for Nagasaki to study under Philipp Franz von Siebold. There he paid for his education by writing papers about Japanese life for von Siebold, gathering plants and translating books from Dutch to Japanese. After the school was shut down and von Siebold expelled from Japan in 1828 Ch?ei was forced to flee. He finally settled in Edo in 1830 where he wrote his Fundamentals of Western Medicine.

In 1838 Ch?ei married and then published The Tale of a Dream, a book critical of the Tokugawa shogunate's handling of the Morrison Incident (1837). Since he was of samurai status he was dealt with harshly and sent to the Kodenmach? prison in Edo where he spent five years of his life sentence in the commoners section. In 1844 he arranged to have a fire started in the prison and made his escape.

He was finally caught by the police in 1850. Rather than return to prison or face execution Ch?ei resisted. He is said to have killed three police with his bare hands before he was either beaten to death or stabbed himself in the neck.