Solutions of two Japanese ellipse problems (Q2810293)

Two challenging problems -- involving ellipses, intersecting tangents as well as four internal and external tangent circles to the ellipses and to the tangents in question -- were published in 1866 and 1827, respectively, by two nineteenth-century Japanese mathematicians, K. Iwata and N. Shiraishi. Later, in 1885 and 1895, papers giving proofs and generalizations of Iwata's problems were published by H. Terao, J. Mizuhara and T. Hayashi. Lastly, Y. Mikami also published an English proof in 1910. In the present paper, the author presents the historical background and provides a detailed proof of these problems based, inter alia, on Mikami's former work and various other elements including an original approach of his own. On this occasion, he introduces accordingly `Terao's theorem' and `Shiraishi's formula'. The whole constitutes a quite useful addition to our knowledge of late traditional Japanese mathematics.