Takano Chōei (高野 長英, June 12, 1804 – December 3, 1850) was a prominent scholar of Rangaku (western science) during the Bakumatsu period in Japan.
At an early age, however, he was adopted by his uncle Takano Gensai who had studied medicine under Sugita Genpaku and influenced Chōei to follow in the same profession.
In 1838 Chōei married and then published Yumemonogatari (The Tale of a Dream), a book critical of the Tokugawa shogunate's handling of the 1837 Morrison Incident.
While in prison he wrote a treatise on Western learning in Japan called Bansha Sōyaku Shōki ("A Short Record of a Meeting with Misfortune").
However, on the last day of October in the same year, an informant told police official where he was hiding, and the Edo Machi-bugyō sent a number of men to arrest him.
A stone monument, inscribed with "The hiding place of Doctor Chōei Takano", commemorates the location, and his grave at the temple of Zenko-ji in Kita-Aoyama has an inscription by Katsu Kaishū.