Kaempfer's Album of Famous Sights of Seventeenth Century Japan

KAEMPFER'S ALBUM OF FAMOUS SIGHTS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY JAPAN YU-YING BROWN WITHIN the covers of a large and weighty album bound in western style and preserved in The (Western) Manuscript Collections of the British Library (Add. MS. 5252; bearing Sloane's old classification 'Bibliothecae Sloanianae Min. 47') are to be found three groups of curiously varied material. The first consists of a series of fifty Japanese paintings executed in brilhant colours and in gold, each on paper measuring 215 x 322 mm. (ff. 1-50). They depict famous sights of Japan enlivened by vignettes of people engaged in a variety of activities, though mostly pleasure outings or pilgrimages to shrines, temples and scenic spots. The second comprises seven Japanese figure drawings mounted on ff. 53-59, together with three padded applique pictures (ff. 68-70), now identified as oshie (pressed pictures). The third group seems to be entirely Chinese in origin. It consists of twenty-six floral and figure pictures in silk brocade or embroidery (ff. 51, 52, 60-67, i00"i5)- These otherwise unrelated groups of items have one thing in common. They were all smuggled out of Japan in 1692 by the German physician and traveller, Dr Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), and have all, until recently, lain dormant, in pristine condition, among the British Museum's foundation collections.^ This paper seeks to introduce the first and major part of the album only, namely the remarkable set of fifty miniature paintings. These are of unique importance for all historians of Japanese art and culture as well as for specialists in 'Kaempfer studies'. The other two groups, fascinating as they are, deserve separate treatment within the realm of Far Eastern folk-art. Kaempfer is best known for a copiously illustrated two volume History of Japan which was published posthumously in 1727 at London in an English translation. It first revealed to the West something of the true nature of this remote and mysterious island empire, in contrast with Marco Polo's hearsay account some five centuries earlier. The sources on which this influential work is based include some sixty Japanese printed books and maps now held in Oriental Collections.^ These, together with the paintings and objets d'art, as well as some natural curiosities, were collected by Kaempfer while he was serving as a medical officer in 1690-92 with the Dutch East India Company at Deshima (fig. i). This was an artificial fan-shaped islet built in Nagasaki Bay by the Tokugawa shogunate as a restricted trading post for the Dutch. The only other foreigners allowed in Japan during the greater part of the Edo period (1600-1868), 90 :'.•<}: -•• Fig. I. Kaempfer's drawing of himself and his Japanese attendants as part of the retinue of the Dutch Envoy on a tribute mission to the Shogun at Edo. Sloane MS. 3060, f. 501 when the country was all but closed to the outside world, were a few Chinese merchants. They were likewise confined, in another part of Nagasaki. Consequently, when Sir Hans Sloane purchased Kaempfer's collections in 1723-25 from his nephew and heir, he may well have imported into Britain the earliest Japanese library ever to reach Europe. Moreover, the value of this library was greatly enhanced by the inclusion, too, of Kaempfer's voluminous field notes and drawings, the material he later organized into his celebrated manuscript draft for the History of Japan. Like the album of paintings, both the manuscript and notes are preserved in Manuscript Collections (Sloane MSS. 3060 and 3061-3062 respectively). 91 It was in fulfilment of one of the conditions of sale that Sloane had Kaempfer's manuscript, entitled Heutiges Japan or Tresent-day Japan', translated into English at his own expense. This appeared in 1727 as The History of Japan . Together with a Description of the Kingdom of Siam under the aegis of the Royal Society, and with the imprimatur of Sloane as President.^ For years during his lifetime, Kaempfer had tried in vain to attract a publisher for this work. But the dry and involved style of his German, as well as the investment needed to touch up and engrave on copper his numerous sketches, had deterred all prospective candidates.'* Sloane entrusted the daunting task of translating and, it would seem, editing as well to his Swiss-born librarian Dr John Gasper Scheuchzer. He was a brilliant scholar who died in Sloane's house two years after the completion of the History. He was then aged twenty-seven. Alas, recent research has called into question the accuracy, not only of his translation, but also of the contents and layout of the History} As will be demonstrated later, Kaempfer's Japanese paintings were to serve as a common model for both the author and translator to copy when illustrating the manuscript and the published version respectively. As such they have a major role to play in unravelling the extent of the discrepancy between Kaempfer's original and Scheuchzer's adaptation. The paintings in question were first listed by Scheuchzer in his long introduction to the History of Japan as among Kaempfer's Japanese books and maps which had come into Sir Hans Sloane's possession, and which he had consulted for his translation. He described them as 'Views of the most celebrated Temples, Castles, and other Buildings of the Japanese, to the number of fifty, done by the Natives, in water colours, all of the same size and make with those engraved in Tab. XVII, XVIII, XXXV and XXXVI, which I have copied out of this very collection'.'^ This somewhat misplaced emphasis on their architectural interest, rather than on their artistic or sociological significance, may have contributed to their being overlooked for so long by curators and historians alike. Another cause of this neglect may simply be that they were overshadowed by the world-famous Chinese colour-prints known universally as the *Kaempfer prints', which were kept in the same album until 1906 when they were moved to what is now the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum."' Evidently, Kaempfer had acquired these woodcuts, together with the floral pictures in silk brocade and embroidery from the Chinese entrepot at Nagasaki. They are the sort of thing that one would expect to see imported into Japan, as a craze for Chinese art and culture had been encouraged by the shogunate to inculcate Confucian values.^ The fifty Japanese miniatures are, of course, much more than mere architectural drawings. They convey a vivid impression of what Japan was like and how her people lived in the early Edo period. They epitomize the burgeoning fashion for the factual recording of the developing tastes and interests of the new Japanese bourgeoisie: a class for whom a popular literature, including meisho-ki (records of famous places), was just emerging (fig. 3). Moreover, they afford a rare insight into the development of a style of painting now called ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). With peace and prosperity firmly secured by the Tokugawa military regime from 92 around the Kambun era (1660-72), Japan underwent a phase of rapid urbanization within which popular culture could flourish. When Kaempfer stepped ashore in the Genroku era (1688-1713), he was to discover a society that was urbane, pleasure-loving, highly literate, and not destitute of arts: *. they rather exceed all other nations in ingenuity and neatness of workmanship'.^ Another aspect of Japan which greatly astonished him was *the great numbers of people who daily travel on the roads'. Indeed, the main highways were always crowded Hike the streets of Europe'. In fact, the modern Japanese love of travel can be traced back to this time in the seventeenth century when, since going overseas was forbidden on pain of death, there was an immense boom in domestic tours. Wherever fine landscapes or sites famous in history, legend or literature were to be found, there the travellers gathered. In Japan, there were many such spots. Long distance travel hitherto undertaken chiefly by daimyo in their periodic attendances at the Shogun's court in Edo (modern Tokyo) became accessible to commoners as well, once the sea and land routes between eastern and western Japan had been completely opened up, shortly before Kaempfer's arrival. This is why, in these miniatures, we see depicted not only the daimyo and their retinues, but people from all walks of life: itinerant merchants, coolies, beggars, couriers, peddlers, farmers, nuns, monks, pilgrims and so on. However, these figures are less numerous than finely attired townspeople enjoying themselves in such settings as famous shrines and temples. So we have here an invaluable pictorial record of a peaceful and relaxed life style as Kaempfer himself observed it. This kind of genre painting belongs to a major mode of Japanese pictorial art known zsfuzokuga (paintings of manners and customs) which flourished from the third quarter of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth. It grew out of native Japanese traditions: Yamato-e (literally 'Japanese pictures') of famous places (meisho-e), of seasonal attractions (shiki-e) such as cherry blossom viewing, of such monthly events as festivals and religious ceremonies (tsukinami-e), and of indoor and outdoor pastimes {yuraku- zu). All these thematic characteristics can be seen in Kaempfer's fifty paintings. Stylistically, they are depicted in aerial projection, with abbreviated facial features and schematized cloud bands in gold or silver, the later device being employed for decorative effect as well as to overcome problems of perspective. This distinctive native style of painting was to be inherited, to a greater or lesser degree, by the academic Tosa and Kano schools of painters from the sixteenth century onwards.

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