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Redalyc.Collecting Japanese Books in Europe from the Seventeenth to The Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies ISSN: 0874-8438 [email protected] Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal Kornicki, P. F. Collecting japanese books in Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies, núm. 8, june, 2004, pp. 21-38 Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36100802 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative BPJS , 2004, 8, 21-38 Collecting Japanese Books in Europe 21 COLLECTING JAPANESE BOOKS IN EUROPE FROM THE SEVENTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES P. F. Kornicki University of Cambridge Most of the great collections of Japanese books in European libraries had their origins in the private collections of nineteenth-century scholars, diplomats, missionaries and travellers. Their collecting activities are of more than antiquarian interest, for they reveal the process by which Japan began to impress itself on the intellectual awareness of Europeans. This process undoubtedly reached its peak during the high tide of European imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this is no coincidence, for the expansion of book-collecting activities to embrace the whole world is but a reflection of the expansion of European trading and diplomatic interests to cover most of the world. So at the same time as the opportunities to collect books in Asia increased so too did engagement with Asian countries, stimu- lated by geopolitical as well as by intellectual interests. This process undoubtedly had its beginnings in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when missionaries and traders from Portugal, Spain, England and the Netherlands first visited Japan. We know very little of their book-collecting activities, but some at least of the books they acquired reached Europe early in the seventeenth century. John Saris (ca.1579-1643), the first manager of the English ‘Factory’ in Hirado, returned to England in 1614 with some erotic Japanese books, presumably illustrated manu- scripts. His successor, Richard Cocks (1566-1624), recorded in his diary that he had bought a set of 54 volumes on the history of Japan, and some time later he sent back to London a printed Japanese almanac which was in 1619 shown to King James I.1 In 1629 three Nô texts printed ca.1615 reached the Bodleian Library in Oxford, presumably brought back to England by employees of the English Factory in Hirado, and at around the same time several volumes of an early printed edition of Azuma kagami, an extensive history of the Kamakura shogunate, reached other collectors in England and 1 Igirisu shôkanchô nikki (Tokyo Daigaku Shiryô Hensanjo, 1978), vol. 1, p. 343; Anthony Farrington, The English Factory in Japan, 1613-1623 (London, The British Library, 1991), pp. 239, 265, 753. 22 P. F. Kornicki Ireland; these may well have been the surviving volumes of the history of Japan referred to by Cocks in his diary.2 Needless to say, there was no one in England or Ireland who could read any of these books, so they were little more than a curiosity. Since the English traders were able to purchase books in Japan without difficulty, it would be surprising if the more numerous Portuguese and Spanish traders, to say nothing of the well-educated mission- aries, had not also bought some books, at least as souvenirs, but as yet no records or surviving volumes have come to light to give us any glimpses of such purchases. By the second half of the seventeenth century the Portuguese, Spanish and English operations in Japan were no more than a memory and it was, of course, only employees of the Dutch East India Company who had access to Japan. Several of them appear to have taken an informed interest in Japan before the end of the seventeenth century and to have used Japanese books as a means of acquiring knowledge. Amongst them was Willem ten Rhyne (1647-1700), who from 1674 spent two years at Deshima, the Dutch East India Company’s post in Japan. He is known to have made some investiga- tions into the Japanese writing system and to have possessed at least a book of Japanese coats-of-arms (possibly a reference to the samurai directories known as bukan) and a map of the route from Edo to Nagasaki.3 Another interested Dutchman was Herbert de Jager (1636-1694), who never visited Japan but from Batavia sought Japanese books from colleagues in Deshima. Although his collection does not survive, the list of desiderata he sent to Deshima does survive and affords us a glimpse of the intellectual agenda relating to Japan at the end of the seventeenth century.4 The fate of these books remains unknown, but some books were definitely finding their way back to Europe by the end of the seventeenth century. For example, the printed copy of the Nô play Kiyotsune which dates from around 1650 and which reached the library of Sidney Sussex College, 2 Izumi K. Tytler, ‘The Japanese collection in the Bodleian Library’, in Yu-Ying Brown, ed., Japanese studies, British Library Occasional Papers 11 (London, The British Library, 1990), p. 114. Two volumes of Azuma kagami in the library of Trinity College Dublin (Tr.1645) were given by John Parker, archbishop of Dublin in 1679-81, and three further volumes that reached Cambridge University Library in 1715 carry an inscription indicating that in 1626 they belonged to an English clergyman who never left England: Nozomu Hayashi and P. F. Kornicki, Early Japanese books in Cambridge University Library: a catalogue of the Aston, Satow and von Siebold Collections (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 1. 3 On ten Rhyne see John Z. Bowers, Medical pioneers in feudal Japan (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), pp. 31-38; Kornicki, ‘European japanology at the end of the seventeenth century’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56 (1993), pp. 510-511, 520-522. 4 On de Jager and his list see Kornicki, ‘European japanology at the end of the seventeenth century’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56 (1993). Collecting Japanese Books in Europe 23 Cambridge, before the end of the century, can only have left Japan through Deshima. Similarly, Nicholas Witsen (1641-1720), the long-standing mayor of Amsterdam, owned a small collection of Japanese printed books and maps which he obtained from Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), the German doctor who spent two years on Deshima in the 1690s.5 It was in the same way, too, that the German sinologist Andreas Müller (1630-1694) acquired some Japanese books and began to take an interest in the language.6 Mean- while, the Prussian State Library had by 1702 acquired a Japanese calendar, a Japanese botanical manuscript executed in 1683 and a copy of the 1637 edition of Honzô kômoku, a Japanese edition of a famous Chinese botani- cal work. Needless to say, all three items reached Berlin from Deshima via Batavia, and the botanical manuscript at least was sent home by Andreas Cleyer, a German who served two terms as doctor on Deshima in the 1680s.7 Kaempfer’s own collection was much more substantial and much more significant; it was purchased from his widow by Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, and 43 books and maps acquired by Kaempfer in Japan are now to be found in the British Library.8 Kaempfer was more than simply a collector for there can be no doubt that he engaged with Japanese books, including maps, dictionaries, almanacs and historical works, as is amply evident not only from his extensive description of Japan but also from the detailed notes he took on his books, which also survive in the British Library.9 How much Japanese he actually knew and how much he was dependent upon his Japanese informants are questions that cannot be answered precisely, but it is clear that his was a working collection, not just a set of curiosities. 5 See the auction catalogue of Witsen’s possessions, Catalogus Van een Heerlyk Kabinet Met Oost-Indische en andere Konstwerken en rariteyten (Amsterdam, 1728). A letter of Kaempfer to Leibniz indicates that he gave books to Witsen: Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey and Derek Massarella, eds., The furthest goal : Engelbert Kaempfer’s encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Folkestone, Japan Library, 1995), p. 186, n. 22. 6 Kornicki, ‘European japanology’, pp. 505-506, 515. 7 Eva Kraft, ‘Die Japansammlung der Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz’, Bonner Zeitschrift für Japanologie 3 (1981), pp. 111-120. 8 K. B Gardner, ‘Engelbert Kaempfer’s Japanese library’, Asia Major, n.s., 7 (1962), pp. 74-79; Yu-Ying Brown, ‘Japanese books and manuscripts in Sloane’s Japanese library and the making of the History of Japan’, in Sir Hans Sloane: collector, scientist, antiquary, founding father of the British Museum, edited by Arthur MacGregor (London, British Museum Press, 1994); the books are fully described in K. B. Gardner, Descriptive catalogue of Japanese books in the British Library printed before 1700 (London, British Library, 1993). 9 For Kaempfer’s notes on his Japanese books, see British Library, Sloane Ms. 3062, fol. 64a, 121-311; his description of Japan is newly translated from his manuscript in Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey. Kaempfer’s Japan : Tokugawa culture observed (Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 1999). 24 P. F. Kornicki In the eighteenth century there are only two important figures whose collections of Japanese books reached European shores.
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