EAST MEETS WEST

Part 2: Papers of Englebert Kaempfer (1651-1716) and related sources from the British Library

Kaempfer’s notes and observations, offering some of Europe’s first detailed insights into the History and Culture of Asia, fired the imagination of so many western writers. Voltaire, Goethe, Kant and Goldsmith all made use of his writings and his voyages are said to have inspired Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

This second part of East Meets West covers the vitally important records of Englebert Kaempfer, the German physician who worked for the Dutch East India Company in Nagasaki between 1690 and 1692, and who has been described as the ‘First Interpreter of Japan’. Kaempfer’s views arouse as much interest now as they did in 1711 when Leibniz wrote "What is Dr Kaempfer up to? Will he not publish anything about his observations made on his travels?" (Letter to Bierling, 7 July 1711)

Now, some three hundred years after Kaempfer’s visit, we can publish in full the manuscript notebooks in which he recorded his observations. Only a fraction were put to use in his great History of Japan. All eighteen notebooks have been included in the project and from these one is able to see why Kaempfer’s work on Japan had such a long lasting influence. As one of the first westerners to leave a detailed and clear description of the interior of the country his work was invaluable, moving away from the mere rough indications that had been available previously.

After a prolonged stay in Persia, Kaempfer reached Nagasaki in September 1690 via posts in India, Indonesia and Thailand. He stayed on the tiny island of Deshima, specially reserved for the Dutch merchants who were the only westerners allowed contact with the Japan. Each year, the merchants made a tribute mission to the Shogun’s court in Edo (Tokyo), and Kaempfer made use of his two trips to observe life in the interior parts of the country and to record the audiences with Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. Only a handful of Europeans before Kaempfer, and none after him until Siebold and Thunberg, had the opportunity to observe Japanese life so closely in this way.

Despite local laws forbidding this, Kaempfer gleaned a great deal of information on contemporary Japan through his interpreter/auxiliary who assisted him in acquiring as much material as he could, risking the threat of execution if he was exposed as a spy. Due to their genuine friendship Kaempfer built up an invaluable source of knowledge about Japan, trading Western medical knowledge or European liqueurs for information on the country.

He offered the first scientific account of Japan, bringing to bear all of the medical and humanistic learning that he had received whilst studying at German, Dutch, Polish and Swedish universities. Kaempfer’s notes are extremely wide-ranging, covering flora, fauna, geography, climate, art, architecture, literature, history, amusements, work, the structure of society, urban life, agriculture, diet, religion and politics. He found a great deal to praise in Sakoku (literally, the country that shut itself up) finding it to be peace-loving, cultured and well-organised.

The value of this collection of notebooks was recognised by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), President of the Royal Society and an indefatigable collector of first-hand accounts of travels and voyages. Using the influence of John George Steigerthal (physician to George I) he bought the manuscripts and they remain a part of the Sloane manuscripts - one of the foundation collections of the British Library. These manuscripts have been surveyed in a number of articles, but they have never been researched in depth. This project offers the ideal opportunity to fully explore these invaluable manuscripts.

".....the rare combination of manuscript and author’s notes not only furnishes the historian with an unadulterated record of seventeenth century Japan and Siam, but also permits reconstruction of the methods that led to the publication of numerous other so-called eye-witness accounts in the period."
Beatrice Bodart-Bailey, Department of Far East History, Australian National University