January 27, 2020

EDO - Siebold exhibition in Germany

https://edoflourishing.blogspot.com/2017/07/matsugae-district.html

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Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold  フィリップ・フランツ・バルタザール・フォン・シーボルト
(1796 – 1866)
a German physician, botanist, and traveler. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna and the introduction of Western medicine in Japan. He was the father of the first female Japanese doctor, Kusumoto Ine.


- Arrival in Japan
On 28 June 1823, after only a few months in the Dutch East Indies, Siebold was posted as resident physician and scientist to Dejima, a small artificial island and trading post at Nagasaki, and arrived there on 11 August 1823. During an eventful voyage to Japan he only just escaped drowning during a typhoon in the East China Sea. As only a very small number of Dutch personnel were allowed to live on this island, the posts of physician and scientist had to be combined. Dejima had been in the possession of the Dutch East India Company (known as the VOC) since the 17th century, but the Company had gone bankrupt in 1798, after which a trading post was operated there by the Dutch state for political considerations, with notable benefits to the Japanese. ...
... In 1824, Siebold started a medical school in Nagasaki, the Narutaki-juku, that grew into a meeting place for around fifty students. They helped him in his botanical and naturalistic studies. The Dutch language became the lingua franca (common spoken language) for these academic and scholarly contacts for a generation, until the Meiji Restoration.
- Japanese family
During his stay in Japan, Siebold "lived together" with Kusumoto Taki (楠本滝), who gave birth to their daughter Kusumoto (O-)Ine in 1827. Siebold used to call his wife "Otakusa" (probably derived from O-Taki-san) and named a Hydrangea after her. Kusumoto Ine eventually became the first Japanese woman known to have received a physician's training and became a highly regarded practicing physician and court physician to the Empress in 1882. She died at court in 1903.
... Siebold Incident
In 1826 Siebold made the court journey to Edo. During this long trip he collected many plants and animals. But he also obtained from the court astronomer Takahashi Kageyasu several detailed maps of Japan and Korea (written by Inō Tadataka), an act strictly forbidden by the Japanese government. When the Japanese discovered, by accident, that Siebold had a map of the northern parts of Japan, the government accused him of high treason and of being a spy for Russia.
The Japanese placed Siebold under house arrest
and expelled him from Japan on 22 October 1829. Satisfied that his Japanese collaborators would continue his work, he journeyed back on the frigate Java to his former residence, Batavia, in possession of his enormous collection of thousands of animals and plants, his books and his maps. The botanical garden of Buitenzorg would soon house Siebold's surviving, living flora collection of 2,000 plants. ...
- - - More in the WIKIPEDIA !



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Collecting Japan. Philipp Franz von Siebold's Vision of the Far East
The octagonal box contains a game with countless finely painted shells, each one a miniature in its own right. It is Japanese and dates from the Edo period (1603-1868). This exquisite object will be on display in the comprehensive special exhibition that includes lacquered and tortoiseshell work, ivory carvings and porcelain, filigree Buddha figures, sacred censers, huge scroll paintings and richly decorated textiles, as well as toy figures and material samples. The approximately 300 individual items, all collected by Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866), a Würzburg doctor and scientist working for the Dutch, provide a fascinating insight into the secular and sacred craftwork of Japan. The exhibition, which is being organized jointly with the Museum of Japanese History in Sakura (Prefecture of Chiba), sheds light on the life of the collector and his time, the basis on which he organized his collections and his encyclopaedic approach to his mission of making Japan comprehensible to the west. ...
- source : Museum Fünf Kontinente, München, Germany -

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The Legend of Yoshitsune
Could Genghis Khan have actually been a Japanese samurai who went to Mongolia?

The first person who introduced this theory was a well known German Doctor, Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796-1866), who was sent to Japan in 1823 by the Dutch government. He carried out research and established a Western style medical school in Edo period Japan while it was still under the rule of samurai.
In his seven volume series "Nippon," he wrote about Yoshitsune and Genghis Khan. During the Meiji period (1868-1912) after the modernization of Japan, some intelligentsia discussed this theory. However it was Oyabe Zenichiro's substantial bestseller of 1924, Genghis Khan wa Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune Nari [Genghis Khan was Yoshitsune] which made this theory known to the public.
- Harada Minoru -

. Genghis Khan (1162 - 1227) .

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