[SIEBOLD (Philipp Franz von). [Voyage au Japon, exécuté pend - Lot 224

[SIEBOLD (Philipp Franz von). [Voyage au Japon, exécuté pendant les années 1823 à 1830]. Paris, Arthus Bertrand, [1837-1840]. Large folio, dark green half-chagrin, smooth spine cold-stamped; jaws rubbed, headbands worn, one with a tear, occasional heavy foxing on the mounts, sometimes affecting the prints more lightly (period binding). Incomplete collection of 55 lithographed plates printed on chine appliqué (one double-page plate mounted on tabs, 54 single plates), 8 of them hand-colored, including maps, views, scenes, portraits, depictions of objects, and reproductions of paintings or prints. Most with trilingual lithographed captions in French, German and Dutch. Taken from the atlas of this Voyage au Japon, these plates are here no. 1, 2, 3bis, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18-21, 25, 27-29, 31-33, 35, 35 (different motif from the previous one), 40, 41, 46, 49, 52, 54, 59, 60, 67, 68, 71, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 87, 92, 93, 94, 96-100, 102, 104, 110, 111, 114-116, 118. This Voyage au Japon, published in installments over several years, is extremely rare today: it appears only in incomplete form in the libraries cited by the CCfr: the BnF, the libraries of Arles, Saint-Geniez d'Olt, Le Mans, Albi and Versailles have incomplete atlases. Others have only the text. The work is also absent from the library of bookseller Charles Chadenat, while Henri Cordier, in his Bibliotheca japonica, cites only the incomplete copy in the BnF. One of the pioneers of Japanese studies and the father of Western medicine in Japan, the physician and naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866) was a Bavarian aristocrat who entered the service of the Kingdom of Holland, and was stationed in Japan from 1823 to 1830 as physician to the Dutch trading post of Nagasaki, on the island of Dejima. This was the only Western settlement authorized in the Empire, and the only place where contacts between the two cultures could be established, as Europeans were not allowed to enter the land. Siebold was the first to be authorized to teach medicine to Japanese, and founded a private establishment (juku), thus playing an important role in the acclimatization of European science in the country, which came to be known as "Dutch studies" (rangaku). He had also received an unofficial mission from his government, firstly to provide diplomatic and military intelligence, then to collect works of art. Thus, in 1826, he took part in the procession that the Dutch were required to make at regular intervals in Tokyo, the only authorized and highly supervised trip in tribute to the shogun. During this trip, he met a number of Japanese personalities, including a geographer who provided him with maps of northern Japan. However, when a Dutch ship was wrecked in 1828, the authorities discovered items Siebold had wanted to send to the West, including maps of Sakhalin Island (Karafuto), even though it was forbidden to send maps to foreigners. Siebold was banished in 1830. He settled in Leiden, where he published several major works that introduced Westerners to Japan even before the country was opened to the world in 1853: Nippon; Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan (Leiden, 1832-1851, 20 volumes), Voyage au Japon (Paris, Arthus Bertrand, 1837-1840, some 20 volumes, French translation of part of Nippon), and Flora japonica (Leiden, 1826-1870, 30 volumes).