Shortly after arriving in Japan in 1823, Philipp Franz von Siebold wrote to a relative back in Holland, "I do not intend to leave Japan until I have described it in detail and until I have collected enough material for a Japanese museum . . ."
Collecting was an 18th-century passion. Ethnology was a completely new field, and no methodology other than collecting had been created for it. As for museology, it could begin only when more museums were established. Cabinets of curiosities, those first table-top museums, were to be found all over Europe, and Siebold -- a doctor and hence of a scientific turn of mind -- was to bring together one of the largest. It is now, in fact, a full-fledged museum.
It would, say the authors of this account of Siebold and his life, "take months, if not years, to view all the material that he collected . . ." That included anything he could lay his hands on -- books, maps, plants, animals, art, handicrafts -- and enlarging and classifying the collection were, along with his medical duties, his major occupation in Japan.
Like Thunberg and Kaempfer before and Morse and others after him, he was interested in accumulating for its own sake. At the same time, however, he was concerned to aid continuing Dutch influence in the country, and was consequently interested in fostering trade. Having acquired a pot of caviar, he wrote: "Japanese caviar exceeds the Russian in taste and purity."
These varied interests excited comment in xenophobic Japan, and indeed his promiscuous collection eventually shortened both his stays here. For example, the maps and geographical information he had obtained from the court astronomer, Takahashi Sakuzaemon, constituted a major transgression.
The unfortunate astronomer was cast into jail and his teeth were smashed so that he could not commit suicide by biting off his tongue. A major search of the Siebold collection was organized, and the collector himself was "banned for life" from Japan. Although during the hearings he had steadfastly refused to name a single "accomplice," a determination which won him local respect, nonetheless some 50 of his Japanese associates were convicted.
Siebold himself was forced to leave behind his wife and young daughter, but he had already managed to send off a major part of the collection and he now somehow contrived to get the rest of it out of the country. Back in Holland, he devoted himself to cataloging and to politicking for a post in the Netherlands government.
Among other accomplishments, he completed his major work, "Nippon," a written description of Japan that he published in 1833, three years after his return to Leiden. He also remarried and raised several children, among them the boy he would take with him to Japan and leave there the second time he was driven out.
Arriving with his 13-year-old son in 1859, he found a very different Japan. Many other nationalities, not only the Dutch, were interested in opening up ports for trade and other reasons and, under the resulting hammering, the inflexible and brittle Tokugawa shogunate was breaking apart.
Here Siebold again met his first wife, now also remarried, and his daughter, now a doctor like her father, and at once resumed collecting. At the same time, "some people found Siebold's inflated ego and meddlesome behavior quite irritating," and it was not long before he was again ordered out of the country. Though the tottering Japanese authority was invoked, his political meddling was severely embarrassing to the Dutch in their own endeavors. By 1861 he was again on his way home.
Now thoroughly irritated, Siebold moved to Germany, selling copies of his book and displaying his more portable treasures. In 1866 a cold finally carried him off. His last words were, "I am going to a beautiful place, a place of peace."
By this he certainly did not mean Holland, but it is this country that has kept "Nippon" in print, has tended the "Japanese" garden he began with seeds and cuttings he had brought home with him, and which maintains the handsome Sieboldhuis that houses his collection and which was opened a year ago to mark the 400th anniversary of the "exclusive relationship" between Japan and Holland.
This exclusivity resulted in the prison island of Deshima, of which Kaempfer, a German, wrote: "The Dutch were so greedy . . . that they willingly submitted to what was virtually lifelong imprisonment -- because that is what our existence in Deshima actually amounted to."
But is also resulted in handsome Sieboldhuis, where resides Siebold's glorious plunder (some of it illustrated in this handsome book) and which in fact helped publish this scholarly, readable account of the man, his life and his times.
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