22 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



have exerted their influence chiefly in the direction of history^ 

 medicine, and the natural sciences. It is to the labours of such men 

 as Engelbrecht Kaempfer, C. P. Thunberg, P. F. von Siebold, 

 Edmund Naumann and Max Fesca that the present position of 

 natural science in Japan is largely due. Of late, too, many Japanese- 

 students have been attracted to America rather than Europe, both 

 by the improvement of scientific education there and by the greater 

 nearness of that country. As a consequence of all this, English 

 scientific men have less communication with their Japanese 

 colleagues, and know less about their doings than it would be to> 

 their advantage to have and know. And this it was that suggested 

 the present account. 



The present state of Japanese science will be better appreciated 

 if we compare it with what has preceded, and trace its gradual 

 development. 



It was originally through the commercial enterprise of the 

 Dutch that scientific men were able to acquire for themselves some 

 knowledge of this far country, and at the same time to introduce to 

 its inhabitants some of their own more advanced methods and know- 

 ledge. The materia medica of snakes' skins, dragon's blood and more 

 disgusting, if less rare, substances, and the oriental nostrums of 

 massage, acupuncture and moxa were, if not superseded, at all events 

 modified by the wider knowledge of drugs and the more rational 

 acquaintance with human anatomy communicated by the physicians 

 of the Dutch East India Company. Of these men the first of impor- 

 tance was Kaempfer, a Westphalian, who came to Nagasaki, then the 

 only port of Japan with which the Dutch were permitted to trade, in 

 1651, being then 39 years of age. He stayed in Japan two years and 

 two months, during which time he was, like other foreigners, practi- 

 cally confined to Deshima, an island district of Nagasaki, except on 

 the two occasions when he attended the Dutch Embassy on its yearly 

 visit of homage to the Shogun's Court at Yedo, now Tokio. In spite 

 of the disadvantages under which he laboured, he collected a vast 

 amount of information, subsequently given to the world in his 

 Amoenitatum Exoticarum Politico-physico-medicarum Fasciculus V. (Lemgo> 

 1 71 2), and in the History of Japan. Here we may venture to pride 

 ourselves on the fact that at least the original publication of the 

 latter work was due to an Englishman, Sir Hans Sloane, who pur- 

 chased the manuscript, had it translated into English by Dr. J. G. 

 Scheuchzer, and published the translation at London in 1727-8; and 

 this English version was the basis of all subsequent foreign editions 

 of the work. 



In Kaempfer's time a knowledge of natural history seems to 

 have been very sparingly diffused among the Japanese. Monsters, 

 indeed, they were well acquainted with, such as the unicorn, by them 

 called Kirin, the Hoo, which is generally translated Phoenix, and 

 the sea-dragon or Ryo ; but animals of a less exalted type appealed 



