Engelbert Kaempfer
Engelbert Kaempfer wrote the account of Japan that Europe relied on for a century. Born in Lemgo in Westphalia in 1651, the son of a pastor, he studied at six universities across Germany, Poland and Sweden, taking degrees in philosophy and medicine and specialising in natural history and languages. In 1683 he joined a Swedish embassy to Persia as secretary, travelling through Moscow and Astrakhan to Isfahan, where he stayed nearly four years and learned Persian. He then joined the Dutch East India Company as a ship's surgeon, sailing to Arabia, India, Ceylon, Java and Siam. He reached Japan in 1690 and stayed two years at Dejima, the artificial island in Nagasaki harbour that was the only point of contact between Japan and Europe under the sakoku policy of national seclusion. Foreigners were confined there and forbidden to gather information. Kaempfer worked around it: he treated Japanese officials and interpreters medically, traded European liquor and knowledge for observations, and travelled twice to Edo with the annual embassy to the shogun, recording the journey in detail. He collected plants, described acupuncture and moxibustion, made the first European account of the ginkgo tree — the name descends from his transcription — and wrote down the political structure, religion, history and daily life. He returned in 1693, took a medical doctorate, worked as a physician, and died in 1716 with the manuscript unpublished. Hans Sloane bought his papers, and The History of Japan appeared in English in 1727 and then in Dutch, French and German. It shaped everything Europe believed about Japan until the nineteenth century.
- Lived: 1651 CE – 1716 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: physician, naturalist, writer
