Investigations of Japanese natural history by western visitors and their exchanges of knowledge among intellectuals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25870485
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese history; Cultural assets study and museology
• Research Institution: Kagawa University
• Principal Investigator: TAKIGAWA Yuko 香川大学, 農学部, 技術補佐員 (40532932)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 魚類学史 / 博物学史 / 19世紀 / 日欧東西交流 / 分類学 / 博物館 / タイプ標本 / 日本産魚類

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research focused on the investigations of Japanese natural history by western natural scientists from the late 18th to the end of 19th centuries. Many natural history items including specimens and drawings were collected by western visitors from Japan. Western scientists regarded those materials as knowledge, and they made great use of them for their research. Specimens and archives stored in museums have shown that the intellectuals intensively exchanged information. Tracing those intellectual networks enabled me to find out where other natural history items and archives had been stored. As results of the first-hand observations of those materials abroad, Japanese studies by the West can be characterized by the collecting methods and research approaches as the following four periods: 1) late 18th to early 19th centuries; 2) the first half of the 19th century; 3) the early Meiji period, i.e., the late 19th century; and 4) the end of the 19th to the early 20th centuries.

Free Research Field

東西交流史