Though the view taken by Thunberg of the Japanese presents them perhaps not quite so high in the scale of civilization as Kämpfer’s, yet he is scarcely less their admirer, coinciding, indeed, in this respect, with most of the Europeans who have left any memorials of their observations in Japan. He notes especially their courtesy, friendly disposition, ingenuity, love of knowledge, justice, honesty, frugality, cleanliness, and self-respect; and he emphatically repudiates the conclusion that, because the laws are severe and strictly executed, the people are therefore to be regarded as slaves. These laws are for the public good, and their severity ensures their observance. “The Japanese,” he tells us, “hate and detest the inhuman traffic in slaves carried on by the Dutch, and the cruelty with which these poor creatures are treated.”
In common with Kämpfer he admires and extols the immutability of the Japanese laws and customs; but this seems hardly so legitimate a subject of eulogy as the peace in which the empire is kept, the plenty which is said to prevail,[69] and its freedom as well from internal feuds, political or religious, as from foreign encroachments.
Thunberg’s “Flora Japonica” describes about a thousand species, of which upwards of three hundred were new. In the preface to it he speaks of the Japanese Islands as chiefly hills and valleys, with high mountains. Plains and meadows are rare. The soil is now clayey and now sandy. The summer heat is great, especially in July and August, sometimes one hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, and scarcely tolerable but for the breeze. In winter the thermometer, even in the most southern parts, falls many degrees below the freezing-point, especially with the wind from the north and west, with ice and snow, which on the highest mountains remains all the year round. The changes in the weather are great and sudden; violent storms with thunder and lightning are common. The rains are abundant throughout the year, and especially so in spring and summer, whence in part the fertility of Japan, mainly due, however, to careful cultivation.
CHAPTER XLI
Isaac Titsingh—His Residence in Japan—Translations from the Japanese—Annals of the Dairi—Memoirs of the Shōgun—Liberal Ideas in Japan—Marriage Ceremonies—Funeral Ceremonies—Mourning—Feast of Lanterns—A. D. 1779-1791.
Soon after Thunberg’s departure, he had a worthy successor in the person of Mr. Isaac Titsingh, the first director at Deshima since the time of Caron to whom we are indebted for any information about Japan. Born about 1740, Titsingh had entered early into the service of the Dutch East India Company. After seven years’ residence at Batavia, he was sent to Deshima, as director, where he arrived August 15, 1779, and remained till November 29, 1780, when he returned to Batavia. He came back again to Japan August 12, 1781, and remained till November 6, 1783, the war between Holland and England, growing out of the American revolution, having prevented the arrival of any ships from Batavia during the year 1782,—an event of which Titsingh took advantage to stipulate for a considerable advance in the price of Dutch imports, for a term of fifteen years. He reached Nagasaki a third time, August 18, 1784, but left again November 26 of the same year. During his first and second visits he made the journey to Yedo as Dutch ambassador, where he succeeded in making several friends, particularly Kuchiki Samon, prince of Tamba, who had learned Dutch, which he wrote tolerably well, with whom, and other Japanese friends, Titsingh kept up a correspondence for some time after leaving the country.
During his residence in Japan he made a valuable collection of Japanese curiosities, including many Japanese books, and he also brought home with him translations of some of these books, made by aid of Japanese interpreters attached to the factory at Deshima, whose interpretations, given viva voce, he wrote out in Dutch; for though Titsingh knew enough of Japanese for the purposes of conversation, he does not seem to have acquired the written language, nor to have been able to read Chinese, of which the characters are largely, and, indeed, chiefly, employed in most Japanese works of much pretensions. “I found,” he says, “among the interpreters belonging to our factory four individuals sufficiently well-informed for my purpose; a fifth had devoted himself chiefly to medicine, in which he had made rapid progress, in consequence of the instruction given to him by Dr. Thunberg. Far from finding them suspicious and reluctant, as Europeans are usually pleased to represent these persons, in order to palliate their own indolence, they manifested, on the contrary, an eagerness to procure for me every practicable information, to consult, in various matters beyond their capacity, the best-informed individuals among the magistrates and clergy, and to furnish me with books which might serve as a guide to my labors.”
After leaving Japan, Titsingh was governor at the Dutch factory at Chinsurah, in Bengal, where he became acquainted with Sir William Jones. In 1794 he was sent, with Van Braam, on a Dutch embassy to Pekin, with the design to counterwork the English embassy of Lord Macartney; but this residence in China was limited to a few months.
Returning to Europe, after a residence in the East of thirty-three years, Titsingh designed to publish the result of his Japanese researches, in both Dutch and French; but, before having done it, he died at Paris, in 1812, leaving his large fortune and his collections and manuscripts to an only child of his, by an Eastern woman, by whom the fortune was soon spent, and the manuscripts and curiosities sold and scattered, though some of them ultimately fell into appreciating hands.[70]
Among his translations, the one to which Titsingh ascribed the greatest importance was that of the “Nippon Ōdai Ichiran,” an abridged Japanese chronicle, from 600 B. C. to A. D. 1611, compiled in the year 1652, and printed at Miyako. Having been carefully compared by Klaproth with the original,—a task, as he says, from the manifold defects of Titsingh’s version, almost equivalent to a new translation,—and having been enriched with an introduction, a supplement and notes, this work was published in 1834, in French, at the expense of the Oriental Translation Fund, under the title of “Annales des Empereurs du Japan.”