The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan

Between the early seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional religious and philosophical understandings of the world, developed into a system (called honzogaku) that rivaled Western science in complexity—and then seemingly disappeared. Or d...

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Between the early seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional religious and philosophical understandings of the world, developed into a system (called honzogaku) that rivaled Western science in complexity—and then seemingly disappeared. Or did it? In The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, Federico Marcon recounts how Japanese scholars developed a sophisticated discipline of natural history analogous to Europe’s but created independently, without direct influence, and argues convincingly that Japanese natural history succumbed to Western science not because of suppression and substitution, as scholars traditionally have contended, but by adaptation and transformation.

The first book-length English-language study devoted to the important field of honzogaku, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan will be an essential text for historians of Japanese and East Asian science, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the development of science in the early modern era.

Prologue ix
Part I. Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Nature without Nature: Prolegomena to a History of Nature Studies in Early Modern Japan 3
Chapter 2
The Bencao gangmu and the World It Created 28 Part II. Ordering Names: 1607–1715 51
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Prologue ix
Part I. Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Nature without Nature: Prolegomena to a History of Nature Studies in Early Modern Japan 3
Chapter 2
The Bencao gangmu and the World It Created 28 Part II. Ordering Names: 1607–1715 51
Chapter 3
Knowledge in Translation: Hayashi Razan and the Glossing of Bencao gangmu 55
Chapter 4
Writing Nature’s Encyclopedia 72
Chapter 5
The First Japanese Encyclopedias of Nature: Yamato honzō and Shobutsu ruisan 87
Part III. Inventorying Resources: 1716–36 111
Chapter 6
Tokugawa Yoshimune and the Study of Nature in Eighteenth-Century Japan 115
Chapter 7
Inventorying Nature 140 Part IV. Nature’s Spectacles: The Long Eighteenth Century (1730s–1840s) 153
Chapter 8
Nature’s Wonders: Natural History as Pastime 161
Chapter 9
Nature in Cultural Circles 179 Chapter 10
Nature Exhibited: Hiraga Gennai 207 Chapter 11
Representing Nature: From “Truth” to “Accuracy” 228
Part V. The Making of Japanese Nature: The Bakumatsu Period 251
Chapter 12
Bakumatsu Honzōgaku: The End of Eclecticism? 255
Chapter 13
Nature as Accumulation Strategy: Satō Nobuhiro and the Synthesis of Honzōgaku and Keizaigaku 276
Epilogue 299
Acknowledgments 307
List of Japanese and Chinese Terms 309
Notes 329
Index 397
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