Thursday 25 January – Wednesday 20 April 2011
The Forgotten Scholars of Dejima: recalling the work of Carl Peter Thunberg and Isaac Titsingh
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
The names of Kaempfer and Siebold are well known, but Thunberg and Titsingh have been largely forgotten. Yet Thunberg and Tisingh also visited Edo-period Japan and left fascinating accounts of their times there. Their visits spanned the end of the 18th century, when the shogunate was in one of its most liberal and internationally-minded periods. Timon Screech has restored the oeuvres of both European writers, after they have been out of print for some 200 years.
About the contributors
Professor Timon Screech
Timon Screech is Professor of the History of Art at SOAS, University of London. He received a BA in Oriental Studies (Japanese) at Oxford University in 1985 and completed his PhD in Art History at Harvard University in 1991. He has published widely on many aspects of Edo-period art and culture, and has written several books in Japanese and English. He has also been Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, and he is Permanent Visiting Professor at Tama University of the Arts, Tokyo. His main current research project is related to the deification of the first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the cult established for him at Nikko.
Dr Simon Kaner
Simon Kaner (chair) is Assistant Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He is an archaeologist specialising in the prehistory of the Japanese archipelago. He curated the exhibition ‘Flaming Pottery: Art and Landscape in Prehistoric Japan’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2001. His recent publications include an adapted translation of ‘Jomon Reflections’ by Tatsuo Kobayashi (Oxbow Books, 2004).